Greek and Roman textiles and dress: an interdisciplinary anthology

Abstract

"The volume presents the range of current research into the study of textiles and dress in classical antiquity stressing the need for cross and inter-disciplinarity in order to gain the fulllest picture of surviving material. Twenty chapters by a range of experts in the subject address issues such as: the importance of studying textiles to understand the economy and landscape of the past; different types of embellishments of dress from weaving techniques to the (late introduction) of embroidery; the close links between the language of ancient mathematics and weaving; the relationships of iconography to the realities of clothed bodies including a paper on the ground breaking research on the polychromy of ancient statuary; dye recipes and methods of dye analysis; case studies of garments in Spanish, Viennese and Greek collections which discuss methods of analysis and conservation; analyses of textile tools from across the Mediterranean; discussions of trade and ethnicity to the workshop relations in Roman fulleries. Multiple aspects of the production of textiles and the social meaning of dress are included here to offer the reader an up-to-date account of the state of current research. The volume opens up the range of questions that can now be answered when looking at fragments of textiles and examining written and iconographic images of dressed individuals in a range of media"--Back cover.

Contents

Weaving the threads: methodologies in textile and dress research for the Greek and Roman world : the state of the art and the case for cross-disciplinarity / by Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch -- Embellishment techniques of classical Greek textiles / by Stella Spantidakai -- The importance of beginnings: gender and reproduction in mathematics and weaving / by Ellen Harlizius-Klück -- Representation and realities: fibulas and pins in Greek and Near Eastern iconograhy / by Cecilie Brøns -- Dressing the Citharode: a chapter in Greek musical and cultic imagery / by Marco Ercoles -- Alchemical textiles: colourful garments, recipes and dyeing techniques in Graeco-Roman Egypt / Matteo Martelli -- The conservation of a 5th-Century BC excavated textile find from the Kerameikos Cemetery at Athens / by Christina Margariti and Maria Kinti -- Transport amphoras and loomweights: integrating elements of ancient Greek economies? / Mark L. Lawall The wool basket: function, depiction and meaning of the kalathos / by Elisabeth Trinkl -- Unravelling the tangled threads of ancient embroidery: a compilation of written sources and archaeologically preserved textiles / by Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Annette Paetz gen. Schieck -- New archaeological data for the understanding of weaving in Herakleia, Southern Basilicata, Italy / by Francesco Meo -- Roman art: what can it tell us about dress and textiles? A discussion on the use of visual evidence as sources for textile research / by Lena Larsson Lovén -- Where marble meets colour: surface texturing of hair, skin and dress on Roman marble portraits as support for painted polychromy / by Amalie Skovmøller -- Dressing the adulteress / by Jessica Dixon -- Looking between loom and laundry: vision and communication in Ostian fulling workshops / by Elizabeth Bevis -- Roman textiles and barbarians: some observations on textile exchange between the Roman Empire in Barbaricum / Zofia Kaczmarek -- The multiple functions and lives of a textile: the reuse of a garment / by Ines Bogensperger -- Discovering late antique textiles in the public collections in Spain: an interdisciplinary research project / by Laura Rodríguez Peinado, Ana Cabrera Lafuente, Enrique Parra Crego and Luis Turell Coll -- A new approach to the understanding of historic textiles / by Pilar Borrego and Carmen Vega -- Burial threads: a late antique textile and the iconography of the Virgin Annunciate spinning / by Catherine C. Taylor.