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Jan Driessen

13. Spinning Gold and Casting Textiles

Marie-Louise Nosch

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Introduction

  • 1 I am grateful for constructive comments and criticism on this paper from Malgorzata Siennicka, Kall (...)

1One of the recent developments in scholarship on Mycenaean Greece is an increasingly strong interest in textile technology and clothing cultures1. This was initiated more than a generation ago by John Killen’s scholarship on the numerous textiles recorded in the Linear B tablets (see, among his many papers, Killen 1984). On the archaeological side, Elizabeth Barber’s monograph, Prehistoric textiles (Barber 1992) fuelled the interest in archaeological textiles, in textile techniques and in clothing praxis. Then for a decade, the theme remained more silent. With the establishment of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Textile Research in 2005, we launched new research programmes on textiles in the Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean area. This time not led by individual scholars but by groups of scholars, of different disciplines, both senior and early career researchers, and working in international teams, in order to cover the large area of the Aegean, selected places in Anatolia, the Levant, and the ancient Near East. The teams have, for example, explored textile tools and contexts of production (Andersson Strand & Nosch 2015), images of textile and dress in frescoes (Chapin & Shaw 2015), and Bronze Age administrative texts concerning textiles, ranging from Linear B to Hittite, and several languages using cuneiform writing (Michel & Nosch 2010; Breniquet & Michel 2014). This has created a great enthusiasm and dynamic in this particular field of textile research.

2Robert Laffineur has, to a large degree, been a supporter and visionary helper in this development. At the Emporia conference in Athens in 2004,I approached him and asked him to accept the hosting of an Aegean conference in 2010 in Copenhagen on the theme of textiles. We wanted to unite our textile research with his knowledge of jewellery (Laffineur 1980; 1993). Therefore, the theme of the Kosmos conference encapsulated the appearance, adornments, and all the physical devices and bodily modifications that humans undertake in regard to their body. The purposes of textiles and jewellery are many: cover and protection against climate, to express status and rank in society, to highlight or conceal age, to undertake bodily changes, piercings, tattoos adorning the body and conveying visible or hidden messages, to display the wealth of the wearer/bearer, access to gold and to advanced technology (Weiner & Schneider 1989). The subsequent volume, Kosmos, one of the largest of the Aegaeum series with 800 pages, is a milestone in our field (Nosch & Laffineur 2012).

3Prehistory is defined by the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen’s chronology, based on stone and metal. In the Aegean, it was Evans, Wace and Blegen who defined and consolidated the tripartite chronology of the Bronze Age. There is, however, another chronological marker, the eruption of Santorini’s volcano in the beginning of the Late Bronze Age and the subsequent layers of ashes, which divides Aegean prehistory and forms a chronological point of departure for many excavations and typologies; thus, it is the sweet irony of our field that another volcanic eruption, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, would sabotage the Kosmos conference in 2010 and force us to host the conference online.

4In this contribution to Robert Laffineur, I wish to reflect a little further on the two craft technologies, textile craft and jewellery craft, by examining some of their technical, terminological, aesthetic and cognitive commonalities. This is inspired by Nancy Thomas’s (2012) cross-craft approach in the Kosmos volume where she examines a craft from the artisans’ perspective, and, in particular, from the perspective of the tools. I also follow the thread of two recent papers where I examined the metaphorical and symbolic uses of weaving (Nosch 2014) and the commonalities between weaving and another area of craft, experience and knowledge: sailing (Nosch 2015). A chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age by Joanna Sofaer, Lise Bender Jorgensen and Alice Choyke (2013) explored the individual and shared craft aspects of ceramics, textiles and bone. I have also sought inspiration in Tim Flohr Sorensen’s paper on “Original copies: seriality, similarity and the simulacrum in the Early Bronze Age” in which he explores the dialogues between bronze swords and flint swords in the early Bronze Age of Southern Scandinavia (1700-1500 BC) and what happens when medias change and when we define some items as originals and others as copies. Sorensen seeks to approach artefactual similarities and differences at a cultural level, rather than through typological analyses alone (Sorensen 2012: 46).

5The interaction of crafts in the Bronze Age is also Robert Laffineur’s focus area. He has investigated local versus imported objects (Laffineur 1993) from five parameters: 1. The raw material, 2. Techniques, 3. Shape and decoration, 4. Style, 5. Meaning and function.

