A. Ulanowska, Diachronic overview of textile techniques from textile imprints preserved on the undersides of clay sealings from Bronze Age Greece, VIII Purpureae Vestes Conference, 19-21 October, Athens (original) (raw)

2022, VIII PURPUREAE VESTES International Symposium Tradition and Innovation in Textile Production in the Mediterranean World and Beyond, organisers: S. Spantidaki, Ch. Margariti and A. Iancu

Impressions of technical textiles: threads, cords and woven fabrics, as well as leather thongs, mats and basketry, preserved on the undersides of clay sealings from Bronze Age Greece, comprise an important, yet so far largely untapped, source of textile knowledge. A large number of such impressions, documented on plasticine and silicone casts of the undersides of clay sealings by the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel (CMS) team and stored in the CMS Archive now in Heidelberg, has been examined within the ‘Textiles and Seals’ research project and published in an open access ‘Textiles and Seals’ database (https://textileseals.uw.edu.pl/database/). The completely examined cast assemblages from Lerna and Geraki on the Greek Mainland, and Phaistos and Kato Zakro on Crete, reflect the longue durée range of sealing and storing practices that required the use of technical textiles. Due to the large number of preserved impressions, these casts allow, for the first time, evidence-based consideration of diachronic changes in textile production, seen from the perspective of a specific archaeological site and its chronological context. In this paper, an overview of the potentially identified textile techniques, such as splicing, spinning, drilling, skin processing, basketry, matting and weaving, is presented in relation to the specific sealing and storing practices at a given place, as well as the developments of technical textiles throughout the several centuries of the Bronze Age.