Textiles and Gender in Antiquity

From the Orient to the Mediterranean

Mary Harlow, Cecile Michel, Louise Quillien, Mary Harlow, Cecile Michel, Louise Quillien

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350189737
• eBook ISBN: 9781350141513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Design della moda

This volume looks at how the issues of textiles and gender intertwine across three millennia in antiquity and examines continuities and differences across time and space – with surprising resonances for the modern world. The interplay of gender, identity, textile production and use is notable on many levels, from the question of who was involved in the transformation of raw materials into fabric at one end, to the wearing of garments and the construction of identity at the other. Textile production has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a domestic (female) activity to a more 'commercial' or 'industrial' (male-centred) mode of production. In reality, many modes of production co-existed and the making of textiles is not so easily grafted onto the labour of one sex or the other. Similarly, textiles once transformed into garments are often of 'unisex' shape but worn to express the gender of the wearer. As shown by the detailed textual source material and the rich illustrations in this volume, dress and gender are intimately linked in the visual and written records of antiquity. The contributors show how it is common practice in both art and literature not only to use particular garments to characterize one sex or the other, but also to undermine characterizations by suggesting that they display features usually associated with the opposite gender.

CHAPTER 1

TEXTILES AND GENDER IN ANTIQUITY: AN INTRODUCTION

Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel and Louise Quillien

---

From the moment a researcher dips their pen into the field of textile studies they are confronted with the issue of gender. Gender and textiles interweave in myriad ways. The most obvious, and most well documented in modern gender and dress studies, is the manner in which, across space and time, gender identity is expressed through dress. Gender, however, also plays a part in the production of textiles from the growing/rearing of original raw materials to the final wardrobe product. The aim of the conference at which most of these chapters had their first airing was to examine and question some of the gendered activities associated with the chaîne opératoire of textile production, as well as to look at ways in which dress has acted as a marker of femininity and masculinity across time. The conference also marked the end of a major international research programme: Ancient Textiles from the Orient to the Mediterranean (ATOM), a collaboration between CNRS (Archéologie et Sciences de l’Antiquité, Nanterre), CTR (Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen) and the University of Leicester. The volume is divided into four parts for ease of reading but there are many interconnections between chapters. These connections highlight the cultural depth of attitudes which define femininity and masculinity and the roles deemed suitable for particular genders in different societies across time, and the ways in which textiles interweave with them all.

1.1 Research on ancient textiles

Research into ancient textiles represents an interdisciplinary and international field of study, but, sadly, often remains marginal in academic disciplines. Some explanation for this marginality may be found in the scarcity of textile remains found in excavations, the difficulty of their conservation and the absence of a real tradition of research for the oldest periods. Moreover, until the Industrial Revolution, in contemporary Western societies textile production was often under-valued, as it was perceived as part of a domestic economy and limited to the female sphere. Coincidentally, in the field of textile studies, a great majority of researchers are women, as reflected in this volume to which four men and twenty-one women have contributed.

Since the late twentieth century, several European research initiatives have totally renewed and revised our knowledge of ancient textiles. To mention only a few: since 2005 the Centre for Textile Research (CTR, Copenhagen, co-founded by Marie-Louise Nosch, to whom this volume is dedicated, Eva Andersson Strand, Copenhagen University, and Ulla Mannering of the National Museum of Denmark) has attracted a whole generation of young researchers with European fellowships, and produced more than thirty volumes dedicated to textiles throughout the world from prehistory to modern times (Ancient Textiles Series, Oxford). More specialized programmes, such as EU-funded DressID (2007–12) dedicated to Roman textiles and dress, or CNRS–DNRF-funded TexOrMed (2010–14, which was a collaboration between the CTR and the CNRS joint research unit Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité) dedicated to eastern Mediterranean antique textiles, have brought together specialists of antiquity and created a community of researchers to further explore the topic. This last project gave birth in 2015 to the International Research Network Ancient Textiles from the Orient to the Mediterranean (ATOM, 2015–18) which linked together the CTR, several CNRS research teams in France and the University of Leicester Ancient History department.¹ The ATOM research programme aimed at defining both the impact of textile production on agriculture, husbandry and environment generally speaking, its role in handicrafts, in trade, and more generally in the economy, but also the uses of textiles in the construction of gender and individual and collective identities. The project intended to promote interdisciplinary studies on textiles, involving many disciplines: archaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, bioarchaeology, environmental studies, experimental archaeology, ethno-archaeology, history, philology, anthropology, and so on. It has been the driving force behind many initiatives aimed at a comprehensive picture of the economic and cultural impact of textiles and textile manufacturing on society through a systematic approach to the ancient craft of textiles, via archaeology, texts and iconography.

