(Re?)Building Textile Archaeology in the Nile Valley

(Re?)Building Textile Archaeology 09122022

When ‘mummy cloths’ meet contemporary textile research

Inaugural lecture by Associate professor Elsa Yvanez, University of Copenhagen.

As always, it will be possible to join via zoom if you are not able to join us at the university. To have an overview of online participants, please register here.

A zoom-link will be available on the event page for people who have registered for online participation when we get closer to the date of the event.

Abstract

From the modern Sudanese capital Khartoum to its northern counterpart Cairo in Egypt, the arid climate pertaining along most of the Nile valley has offered ideal conditions for the preservation of archaeological textiles. Here, organic material – and textiles in particular – are common finds during excavations, complemented by an astonishing number of human remains, naturally or artificially mummified and wrapped in many textile layers. Nevertheless, textiles have yet to become a prominent subject in Egyptology and Sudanese archaeology. Upon the creation of a new position of associate professor of textile archaeology at Saxo Institute, this lecture will discuss the potential of the discipline in the Nile Valley context, combining different sources and crossing disciplines, and framing the material in a wider theoretical framework. This can only be fulfilled by collaborative work, in which researchers and students actively participate in the creation of new data and discourse. These developments will be illustrated through the presentation of diverse projects now underway at CTR and beyond, which are today advancing textile archaeology in the Nile valley and pushing this rich material towards its full historical potential.

Fashioning Sudan. Archaeology of dress along the Middle Nile

The lecture is part of the Saxo Archaeology Research Seminar Series, Autumn 2022.

Other lectures in the series are: