Classical Studies 2700B

TEXTILES: fibres and spinning

[NOTE:

a) There is a two-page “handout” to accompany this and the next lecture. You will need both pages for each lecture; for page 1, click here; for page 2, click here.

b) The in-class essay, for those not doing projects, will happen during the class hour on Tuesday, 23^rd March in TC 309.

c) Students who are doing projects should turn them in to TC 429 on the same date between 8:30 and 9:20 am and after the class hour, from 10:30 to 11:30 am (I have another class from 11:30 to 12:20) and then from 12:30 to 2:00pm. Please do NOT bring projects to TC 309, during 9:30 to 10:20 am, since Ashley and I will be fully occupied with proctoring the writing of the in-class essay. CLM]

The textile industry in the ancient world was even more important than leather. The term “textiles” covers many processes: production of fibres, their processing, their spinning, their weaving into cloth, and its finishing. R.J. Forbes has 260 pp. on this topic alone. Textiles were such an everyday matter that ancient writers tended to take them for granted; only poets go into great detail, as do some folktales.

Fibres and their preparation: basically four to be considered—two animal (wool and silk) and two vegetable (flax and cotton). Others were relatively insignificant.

Wool: many varieties of sheep; domestication goes back to early Neolithic period (earliest samples of wool are from pre-Dynastic Egypt). Egyptians not v. fond of wool: possible reasons. Ancient Mesopotamia was great centre of wool production; detailed records kept and prices can be tracked from c. 2200 – c. 650 BC. During Bronze Age, wool was plucked/combed from animals; use of shears comes with Iron Age. Earliest wool samples from W. and N. Europe area are from Denmark c.1300-1100 BC. In Mycenaean Greece wool production was v. important part of economy (freq. refs in Linear B tablets); the same is true of later Greece and Italy; use of sheep as natural “lawnmowers”.

Three basic ways of preparing wool for spinning—combing, carding and bowing.

Flax: > Linen. Main ancient centre of production was Egypt (what is today’s?). Flax seeds were an important source of food, while fibres in stalks were used to make linen. Processes involved—rippling, retting , breaking, skutching and hackling (!!) Flax production seems to have spread throughout Europe and the Near East from Bronze Age on.

Cotton: first cultivated in India (during Indus valley civilisation). Latin word carbasus comes from Sanskrit (our word is from Arabic qutun). Two main types of cotton: Old World type has 13 short chromosomes, while New world cotton has 13 long chromosomes; many centuries ago Old World cotton found its way to New World (how??): 26 chromosome hybrid appeared in Peru; then diffused (?back) across the Pacific (Captain Cook found it growing in Hawaii in 18^th century). Knowledge of cotton in ancient times fairly slow to travel: in Mesopotamia by 1000 BC, but known to Greeks only in 5^th century BC (Herodotus), but not extensively known until after conquests of Alexander the Great. It was not widely used by Romans and was quite expensive (e.g., we hear of silk/cotton and linen/cotton mixtures [fustian]).

Silk: apparently two places in ancient world where silk was discovered—China, where the mulberry-eating silkmoth caterpillar breeds continually (and in India), and the Aegean area, especially the island of Cos, where cocoons of certain moths were used to produce a kind of “wild silk”, first mentioned by Aristotle in 4rth century BC, but there are earlier references to clinging, diaphanous female garments (in Aristophanes, 5^th century BC). Chinese silk first mentioned in Mediterranean area in 1st century BC (Cleopatra VII of Egypt); but eastern fabrics not popular with Romans; so usually yarn imported and woven in R. empire. (Silkworms were brought to Byzantium in AD 552 from China; imperial monopoly of production of silk thereafter.) Silk was never very widespread.

Other materials: only one of any importance—hemp, used for making ropes, nets and rough kind of burlap. Esparto grass also used in N. Africa and Spain for rope-making. Finally, even asbestos fibres were made into fireproof cloth in Roman empire, but very rare.

Spinning: defined as “the formation of continuous threads by the drawing-out and twisting of fibres”; key element is twisting. Spinning is a v. labour-intensive activity; in antiquity a major “cottage-industry”. Begins with hand-spinning or hand-and-thigh spinning. However, commonest method in ancient world was suspended spindle spinning, which involved use of the distaff and spindle (the spinning-wheel was not invented until the 15^th century AD). Description of process; it all sounds very serious, but women became used to doing it in conjunction with other household chores; ex. from Herodotus of girl from Paeonia, in N. Greece. Question of “direction” of spinning: gives rise to definition of yarns as being “Z-twist” or “S-twist” (linen tends to be S-spun, and cotton Z-spun). None of this needs to apply to wool or silk: why?