The 5th Young Researchers' Conference in Aegean Archaeology (2017) - Book of Abstracts (original) (raw)

Textile implements from Early Bronze Age Greece: searching for potential tools

Prehistoric textile production has recently seen an increasing interest among scholars. New research on diverse aspects has been undertaken in order to improve our comprehension of the crucial craft of fabric and cloth manufacture in prehistoric times. Since textiles are hardly ever preserved in the archaeological material at prehistoric Greek sites, we can only investigate other remains related to textile production, especially textile implements made of clay, stone and bone. While it is relatively easy to identify the main types of clay spindle whorls, loom weights or needles, other classes of implements have proved to be more difficult to classify. This is true especially for bone tools, which are commonly found in prehistoric contexts, but their functions often remain unclear. Also various stone implements, e.g. pierced discs, may have been used in textile production, but this still needs to be verified through further studies and experiments. This paper will present various classes of Greek Early Bronze Age objects which have never before been considered as potential textile tools. The aim is to turn our attention to commonly neglected artefacts, which were often, especially in older publications, published without further examination or interpretations, but, in my view, might well have been related to textile production. Moreover, the functions of other artefacts, such as pierced clay discs, spools, and bone implements will be reconsidered.