6One of his case studies is the use of similar or identical techniques or processes but employed on different materials, such as, the engraving of stelai and gem stones (Laffineur 1993: 248). Laffineur also highlights the technical and tool-oriented aspects, and commonalities between the carvers of moulds for gold-sheet ornaments and the gem stone carvers. He observes “the close connections that the manufacture of hollow moulds implies with gem cutting and which may well account for iconographical and stylistic similarities between gold ornaments and seals, and might lead to the suggestion that the engraving was made in both cases by the same people and in the same workshops since it requires much the same skill” (Laffineur 1993: 257).

7Today, the academic crafts of experts in textiles and experts in jewellery and metallurgy, respectively, are two distinct fields of highly specialised academic knowledge, and few can bridge both fields. This is why the Kosmos conference was important.

1. Textiles and jewellery

8In museum catalogues and excavation reports, textiles are classified among organic materials. Textile tools have traditionally been classified among small clay, bone or stone objects, while jewellery and metals are published and categorised separately. This division creates another academic gap in our thinking about the potential of shared craft knowledge between these crafts.

9This is regrettable, since in the past, jewellery and textiles were used together. Mycenaean gold plaques are mostly discretely pierced so that they could be sewn onto textiles (see examples in Laffineur 1980 and many more examples from the Aegean in Kosmos). It is, therefore, plausible that they were also perceived as having certain elements and properties in common. In Fig. 13.1, the two crafts meet: a gold sheet figure of women in elaborate dress.

Fig. 13.1. Gold foil figure of women with elaborate dress (after Laffineur 2012: pl. IIc)

10Fibulae, pins and brooches are made to be fixed onto and into the fabric. Functionally, they take over the purpose of straps and strings of the clothing in order to tie and bind fabric onto the body. This may also explain the similarities between pins (a clothing tool and piece of jewellery) and needles (a textile tool); likewise, a fibula in its construction bears a similarity to a decorated needle and an attached metal thread, which pierces the fabric li a needle or a thread, and fixes the cloth. The fibula, in some way, stylises the action of stitching. Fibulae and pin when found in graves, sometimes still bear traces of mineralised textiles (Spantidaki & Moulhérat 2012: 190).

2. Design and the organisation of craft processes and materiality of raw material

11Making textiles means that the craftsperson collects, sorts and blends the fibres of the right quality and length. Shorter fibres can be blended with longer fibres, softer fibres with coarser ones. The choices of the blend will define the quality of the finished product. This is true for both plant fibres (flax) and animal fibres (wool). This early processing of the raw material and mixing of components is similar to the combination of alloys in specific proportions, being copper with arsenic or tin. Crucially, in this first and basic level of decision-making for both the smith and the weaver, the design and properties of the finished object is already prefigured and visualised. A sail or packing material will be woven from another blend of fibres than a tunic; when casting bronze, the metal blend will contain ca. 10 % tin and 90 % copper, but for the purpose of hammered bronze for, e.g. helmets and armour, a lower percentage of ca. 6 % tin was in use.

12Moreover, in the initial, yet decisive, process of sorting and mixing, both the goldsmith and the weaver separate fibres and metals into different colours, and in the artistic process, these will be combined to enhance patterns. Thus, the natural hues of fibres and metals are employed as resources in the design process. The goldsmith combines metals of various colours – gold, silver, niello, copper and bronze – to decorate objects with inlayed metals (Laffineur 1974). Most famously, this is exemplified in the bronze dagger with inlayed scenes in silver and gold, from Shaft Grave V, Grave Circle A, Mycenae, c. 1600-1500 BC. Likewise, the weaver can combine yarns of different colours to weave stripes and checks, or weave patterns and tapestry into the cloth by using yarns of different natural pigmentation or dyed yarn. In both tapestry and figurative decoration on metals made by inlays or cloisonne, the scenes are built of integrated blocks of colours and form a coherent ensemble, with all spaces filled out. It has been suggested that metal vessels with elaborate inlaid motifs were inspired by textile techniques (Sofaer et alii 2013: 476).

