123 Textiles, like food, meet a basic human need. Their production, distribution and consumption have therefore played an important role in the economies and the cultural life of all societies. Textile production was already highly specialized in antiquity,1 and associated with different forms of dependency: the availability of resources, forced labour, unequal gender roles and the level of technical progress. These aspects of unfreedom can be observed in textile production in almost all cultures and periods, and of course they have not been eliminated everywhere even now. This chapter focuses on the late antique Mediterranean, i.e. the period between the 3rd and the 7th centuries CE (fig. 1). DEPENDENCY ON RAW MATERIALS: SILK, GOLD AND PURPLE An important source for the study of late antique textiles are finds from Egypt, where the hot, dry climate has preserved fabrics and dyes in amazingly good condition. Most finds are from graves: the deceased were buried in their everyday clothes and wrapped in blankets and hangings. Because of their close relationship to representations of clothing and soft furnishings in mosaics and paintings, textile finds from Egypt are considered representative of the entire late antique Mediterranean region. Linen and wool were raw materials that were equally available in late antiquity. Depending on what was required, people would choose the cooling, tear- resistant qualities of linen (fig. 2) or the warming, dye-absorbing properties of wool (fig. 3). Cotton did not come into wider use until the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, increasingly replacing linen as the most important fibre throughout the Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages.2 This shows how the availability of raw materials depended on political rulers who introduced their own materials into conquered territories and made sure that they took root there. The textile luxury goods of late antiquity were silk (fig. 4), gold and purple dye. These materials had limited availability because of their rarity in nature and the elaborate processing techniques they required. Silk was imported into the Mediterranean region from China and Central Asia. Written sources report that the emperor Justinian had silkworm eggs smuggled from Central Asia to Byzantium in the mid-6th century, thereby establishing silkworm farming in the Mediterranean.3 True purple, which produces reddish and blue hues, was extracted from the glands of sea snails found in coastal regions of the Mediterranean in an extremely complex process. True purple had been a status symbol since the Bronze Age.4 In antiquity, clothing and soft furnishings with gold threads were highly prestigious.5 The gold threads were made of sheet gold cut into strips and wound around a thread core. With diameters of only 0.1 to 0.2 millimetres, gold thread was produced by specialized goldsmiths. The limited availability of silk, purple and gold thread was further restricted by imperial legislation, which imposed a monopoly, held by the imperial house, on the production and sale of pure silk garments, textiles dyed with true purple, and gold fabrics. However, archaeological finds of gold, silk and purple textiles in private contexts show that loopholes in the law were exploited, or the law circumvented.6 The influence of these luxury materials on textile production is particularly evident in the ways they were imitated: the mesh patterns typical of silk were imitated in cheaper materials such as wool and linen, vegetable dyes such as madder and indigo were substituted for genuine purple, and the luminous effect of gold thread was imitated by yellow wool. GENDER-SPECIFIC ROLES IN PRODUCTION: SPINNING Textiles were produced in several stages: raw material extraction, thread production, weaving, fulling and dyeing. Written evidence suggests that these operations were mainly carried out in professional textile workshops.7 While the occupations associated with fabric production were carried out by men, thread production, i.e. spinning, appears to have been an activity carried out exclusively by women in the home.8 Spinning the thread used in weaving was very time-consuming, with between 122 and 350 hours of labour required to spin the wool or linen thread needed to make a single tunic.9 Only the hand spindle was used, which consisted of a wooden or bone rod to which a terracotta, stone or bone whorl was affixed. Evidence for domestic spinning has been found around the Mediterranean in the form of remains of spinning tools in dwellings in many late antique settlement excavations (figs. 5 – 6).10 Spinning was considered a typically female activity, associated with the feminine virtues of diligence and care. Thus spinning tools became typical attributes of women, both in representations of the living and in death. Spinning tools were placed in women’s graves and women were depicted on gravestones with a spindle. In wealthy households, spinning tools made of precious materials such as ivory, amber or jet were considered status symbols.11 The image of the Virgin Mary spinning entered Christian iconography with the Annunciation scene.12 Petra Linscheid
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