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Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 1176

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textiles and needlework: Greece Bone needles from the cave of Courbet, Penne-Tarn, France, dating to about 10,500 b.c.e (© The Trustees of the British Museum) to be finished on a larger loom In card weaving a number of cards (of wood, bone, or ivory), a bit larger than standard playing cards, had a hole drilled in each corner The warp threads each passed through one hole The warps were moved by flipping the cards from side to side and running the weft between them This technique might have been used earlier, but the first unequivocal use was in the Iron Age Iron Age skills were continued into the Classical Period, when writing and the increased use of figural depictions on ceramics provide evidence beyond archaeological deposits GREECE BY SPYROS SIROPOULOS Evidence confirms that textiles were used as far back as the Neolithic Period, although no findings of actual textiles have been preserved Bone pins (as well as copper pins from the late Neolithic period) testify to the extended use of textiles in the area of Greece The processing of wool and linen and the manufacture of tapestries and rugs appear to have been a major part of the Minoan economy During the acme of the Minoan society (2200–1800 b.c.e.)—also known as the palace society because the palace was the central economic and political unit—many women offered their weaving services to the palace Preserved on clay tablets from Pylos is information about 15 specialties of weavers This specialization is equivalent to industry by modern standards One tablet records 10,572 animals (goats and sheep), while others describe palace weavers also working with vegetable fibers, such as linen Linen reached the palace by annual contributions twice a year: at the end of winter and at the beginning of spring A series of clay tablets from Cnossus relates that 10 tons of wool were distributed to 30 workshops, where 600 to 900 female weavers labored Other tablets from Cnossus mention the processing of 45 tons of wool, which would have required an estimated 2,700 to 4,000 workers 1081 Raw materials were not difficult to obtain Out of the 3,000 tablets found at Cnossus, almost 1,000 are about goats and sheep, the number of which is estimated at 100,000 The average annual production of wool from these herds, which probably belonged to the palace, is an estimated 50 tons A bolt of textile weighed roughly 22 pounds, so 50 tons should produce about 5,000 bolts The L-series tablets, referring to the previous year’s wool process, number about 5,000 bolts, the weight of which varies between 11 and 132 kilos, whereas their total weight reaches up to 45 tons We are also certain that the textiles were dyed both at Pylos and Cnossus, though no traces of dying essences have been recognized by archaeologists today Herodotus (fift h century b.c.e.) reported in his Histories that in India a wild plant produced “fleece,” obviously referring to cotton It was Alexander the Great who introduced the cotton plant to Greece and made it part of the Greek economy The two kinds of fibers—animal and vegetable—required different processing techniques In the case of cotton and linen, the process went through the stages of opening the fruit, extracting the fibers, carding, combing, dyeing, and twisting them for the spinning frame Women did most of the weaving at home, although specialized factories existed for processing wool First the wool was washed with hot water Then the yarns were combed and stretched Workers stretched the wool over either their bare calves or a specialized tool called an onos or epinetron The cylindrical clay tool covered the worker’s knee and lower thigh Before the invention of the spinning wheel (around 500 b.c.e in India), spinning was done by hand Wool was bound loosely around a stick called a distaff Many Grecian vase paintings depict women holding a distaff in one hand and using the other hand to draw the material onto a spindle—another stick with a weight at the bottom Made to spin quickly, Utensil used for unwinding balls of wool, called Ariadne’s Clew Box (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

Ngày đăng: 29/10/2022, 21:23