3. Weaving cloth and making metal objects. Devices of shaping

13A significant shared element between producing bronze items and producing textiles is prefiguration: the initial outline of objects, where the design takes place at the early stage of projecting the item: both crafts use specific devices to predefine the shapes of the products: the mould and model of the smith will give the defined outline and size of the metal object, and the loom and the warp set-up define from the outset the width, the weave technique, and warp thread density of the weave. This commonality is specific to both Bronze Age weaving and the casting of bronze. Both the weaver and the bronze smith can then, once the products are moulded and woven, treat the surface further, embellish with additional decorations and shape of edges. But the basic shapes and sizes are pre-figured.

  • 2 I thank Agata Ulanowska for seeing this connection.

14There might also be a shared tactile concept of taking a softer, fluid raw material (copper, tin, wool) and transforming it into a new physical solid, a new appearance, a new item of a more coherent structure2.

15When iron came into use, a quite different series of processes came into place with the melting, smelting and hammering of the raw material. These Iron Age processes could rather be compared to fibre processing than to weaving.

4. Terminologies of crafts

16In Mycenaean Greek, weaving was probably called by the verb plekein (Linear B pe-re-ke as verb and pe-re-ke-u for the occupational designation of the male weaver). Another term for weaver is i-te-ja/histeía and i-te-u/histeús (female and male weaver, respectively), and these occupational designations probably derive from the term for loom, histós (itself derived from the verb histamai, meaning to stand up or to dress upright), and textile craftspeople with these occupational designations are those who work at the upright loom.

17For metals, we have the occupational designations ku-ru-so-wo-ko, khrusoworgoi, goldsmiths or literally gold-workers, and ka-ke-u, khalkeus, smith. The materials they work are ku-ru-so, khrusós, gold, and ka-ko/khalkós, copper or bronze. With what verb would Mycenaeans denote the actions of gold working and forging? Probably by using wo-ke, Ϝόργεν, just like it is integrated in ku-ru-so-wo-ko, khrusoworgos/χρυσο-Ϝοργός.

18Thus, weavers derive their occupational designation not from the verb of weaving, but from the device of weaving, the loom; smiths derive their occupational designation from the material they work (ka-ko, ku-ru-so) and form the occupational designation by adding the ending -eus, or by adding the ending -wo-ko.

19For both weavers and smiths, a shared technical term comes into use when the first shaping process is successfully completed and the finishing process takes place. It is the verb askein, to finish or to decorate. Among textile workers are a-ke-ti-ri-ja (sometimes spelled a-ke-ti-ra2 or a-ze-ti-ri-ja), askestriai, who are women and children in charge of finishing/decorating the woven textiles, and these processes could include raising the nap, fulling, embroidery, finishing of edges and fringes. Their occupational designation has a female ending in -τρια, *άσκήτρια female finisher/decorator. Among smiths some are called a-ke-te-re, asketeres, which is a masculine occupational designation ending in -τηρ, *άσκητήρ, finisher/decorator, and the post-production processes for metals include polishing, cold-hammering and adding decorative elements. Only in these two sectors, the textile sector and the metal sector, do we find these specialised occupational designations; this suggests that the finishing and decoration of textiles and of metal were perceived as a special craft or technique; it also suggests that these asketeres and askestriai would transform textiles and metal objects in a significant way.

5. Thread and wire: jewellery and spinning and braiding techniques

20Fabrics are made of threads; threads are spun or plied fibres, sometimes with knots. In Bronze Age jewellery, a creative play with thread and yarn aesthetics may be observed in the frequent use of spirals, knots and twisted metal wire/threads (Fig. 13.2). Onto the surfaces of gold objects are attached gold threads and knots, filigree and granulation, and these decoration techniques use wire and tiny granule arrangements soldered onto the surface of the jewellery, not unlike embroidery on plain fabric surfaces. Gold spirals illustrate the genius of the goldsmith who can produce long continued gold threads, and it also hints at a very familiar object, a clew of yarn.

Fig. 13.2. Spirals on gold bracelet from Troy (with kind permission of the Pushkin state Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/0001-1000/aar_122_ braslet/index.php?lang=en&coll=9408])

21It is indeed necessary to use very different techniques to make a gold thread and to spin a fibre thread, but their results look similar.

