Testing and comparing the functionality of prehistoric Sicilian spools in textile production through experimental weaving (11th Experimental Archaeology Conference, Università degli Studi di Trento, 2-4.05.2019) (program) (original) (raw)
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"Islands in Dialogue (Islandia). Proceedings of the First Conference in the Prehistory and Protohistory of the Mediterranean Islands", G. Albertazzi, G. Muti, A. Saggio (eds), Rome: Editoriale Artemide, 2021
This paper focuses on the functionality of non-canonically shaped textile tools used for weaving on the vertical warp-weighted loom. It investigates the impact of differences in the forms of potential weaving tools (pierced cylindrical spool-shaped object and weight), which are otherwise characterised by similar functional parameters (i.e. weight and thickness), on the outcome of weaving, as well as on their performance on the loom. The experimental framework of the study is based on the use of replicas of the Early Bronze Age (c. 2200–1450 BC) implements found in Sicily and the adjacent Aeolian Islands. Experimental weaving, using both thinner linen threads and thicker woollen threads, has proved that the different forms of these tools, as opposed to their functional features, did not have an influence on the woven fabric. It has, however, affirmed that particularities in the shapes of these implements have major significance for the practical aspect of weaving on this type of loom. The experiments also showed that the flared cylindrical spools with concave shaft and a central perforation that runs diagonally were especially efficient as they kept the warp threads in place and maintained the original setup throughout the weaving process. The roughly cylindrical weights, by contrast, caused problems for the operation of the loom. Their tendency to twist and alter the width of the rows leaves the question of their application within weaving open to debate.
In the last decades archaeological textile tools have been the subject of numerous studies contributing to our knowledge about the prehistoric technology of textile production. However, from the island archaeology perspective, it is true only for the eastern Mediterranean region. The Sicilian Bronze Age (c. 2200-850 BC) repertoire of textile tools, for instance, has never been put under a thorough examination and remains largely unpublished, while in the case of this island it is the unique source of information about textile manufacture, especially important since no end product, i.e. fragments of cloth, was preserved from this area and epoch, and comparative material (iconographic and written documents) is lacking as well. The ongoing research project “Sicilian Textile Tools from the Bronze Age: Examination of Finds and Comparative Studies on Their Functionality” was designed to fulfil this informational gap and deliver new data about the technological advancement of the craft and textile production possibilities through the examination of finds, analysis of their functional parameters, and creation of a framework typology of tools. The project also tackles the issues of tools specialization and/or standardization, potential external influence on textile tools and craft, the organization of production, also in relation to space, labour division, and craft specialization. The aim of this paper is thus to present the preliminary results of almost two years of research conducted on archaeological textile tools, mainly clay spindle whorls, but also spools and loom weights, unearthed on a number of Bronze Age sites across the island, as well as in the neighbouring Aeolian Archipelago.
Neolithic and Bronze Age textiles and textile tools from Northern Italy
In Banck-Burgess, J., Marinova, E. & D. Mischka (eds.) The significance of archaeological textiles, Proceedings of the International Conference, 24th-25th February 2021, THEFBO volume II, Forschungen und Berichte zur Archäologie in Baden-Württemberg 28, 179-196., 2023
Some of the earliest evidence of textile production in Northern Italy comes from an advanced stage of the Neolithic (5th–4th millennium BCE). It is at this time that loom weights and spindle whorls become widespread on numerous archaeological sites. The contexts that have provided useful information are primarily located in humid areas and are often of pile-dwelling type. Recent information comes from the currently excavated site of Palù di Livenza (UD). After a decline in data during the third millennium BCE, the evidence for textile production increases significantly with the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (2200–1600 BCE), when the pile-dwelling model spreads across the region, particularly in the area around Lake Garda, where the surrounding pile-dwelling sites, datable primarily to Early Bronze Age, provide important evidence regarding the spinning and weaving of linen and other vegetable fibres. In these settlements, not only tools for textile production in clay, bone-antler and wood, but also fragments of fabrics have been found. In addition to the Trentino site of Molina di Ledro, well known for the numerous fragments of linen fabrics, the site of Lucone di Polpenazze is gaining considerable importance thanks to the new excavations underway since 2007. Various settlements have been identified in the inframorenic basin of the Lucone. To Lucone A, which was excavated from 1965 to 1971 and had already yielded various relevant materials, including numerous fragments of fabric, Lucone D has now been added, where several fragments of fabric, a spool with wound thread and various tools for spinning and weaving have been found. In this contribution, we present the preliminary results of the analysis of the textile tools, the fabric and textile fragments, as well as the thread preserved on a spool, which attests the intermediate stage of splicing at Lucone. The material will be placed in the wider context of textile production in prehistoric northern Italy.