Textiles and gender was one of ATOM’s main research axes. It concerned the areas of the chaîne opératoire that have traditionally been assigned either to women or to men in the production and trade of textiles, and the gendered aspects of dress. These approaches are developed in the twenty chapters of this volume which cover a large geographical area including Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, Greece, Crete, Italy, France and North Africa, and range chronologically from the early third millennium BCE to the first centuries of our era, with a late echo in the 1970s.

The editors would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Eva Andersson Strand for her constant support and engagement with the ATOM project, and her conclusion to this collection of essays. As the first ever Professor of Textile Archaeology at the University of Copenhagen (and in the world, as far as we know), with many years’ experience in working with textiles, experimental archaeology and a vast knowledge of several textile cultures, she is ideally placed to undertake this task and her comments here are as perspicacious as we have come to expect from her publications.

1.2 Gendered textile terminologies

Since the earliest texts from Mesopotamia, the development of textile terminologies has been intrinsically linked to technical discoveries, innovations, fashion and trade networks (Michel and Nosch 2010; Gaspa, Michel and Nosch 2017). There is a wide vocabulary referring to textiles, their material, weaving techniques or uses, most of the references found in administrative and literary texts being linked first to fabrics rather than specific types of dress (see the contributions by Abrahami and Lion, Biga, Matoïan and Vita, Michel, Quillien). Indeed, the garments mentioned are usually generic and seem to be common to both genders, with the exception of footwear and headdresses (Abrahami and Lion, Matoïan and Vita, Michel). This may be explained by the different size of female and male feet, on the one hand, and on specific and symbolic use of headgear by women, on the other hand (Michel, Couturaud). For instance, in a Medio-Babylonian list of garments intended for a wedding, presented by Philippe Abrahami and Brigitte Lion, the terminology of garments is common to men and women, with the exception of headdresses and shoes. At Ugarit, according to Valérie Matoïan and Juan-Pablo Vita, apart from some items like veils and shawls, the terminology of the garments is not gender-marked.

While the terminology of clothes does not, a priori, make it possible to determine the gender of the person wearing them, some items of dress were presumably worn more by one sex or the other. The content of dowries, which includes garments for women, or lists of gifts made to men and women allow, for example, the identification of certain particularities of female dress, such as its colour or decoration (Abrahami and Lion, Quillien and see also Brøns and Harlow). In the Medio-Babylonian text quoted above, despite a common terminology, the vivid colours of the bride’s garments contrasted with the whiteness of the groom’s outfit.

However, rich adornments on some dresses could also reflect the context in which these were worn or the social status of those wearing them. For example, on the occasion of her marriage a woman would wear rich decorated and colourful garments (Abrahami and Lion, Biga), including jewellery and cosmetics (Matoïan and Vita). The queen could be dressed in specific items (Matoïan and Vita). Texts regularly document the clothes of wealthy people, a social group in which the distinction between male and female garments could have been highlighted. The dress of a goddess, i.e. of her statue, could moreover have a very particular and symbolic meaning. Such garments may be depicted as luminous, brilliant or bright, referring to the powers of the goddess (Michel, Rendu Loisel). These powers could lie in the dress, as the kusītu garment of the goddess Nanaja at Uruk, studied by Francis Joannès, which, like the mantle of the Madonna in Catholic communities, symbolised the goddess.

