Tools and Textiles - Texts and Contexts
Previous CTR project
The research programme is directed by Marie-Louise Nosch and Eva Andersson Strand.
The geographical and chronological framework for the program is the Central and Eastern Mediterranean in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. This was the period when, in some places, textile production rapidly grew from household production to standardised, industrialised, centralised production, on the basis of a division of labour. During this period sheep developed a white coat/wool through selective breeding, which then provided the dynamics for the development of dye industries, colour extraction and the intensive use of colour symbolism in dress. Within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean the development of palace economies, new means of production, inscriptions on production management, tools, glyptic, fresco and relief, and iconography of textiles are visible, and also evidence of production areas are known from excavations.
The Tools and Textiles - Texts and Contexts program analyses and discusses the parameters for and the impact on society of the development of this intensive, industry-like production. We aim to reveal how tools and technology developed to meet the new demands. In many previous studies the approach remains descriptive. In order to grasp the real production processes, in the absence of archaeological textile remains, it is necessary to join forces and combine specialist knowledge, not only from the region itself, but also developed elsewhere, such as in the Scandinavian tradition.