In the contemporary studies on the textile production experimental approach to the process of manufacturing textiles and the functional analysis of textile tools produce an important part of the research. Thanks to the pioneer archaeological experiments conducted within the Tools and Textiles – Texts and Contexts (TTTC) Project of the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen the most important technical parameters of the textile tools were acknowledged. During these experiments some copies of prehistoric Aegean spindle-whorls and loom weights were reproduced, tested and analysed in terms of their functionality. In the result the weight and the thickness of a loom weight were recognized as two crucial technical parameters directly influencing the quality of a fabric. The optimal set up of the warp weighted loom was estimated and the relation between the quality of warp threads and their optimal tension recognized. Moreover, the tests suggested that there is a possibility to approximate, what yarns and what fabrics respectively might have been produced with specific textile tools. Textile production in the Bronze Age Greece is the main subject of my research carried in the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw. Experimental approach to the textile techniques, specifically weaving, is applied together as a research and a didactic method of teaching. The experimenters are mostly students, who attend the teaching courses on prehistoric weaving techniques and who are supposed to learn the basic “body knowledge” of weaving and the textile terminology by practice. In these experiments, mostly of experiential character, copies of loom weights from the Bronze Age Greece are also employed. Students first model themselves several copies of a chosen artefacts and afterwards they weave with different sets of loom weights. In that way students gain ‘hands on experience’ in weaving, being able to understand the aforementioned relation between loom weights and fabrics by practice. We have to our disposal several sets of copies of Minoan discoid, spherical and cuboid weights, three types of Late Helladic spools and finally two sets of Early Bronze Age loom weights from Tiryns. The last two sets consist of loom weights unique in the Aegean: a crescent like (“banana”) weights and heavy cylinders with three perforations. Both sets where several times applied for weaving, which allows for some observations on their functionality. More tests, including further modelling of artefacts, are planned for this winter/spring semester. In my paper I present insofar results of our experiments with copies of Early Bronze Age tools, though I have to emphasize that the students are not experienced weavers and therefore their observations have to be analysed with a special caution. I refer to the significant difference between the parameters of the discoid loom weights and heavy crescent shape weights, and cylinders. I discuss difficulties in the proper reconstruction of the way in which these two last types of weights might have been set up on the warp weighted loom; the use of crescent shape weights for twill weaving and the possibility of using “bananas” and cylinders as somehow more universal weights in the process of textile manufacturing.
K. Żebrowska (2018), The Early and Middle Bronze Age Textile Tools from the Aeolian Islands (Italy)”, in: A. Ulanowska, M. Siennicka, M. Grupa (eds.), Dynamics and Organisation of Textile Production in Past Societies in Europe and the Mediterranean, Fasciculi Archaeologiae Historicae XXXI, Łódź, pp. 12-23. The Aeolian ceramic textile tools dated to the advanced Early and Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600-1250 BC) comprise the only evidence for textile manufacture and are a unique source of information about the technology of textile production used in the Early-Middle Bronze Age (EBA-MBA) in the Aeolian Archipelago (province of Messina, Italy). A recent re-examination of 76 out of over 140 of these tools has shown that heavier spindle whorls (71-153 g) dominate in the more numerous MBA material. The high weight values of the Aeolian spindle whorls, uncommon in the area and epoch, could point to the prevalent use of long staple animal fibres, e.g. wool, which requires heavier implements in order to be spun, in yarn manufacture in the archipelago. A group of very heavy tools (165-199/222 g), difficult to classify, has been identified in the MBA material as well. It is suggested that these particular implements were potential heavy spindle whorls used primarily for spinning long hard plant fibres, such as flax, and plying yarns or producing twines.