22Gold and fibre threads are technologically combined in gold threads woven into cloth: they consist of a core of fibre thread with long, thin strips of gold foil twisted around the core. According to Margarita Gleba (2008), the earliest gold threads were probably gold wire hammered out or gold strips beaten and cut. Later, these strips of gold, or gold wires, were twisted around a core of thread or animal gut. The majority of archaeological items with gold thread are made in this technique.

  • 3 Recently, a team from the University of Cincinnati recovered a a gold chain froma warrior grave in (...)
  • 4 I thank Lena Bjerregaard, expert in textile techniques, for this analysis. Also see http://www.tabl (...)

23Fibre threads can be braided into bands and cords by special braiding techniques (see Fig. 13.3). Gold threads cannot be braided into gold chains with the same technique because the metal is not as flexible as fibre. However, Bronze Age goldsmiths found other techniques for uniting series of gold rings into chains which appear braided, and the result is as flexible as a cord. Such gold chains were found in Ur III elite graves, in Egypt, Mycenae and in Lakkhita, Kephallenia3. The gold chains draw aesthetically from a cordage and fibre art tradition but have technologically speaking adapted to the new material4.

Fig. 13.3. Drawing of how to make a braided cord of eight strands. The same technique is used for strands of fibre and of metal (drawing: Joy Boutrup; with kind permission of Joy Boutrup)

6. Jewellery and weaving techniques

24The earrings from Troy, beautifully worn by Sophia Schliemann, are a unique example of the aesthetic interaction between weaving techniques and goldsmithing techniques, and the joint aesthetic expressions that they foster (Figs 13.4 and 13.5). Similar earrings are found elsewhere in the north-eastern Aegean, e.g. at Poliochni (Fig. 13.6). These earrings are each composed of a narrow upper horizontal band. From this band hang five sets of chains, all ending in symmetrical rounded items.

Fig. 13.4. The Troy earrings, beautifully worn by Sophia Schliemann (from Creative Commons https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/File:Sophia_schliemann_treasure.jpg)

Fig. 13.5. Troy earrings (with kind permission of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/0001-1000/aar_12_serga/index. php? lang=en& coll=9408])

Fig. 13.6. Poliochni earrings dated 2300 BC (with kind permission of the Penn Museum)

25If we were to look for similar objects, although made in another material and later in date, the immediate comparison that comes into mind are the tassels on a belt of the Bronze Age female grave of Borum Eshøj in Denmark (Fig. 13.7). Another striking parallel comprises tablet-woven bands and their braided fringes. Indeed, when making tablet-woven bands, the warp ends have to be tied, twisted and knotted in the end, so that the weaving stays in place; the regular method is to twist and braid the threads into hanging cords, and finish them off with a knot (see Fig. 13.8 for four modern braided or tablet-woven bands, hand-made by the author and more skilled students). Thus, one could describe the gold earrings from Troy and Poliochni as having a distinct textile look and mirroring structures and shapes seen on band weaves, for functional and decorative purposes. One could then ask: are the earrings from Troy textile earrings made in gold, or gold earrings imitating textile forms?

Fig. 13.7. a-b: Wool Tassels of the costume in the Bronze Age female grave of Borum Eshøj, Denmark, dated ca. 1350 BC (A. Drawing from Broholm & Hald 1935. B. Photograph by Roberto Fortuna, with kind permission of the National Museum of Denmark)

Fig. 13.8. a-d: Examples of modern tablet-woven bands or bands woven with a rigid heddle (produced by the students [including the author] at a workshop run by Agata Ulanowska, University of Warsaw. Photos kindly provided by Agata Ulanowska)

7. Textile structures

  • 5 I thank tapestry weaver Ulrikka Mokdad for discussing this with me.

26I think it is worth considering that the combination of threads attached to a band and subjected to tension by weights or finished by knots are all essentially features belonging to the realm of textiles. It can also be identified in the renowned string skirts of the Nordic Bronze Age. As a textile concept, the golden head coverings of the treasure of Troy are unique (Fig. 13.9). They may symbolise the long golden hair of the wearer. They may also recall various textile-related items and technologies. The tangling threads with the stylised gold fringes look like golden, braided and knotted threads. Yet, if you were to ask a traditional weaver, the resemblance to a warp set-up on the warp-weighted loom and an upper starting border on a warp-weighted loom for a set-up warp ready to be woven springs to the eye5. In the Bronze Age Aegean, when weaving on the warp-weighted loom, the weaver first wove a tight band in which the warp threads were fixed at precise, planned intervals. This starting band’s length equals the width of the woven fabric, as, when the band is finished, it has all the warp threads hanging down from it and it can be attached to the upper beams of the loom, not unlike how it is attached to Sophia Schliemann’s head (see Fig. 13.4). The warp threads hang vertically from the starting band, in neatly organised bundles. An example of such a set-up warp was preserved in Tegle, Norway (Fig. 13.10).

Fig. 13.9. Golden head coverings of the treasure of Troy (with kind permission of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/ 0001–1000/aar_10_small_diadem/index. php? lang=en&coll=9408])

Fig. 13.10. Set-up warp of a Roman Iron Age bog find from Tegle, Norway (with kind permission from Museum of Archaeology University of Stavanger)

27The choice of various textile themes in the royal jewellery from Troy may reflect the ancient age of the textile craft and its normative and formative role in relation to other crafts. It could also suggest that the royal jewellery of Troy symbolised the city’s wealth, in woven textiles. A further consideration is, whether the choice of a textile-inspired technology formed in gold may also refer to the female sphere, a sign of femininity and of a female domain of authority?

Discussion and conclusion

28In this text I have discussed examples of inter-artefactual relations between textiles and metals, especially gold.

29In thinking about technological and aesthetic transfers, the focus is often on exotic luxury foreign goods, in the form either of imported objects or the transfer of foreign technologies, styles, iconographies, aesthetics and ideas. However, the local transfer of ideas and solutions between crafts should also be brought into the discussion.

30The discussion goes back to the German art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Warburg’s original thesis in his unfinished work Bildatlas (atlas of images) was that it is possible to identify and map core motifs from Antiquity to the Renaissance which convey the same original messages. The motifs remain the same but they can be found in many forms, such as paintings, architecture or sculpture. He coined the concept Bilderfahrzeuge whose literal translation is image vehicles (Warburg n.d.). We can hardly speak of migrating motifs between textiles and metals/gold since so few textiles are preserved, but one potential migrating motif type is the repeated pattern rooted in the loom set-up with heddles which will automatically repeat a pattern each time the heddles are handled.

31This paper also wishes to illustrate migrating techniques and migrating visual expressions of textile Leitmotifs: the threads, the warp, and the knots of the textile world are stylised and expressed in gold when migrated to jewellery. Gold threads appear braided, knotted and coiled into spirals, but in reality, a series of new, specialised metal-oriented techniques had to be invented and adopted in order to accomplish these textile look-alike results. The suppleness, tactility, and plasticity of threads, cords and woven bands are translated into the complex gold technique of chaining tiny metal rings into a movable assemblage.

32The migration of textile motifs also proceeds to other media. In Mycenaean palaces, the painted plaster floors of the throne rooms imitate stones, textiles or both (Egan 2015) (For later textile migrations into stone and metal, see Gasparini 2014 and Dode 2014). Sorensen (2012: 52) examines similarities between swords of flint and bronze in terms of their ‘shared genealogy’. His distinction between ‘physical prototypes’ and ‘conceptual prototypes or sources of inspiration’ are relevant categories when endeavouring a comparison of textiles and jewellery, as conducted above. He argues that “the dialogue across materials appears to have opened up for a creative play with the translation of formalised standards” (Sorensen 2012: 54).

33Nevertheless, when undertaking a comparative survey of goldsmithing and textile work, the extent to which the metal arts imitate textiles, or textiles imitate metals, remains an open question.

34One of the conditions to determine the direction of medial transfer, but admittedly not a certain condition, is to ascertain where a certain shape or technique is rooted, and where this shape or technique becomes simply a stylistic feature. In research on ancient crafts, scholars use the term skeuomorphs to describe functional elements which are kept and repeated when techniques or forms are transferred to other media (Sorensen 2012; Sofaer et alii 2013). In Northern Europe, a famous example is how locally produced bronze swords cast in one piece maintain non-functional rivets which were necessary functional elements on the central European bronze swords which served as model for the Scandinavian swords. Skeuomorphs are imitations of form, and not of function, and become apparent in the translation from one medium to another.

35Tim Flohr Sorensen has examined the theories and concepts behind our perceptions of copies, imitation, inspiration and similarities, and mentions how the theoretical discussion goes back to Plato (Sophist 236a-d), and this thread was taken up by 20th c. French philosophers Deleuze and Baudrillard (Sorensen 2012: 55-57). I believe that the normativity of Plato’s concepts of ideal forms and copies, where the first represents the highest value in terms of originality, technology and art, and the copies’ lesser value, may bias the picture when comparing textiles and metals. Can we conceive that textiles were the ideal forms and originals, and the golden jewellery and cast bronzes the copies?

36Here, I have highlighted two examples of a specific shape or technique rooted in textiles but transferred to other media: the rectangular or square shape of woven cloth transferred to other media where the rectangular shape is no longer given or necessary, such as on seal stones.

37The cloth example highlights this direction: in painted scenes in frescoes, in imagery on seal stones, creativity in painting or carving is not bound to a rectangular shape and does not require a border. Yet, we continue to find these textile formats adapted to other media.

38Another example is repetition: goldsmiths, fresco painters, wood or ivory carvers are not bound by repetition technique but are free to profit from the shapes of their support, structure and materials to let motifs evolve. Weavers, in contrast, when weaving twill on heddles, or tablet weaving, prefigure a series of repetitive patterns which limits their freedom but which also creates their own aesthetics. Repetition is an integral element of many textile techniques. In jewellery making, Robert Laffineur has demonstrated that repetition enters when goldsmiths start hammering gold sheet over a mould; this can be expanded when an identical relief design is repeated several times on a single object through repeated hammerings of the sheet in the same cavity of a mould (1993: 256). Likewise for bronze casting which offers the possibility of replicating bronze objects by replicating the moulds or the models of clay or wax. A fine illustration of repetition as a motif is the dagger from the National Museum of Denmark (Fig. 13.11). The repeated inlaid gold axes are not bound to the inlay technique or the metal surface treatment; other daggers have narrative scenes. But on the dagger below the gold axes represent an aesthetic choice, perhaps a skeuomorph of axes in band weaving.

Fig. 13.11. Fragmented blade of a dagger with inlaid gold axes. from Thera, dated LH I (drawing by Poulhliche in Dietz et alii 2015: 23 no. 17, pl. 4. National Museum of Denmark, with kind permission)

  • 6 I thank Kalliopi Sarri for this suggestion.

39Likewise symmetry, the left and right side, the upper and lower bands, in the realm of textiles and their binary properties, symmetrical motifs result from the change of heddles, the change of direction during tablet-weaving, and the natural basic division of warp threads into two layers when weaving tabby and four layers when weaving 2/2 twill. This entails dividing the threads into ½, ¼, and so forth, or doubling up6.

40In Robert Laffineur’s words, “The picture we gain [, ..] is that craftsmen working in different media, gold ornaments and faience beads – and later glass paste beads [...] – as well as seals were technically dependent from each other” (Laffineur 1993: 262). The present paper suggests connections – of technical, aesthetic and visual similarities – with textile technology, including spinning and braiding, but it is difficult to say how far weavers, embroiderers, other textile craftspeople and copper smiths and goldsmiths were technically dependent on each other, and learning from each other. This potential dependency should not be sought in the Late Bronze Age’s standardised ‘industrialised’ textile production recorded in Linear B, but rather in an older tradition of sophisticated luxury craft production with high degrees of skill and specialised tools, and time to experiment and create unique pieces of both textiles and jewellery.

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▪ Nosch 2015 = M.-L. Nosch, The loom and the ship in ancient Greece. Shared knowledge, shared terminology, cross-crafts, or cognitive maritime-textile archaeology?, in Weben und Gewebe in der Antike. Materialität – Repräsentation – Episteme – Metapoetik, edited by H. Harich-Schwarzbauer (Ancient Textiles Series 23), Oxford & Havertown (2016), 109-132.