Visual material is clearly a key source of evidence, just as the wearing of dress on the clothed body of an individual is a form of non-verbal communication, so iconography conveys a visual terminology of dress and textile production. Visual language is, like text, defined by context and media. Iconography not only provides a visual account of how people chose to be represented, or how those who commissioned the art chose to represent them, it allows us insight into gendered assumptions about the mode of production. It also provokes questions about these assumptions. Agata Ulanowska suggests a new reading of Middle Bronze Age prismatic seals to reflect the changes in textile technology happening in Crete and known from other types of evidence. Close examination of the imagery of Middle Bronze Age glyptic art has revealed potential weavers, ‘combers’ and spinners. Human figures are schematically rendered making their gender hard to define, unless it is defined by an accompanying motif (a human figure with loom weights and comb; human figure with loom weights and ‘spindle with whorl’; or with ‘weft beater’). Tradition may assume the figures are male given the lack of the long skirt that usually identifies women in such seals: this raises questions about the gendering of textile activities (spinning, for instance, is predominantly associated with women in almost all ancient cultures) but also about the nature of glyptic iconography.

Visual and textual vocabularies alert us to both the subtleties and ambiguities of the language of textiles, dress and gender which reflect both ideological positions but also normative practices. The tension between the images the sources provide and lived social reality is apparent for most of the issues raised but is particularly complex when we come to examine the chaîne opératoire.

1.3 Gendered textile activities

Textile work is one of the few areas of social and economic life where women are highly visible – this might influence how we conceptualize the gendered division of labour. Indeed, textile production in antiquity has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a female domestic activity to a more institutional male-governed mode of production once outside agencies become involved. In reality, many modes of production probably existed side-by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: An Introduction Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel and Louise Quillien
• Part 1 Gendered Textile Terminologies
• 2 Textiles and Gender During the Middle Babylonian Period (c. 1500–1000 bce): Texts from Syria and Babylonia Philippe Abrahami and Brigitte Lion
• 3 The Goddess Nanaja’s New Clothes Francis Joannès
• 4 Textiles and Gender at Ugarit Valérie Matoïan and Juan-Pablo Vita
• 5 Towards Engendering Textile Production in Middle Bronze Age Crete Agata Ulanowska
• Part 2 Gendered Textile Activities
• 6 A Man’s Business? Washing the Clothes in Ancient Egypt (Second and First Millennia bce) Damien Agut-Labordère
• 7 Women, Men, Girls and Boys: Gendered Textile Work at Late Bronze Age Knossos Hedvig Landenius Enegren
• 8 Female Dues and the Production of Textiles in Ancient Greece Beate Wagner-Hasel
• 9 Gender and Textile Production in Roman Society and Politics Lena Larsson Lovén
• 10 Work Gendering Space? Roman Gender, Textile Work and Time in Shared Domestic Space Magdalena Öhrman
• Part 3 Gendered Wardrobes
• 11 Some Remarks on Textiles and Gender in the Ebla Texts of the Third Millennium bce Maria Giovanna Biga
• 12 A Visual Investigation of Feminine Garments at Mari During the Early Bronze Age Barbara Couturaud
• 13 Belts and Pins as Gendered Elements of Clothing in Third and Second Millennia Mesopotamia Cécile Michel
• 14 ‘I Made You Put on Garments, I Made You Dress in Linen’: Gender Performance and Garments in Sumerian Literature Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel
• 15 The Gender of Garments in First Millennium bce Mesopotamia: An Inquiry Through Texts and Iconography Louise Quillien
• 16 White Men and Rainbow Women: Gendered Colour Coding in Roman Dress Cecilie Brøns and Mary Harlow
• 17 Garments for Potters? Textiles, Gender and Funerary Practices in Les Martres-de-Veyre, France (Roman Period) Catherine Breniquet, Marie Beche-Wittmann, Christine Bouilloc, Camille Gaumat and Marion Veschambre
• 18 Fashioning the Female in the Early North African Church Amy Place
• 19 Climate Change and Clothing Changes in Late Antique Male Dress Nikki K. Rollason
• Part 4 Afterwords
• 20 A Note on Gender and French ‘Haute Couture’ in 1970: ‘Les Sumériennes’ by Jacques Estérel Brigitte Lion
• 21 Concluding Remarks Eva Andersson Strand
• Index of Names
• General Index
• Plate Section
• Copyright