The Archaeology of Textiles

Catalog description

Humans need the warmth – and social capital – clothes provide, ships need cloth to sail, sheep and flax need pastures and fields. Fabric and its production have shaped our physical and cultural environments for millennia. But cloth’s ephemeral nature makes it nearly invisible in the archaeological record – and biases against so-called women’s work have rendered fabric production similarly unseen in scholarship. Through hands-on learning, students in this class will process fiber, spin with a spindle, and weave on a loom we build. Students will connect this practice with their own research, investigating the production and use of ancient textiles in student-driven case studies.