▪ Nosch & Laffineur 2012 = M.-L. Nosch & R. Laffineur (eds), KOSMOS. Jewellery, Adornment and Textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age. 13lh international Aegean conference held at Copenhagen, April 2010/13eme rencontre égénne, Copenhague, avril 2010 (Aegaeum 33), Leuven & Liège (2012).

▪ Sofaer et alii 2013 = J. Sofaer, L. Bender Jorgensen & A. Choyke, Craft production: ceramics, textiles, and Bone, in The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age, edited by H. Fokkens & A. Harding, Oxford (2013), 469-490.

▪ Sorensen 2012 = T. F. Sorensen, Original copies: seriality, similarity and the simulacrum in the Early Bronze Age, Danish Journal of Archaeology 1 (2012), 45-61.

▪ Spantidaki & Moulhérat 2012 = Y. Spantidak & C. Moulhérat, Textiles from the Bronze Age to the Roman period preserved in Greece, in Textiles and Textile Production in Europe from Prehistory to AD 400, edited by M. Gleba & U. Mannering (Ancient Textile Series 11), Oxford (2012), 189-200.

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Notes

1 I am grateful for constructive comments and criticism on this paper from Malgorzata Siennicka, Kalliopi Sarri, Lena Bjerregaard, Ulrikka Mokdad, Agata Ulanowska, Peder Flemestad, Cherine Munkholt and Joanne Cutler.

2 I thank Agata Ulanowska for seeing this connection.

3 Recently, a team from the University of Cincinnati recovered a a gold chain froma warrior grave in Pylos dated ca. 1500 BC, but we must await the excavators’ publication of this exceptional find to analyse the techniques with which it is made.

4 I thank Lena Bjerregaard, expert in textile techniques, for this analysis. Also see http://www.tabletweaving.dk/ for more on the technique.

5 I thank tapestry weaver Ulrikka Mokdad for discussing this with me.

6 I thank Kalliopi Sarri for this suggestion.

Table des illustrations

Légende Fig. 13.1. Gold foil figure of women with elaborate dress (after Laffineur 2012: pl. IIc)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 50k
Légende Fig. 13.2. Spirals on gold bracelet from Troy (with kind permission of the Pushkin state Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/0001-1000/aar_122_ braslet/index.php?lang=en&coll=9408])
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 26k
Légende Fig. 13.3. Drawing of how to make a braided cord of eight strands. The same technique is used for strands of fibre and of metal (drawing: Joy Boutrup; with kind permission of Joy Boutrup)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 22k
Légende Fig. 13.4. The Troy earrings, beautifully worn by Sophia Schliemann (from Creative Commons https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/File:Sophia_schliemann_treasure.jpg)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 18k
Légende Fig. 13.5. Troy earrings (with kind permission of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/0001-1000/aar_12_serga/index. php? lang=en& coll=9408])
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 15k
Légende Fig. 13.6. Poliochni earrings dated 2300 BC (with kind permission of the Penn Museum)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 9,6k
Légende Fig. 13.7. a-b: Wool Tassels of the costume in the Bronze Age female grave of Borum Eshøj, Denmark, dated ca. 1350 BC (A. Drawing from Broholm & Hald 1935. B. Photograph by Roberto Fortuna, with kind permission of the National Museum of Denmark)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 37k
Légende Fig. 13.8. a-d: Examples of modern tablet-woven bands or bands woven with a rigid heddle (produced by the students [including the author] at a workshop run by Agata Ulanowska, University of Warsaw. Photos kindly provided by Agata Ulanowska)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 42k
Légende Fig. 13.9. Golden head coverings of the treasure of Troy (with kind permission of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, for non-commercial purposes [http://www.arts-museum.ru/data/fonds/ancient_world/aar/ 0001–1000/aar_10_small_diadem/index. php? lang=en&coll=9408])
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 24k
Légende Fig. 13.10. Set-up warp of a Roman Iron Age bog find from Tegle, Norway (with kind permission from Museum of Archaeology University of Stavanger)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 36k
Légende Fig. 13.11. Fragmented blade of a dagger with inlaid gold axes. from Thera, dated LH I (drawing by Poul Wöhliche in Dietz et alii 2015: 23 no. 17, pl. 4. National Museum of Denmark, with kind permission)
URL http://books.openedition.org/pucl/docannexe/image/6667/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 41k

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