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New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods-methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.… (more)
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The author gets particular accolades for explaining her method, and then executing the work within scientific perameters so as to reveal actual facts of what people in previous times were doing. Not content with ignoring "work" for which there is little monumental evidence, she has found "data" in our physiology, the plants, myths, and language. With restraint on mere guesswork and speculation which is remarkable, Barber pieces together the role of women's work in the ancient communities. She is able to "explain"--objectively--why women did things that left almost no hard evidence: preparing food and weaving textiles. (For the 3 years of breast-feeding child care, it had to be work that could be interrupted and "safe"--unlike mining, carcass-rendering, stone-chipping and piling, or warfare, all of which tend to leave more obvious remains).
Barber takes us on a 20,000 year odyssey [283] to show us women working. In the Paleolithic period, the fiber crafts were connected to high social status and posed no danger to toddlers. Clothing, which became the "the next language after speech--unique in its ability to convey important information [if simple) continuously and relatively permanently".
With the advent of more settled life, the world changed. Cloth-making shifted from merely useful to essential, and finally commercial, importance as a commodity. By the start of the Late Bronze Age (2500 BC), women's textile work lost economic ground, while still busy with children.
As a scholar, Barber's work on "work" is particularly important not only for its rigor but its methodology in reconstructing what other scholars had dismissed as unreconstructable--the history of easily perishable commodities like textiles. Before Barber, apparently no one had bothered to reconstruct, and wear, a String Dress, or even a 2500 year old tartan. The woolen guide-string recovered from the caves of Lascaux is now considered part of the importance of the paintings.
The presentation is not wooden or theoretical-- it is delightful to re-read Homer and the Xenophon with Barber to re-visit the mystery of change and activity. Until recently, excavators would often throw away the remaining and scarce fiber, or assume the loom weights held little information.
Archeology did not become an investigative science until in 1898 a horrified WMF Petrie rushed in to glean from the remains of the smashing and burning ordered by Emile Amelineau at his excavation of Abydos. Known as the l'affaire Amelineau, the tomb raiders were deliberately trying to make their relics more valuable because "unique". And the world started to realize the value of SOCIAL information recovered from the Past. [288]
Ancient Texts are not only studied for the stories, the lessons, but also for the revealing etymologies. Barber is an accomplished linguist. The importance of "tunic", "shirt"[290], and "zone [zoster]" [66] not only to show the source of techniques and goods, but illustrates that Language is remarkably durable evidence even as messages perish as they are uttered [13, cf 66, 291, cautionary fn at 292].
Barber concludes with a careful examination of her methodology -- this is her great contribution. The techniques -- beginning with the technique for removal of "unwarranted assumptions"! [298] -- for finding the facts.
The INCLUSION of the facts about 1/2 the population in "history" turns out to be helpful answering virtually all the critical historical questions -- migration, source-points, influences, etc. For example, understanding the role of women--finding the artifacts of their presence, understanding their work--reveals whether migrants were "invaders" (men engaged in plunder or trade), or "colonizers" or settlers with entire families. For example, Egyptian records show "attackers" known as "PLST" settling around Gaza in 1200 BC. But the excavation of numerous crumbly clay donut weights tells us women had moved in. The sudden appearance of clay weights with little intrinsic "trade" value, far outside the early homeland of the warp-weighted loom, suggests the arrival of entire families from Europe via Anatolia. Thus, the earliest permanent settled inhabitants of the still-disputed Gaza of "Palestine" are likely to be Mycenaean Greeks.[294] {Not to say that wandering tribes, or even piratical coast-raiders, have no "territorial" legitimacy!}
A fascinating and easy-to-read work, I highly recommend it to any interested in an area of history that has received less attention.
The most wonderful thing about this book is that all of this information is firmly rooted in the evidence of real textiles, loom weights, texts, sculptures, account records, wall paintings, recreations of historical textiles and techniques and so on. So much of the traditional work of women doesn't precisely leave a record graven in stone. As a consequence the subject of women's work gives rise to huge temptations to speculate in advance of the evidence or even in the absence of evidence altogether.
Given some of the patronising tosh that has been said about women's work in the past I do understand how tempting it can be to make a large cake from a small bit of flour. One longs to create a different fantasy if only to combat the old ones. But understanding how tempting it can be makes me appreciate Barber even more, how she teases real information and knowledge out of such small details as the orientation of fallen loom weights, and how if she can't find evidence she doesn't make stuff up.
Its worth reading the book for her discussion of methodology alone; how to seek and organize evidence for the more ephemeral occupations like clothmaking, cooking, music, dance. I am deeply impressed by the mountain of hard thoughtful work on which this book is perched. At the same time, as I said its still very readable - another considerable achievement - when someone is so close to so many tiny details its impressive to be able to pull back and tell a coherent and interesting story about them.
My enjoyment of this book is partly due to my deep interest in the subject matter, but I highly recommend it to anyone.
Barber introduces her book with a very relevant story that also proves why she is the perfect choice to tell it. She weaves as a hobby, a profession that women have undertaken for many, many thousands of years. It’s a relatively simple craft, but there tricks of the trade
There’s a few other things that have relegated the history of women to the wayside. Cloth rots, so unless it’s sunk in a bog or buried in an extremely arid tomb, it likely won’t survive to modern days. Sites that were dug up in the 1800s weren’t always kept separate by strata, so the timelines of technology can get very messy. Women are doing a lot of the monotonous duties at home, which are less worthy of great stories because they’re so unremarkable (e.g. a modern book would not explain every detail of how to drive a car, with how to put the car in reverse, how to use a turn signal, how to moderately apply the gas pedal, etc. It would just say that somebody drove somewhere).
Barber’s fascination with weaving is both a strength and a weakness for arguing her thesis. Her interest is obviously more towards the mechanics of weaving, such as the making of yarn, technological advancements to ease the craft and how they spread across the world. She’s much less focused on the intricacies of the life of the women. This isn’t immediately apparent - Barber definitely tries to share what cultural tidbits she’s been able to glean (one imagines that those remote European villages are losing more and more of their traditions as internet/globalization becomes more ubiquitous) - but her interest is pretty obviously more towards the actual making of fiber and fabric, than with what women were doing. There are a few offhand comments that they're also making food, but not in any kind of detail.
So while I appreciated the stories we got, I think I would have liked some more on all of the professions available to women. Obviously cloth-making was tremendously important (consider the fact that even noblewomen wove or embroidered. There was no escaping the necessity of clothing, even if a noblewoman’s products would likely be used as noble gifts or something like a storytelling tapestry that a serf woman wouldn’t have the luxury of time to detail), but if women are also in charge of daily food preparation, I would have liked to hear more about that. Barber postulates that women end up in the home because they need duties that are easy to put down to go deal with childcare. I can accept that hypothesis, but there absolutely has to be more to that life than just spinning or weaving.
In summary: good talk on the mechanics of weaving, I would have preferred more on actual treatment of women.
Because textiles naturally degrade over time, researchers cannot rely solely on archaeological evidence. Barber found several other avenues of inquiry which she used to develop a picture of these early societies. For example, she obtained a great deal of insight from studying early language. If language included a word for cloth or a garment, then that item must have existed even if no physical remains have been found. The geographic scope is limited to what is now Europe and the Middle East, not because these were the only societies producing cloth, but for practical reasons: a broader scope would have made for a larger and possibly less accessible book.
I appreciated the way this book not only outlined the evolution of fiber arts, but validated the role of women and their contributions to society.
This was less about sewing, embroidery, etc, and more about spinning and weaving, with regular side trips in the materials used and how to prepare them to create thread and rope.
A book to keep in mind when discussing, or looking into, how women fit into society. I highly recommend it.