MAKING PREHISTORIC CLOTH: EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Assemblage , 2021
Stylistic typologies dominate the way textile tools are interpreted for Iron Age Britain. Though this analysis may be useful for relating multiple categories of artefacts across time and space, it does not produce adequate data for understanding tool function or technological variability. To understand how Iron Age people produced cloth with warp-weighted loom technology, we must also understand how textile tools may have related to each other. The chaîne opératoire of textile production is complex and its interpretation cannot be understood in simple terms. Because there are so few preserved textiles from this prehistoric period, what can be learned of textile production must be investigated through the tools from a functional perspective. An analysis of loomweights, spindle whorls, long-handled combs, and needles, and the range of their functional characteristics, has been the primary focus of the author's doctoral study. Though this research has revealed vital information about the life history of the respective objects, a functional analysis is still restricted in how it can answer certain questions. When used appropriately, experimental archaeology affords the ability to assess variables within physical space that can bear fruitful insights otherwise unobtainable in theoretical considerations. This paper summarises an experiment involving triangular clay weights, spindle whorls, and long-handled combs that are based on the small finds from Danebury hillfort. Part of this summary includes personal experiences as an experimenter and a crafter and how these experiences encouraged a discussion of technique. Furthermore, both experimental archaeology and experiential perspectives are shown to have interpretive value when relating these results to the archaeological evidence.
Experiments with Neolithic weaving tools (crescent shaped loom-weights)
Lunular or crescent shaped loom-weights are well known in mediterranean area – from Spain, in France, Italy, Greece and Turkey. The weights have also been found even in the area around the alps, in Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic and Southern Germany, especially accompanying the Jevišovice Culture and the Funnel Beaker Culture (about 3000 BC). The exact function of this unburnt or only less burnt artefacts is reconstructed in different ways. The experiments proved that crescent loom weights can be used for different textile techniques as band weaving, weaving a large textile on a loom or twining on a frame. It is possible to construct with that tools fabrics as they were found at Late Neolithic sites, especially band weaves, large weaves in tabby as well as structures of twined. Use-wear analysis were done as well.
Iancu 2020_Redefining Textile Handcraft. Structures, Tools and Production Processes. Proceedings of the VIIth International Symposium on Textiles and Dyes in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Granada, Spain 2-4 October 2019), 2020
Abstract: Clay spools are ubiquitous in many regions of the ancient Greek world, being associated by archaeologists most often with textile crafts. This category of tools is controversial because the functionality of the ancient spool-shaped objects made of clay is still highly debated among scholars. Despite the large numbers of spools dating to the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods recovered from archaeological sites in Elis (e.g. Olympia, Elean Pylos, Makrysia) and in other regions of Peloponnese, as it is the Argolid and Corinthia, these objects have received much less attention than their Bronze Age counterparts. As a consequence, relatively little is understood about their modes of production, geographical distribution and functionality. This paper investigates a trait observed on the waist of several of the ancient spools from Elis and examines an ancient production technique of spools that remains quasi-unknown in the field of archaeological textiles: the moulding of spools. Keywords: Clay spools, Textile tools, Peloponnese, Olympia, Elean, Pylos, Bivalve mould, Spool-shaped loom weights. Resumen: Los carretes de arcilla están presentes en muchas regiones de la Antigua Grecia, siendo lo más habitual que se vinculen con la artesanía textil. No obstante, esta clase de artefactos no está libre de controversia, pues la funcionalidad de los objetos de arcilla que adquieren esta forma de carrete es ampliamente debatida por parte de la investigación. A pesar de las grandes cantidades de carretes fechables en época arcaica, clásica y helenística que se han recuperado en varios yacimientos de la región de la Élide (por ejemplo, en Olimpia, Elea, Pilos o Macrisia) y en otras zonas de Grecia, como la Argólide y la región de Corinto, estos objetos han recibido mucha menor atención que sus homólogos de la Edad del Bronce. Consecuentemente, es muy poco lo queue se sabe acerca de sus sistemas de producción, su distribución geográfica o su funcionalidad. Este trabajo se centra en una característica observada en varios de los antiguos carretes de la Élide y estudia una antigua técnica de producción que sigue siendo casi desconocida en el campo de las herramientas textiles en la Antigüedad: el uso de moldes para fabricarlos. Palabras-clave: Carretes cerámicos; Herramientas textiles; Peloponeso; Olimpia; Elea; Pilos; Moldes bivalvos; Pesas de telar en forma de carrete.
The aim of this paper is to presents how a series of experiments (including spinning and weaving) conducted in controlled environment on clay copies of the original implements can contribute to the study of the use-wear marks characteristic for this class of objects. It aims at determining how different types of attrition, previously identified through macro- and microscopic observations of the artifacts’ surface, appeared (as result of use, storage, post-depositional processes), verify the assumptions about the techniques of use of particular types of tools, and finally, provide a better understanding of specific activities performed within the chaîne opératoire of prehistoric textile production.