Twenty chapters present the range of current research into the study of textiles and dress in classical antiquity, stressing the need for cross and interdisciplinary study in order to gain the fullest picture of surviving material. Issues addressed include: the importance of studying textiles to understand economy and landscape in the past; different types of embellishments of dress from weaving techniques to the (late introduction) of embroidery; the close links between the language of ancient mathematics and weaving; the relationships of iconography to the realities of clothed bodies including a paper on the ground breaking research on the polychromy of ancient statuary; dye recipes and methods of analysis; case studies of garments in Spanish, Viennese and Greek collections which discuss methods of analysis and conservation; analyses of textile tools from across the Mediterranean; discussions of trade and ethnicity to the workshop relations in Roman fulleries. Multiple aspects of the production of textiles and the social meaning of dress are included here to offer the reader an up-to-date account of the state of current research. The volume opens up the range of questions that can now be answered when looking at fragments of textiles and examining written and iconographic images of dressed individuals in a range of media.
This volume is part of a pair together with Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles and Dress: an interdisciplinary anthology edited by Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch, Isbn 9781782977193
1. Mary Harlow & Marie-Louise Nosch, Methodologies in Textile and Dress Research for the Greek and Roman World. The State of the Art and the Case for Interdisciplinarity
2. Stella Spantidaki, Embellishment Techniques of Classical Greek Textiles
3. Ellen Harlizius-Klück, The Importance of Beginnings: Gender and Reproduction in Mathematics and Weaving
4. Cecile Brøns, Representations and Realities: Fibulas and Pins in Greek and Near Eastern Iconography
5. Marco Ercoles, Dressing the Citharode. A Chapter in Greek Musical and Cultic Imagery -
6. Matteo Martelli, Alchemical Textiles: Colourful Garments, Recipes and Dyeing Techniques in the Graeco-Roman Egypt
7. Christina Margariti and Maria Kinti, The Conservation of a 5th century BC Excavated Textile Find from the Kerameikos Cemetery at Athens
8. Mark Lawall, Transport Amphoras and Loomweights: Integrating Elements of Ancient Greek Economies?
9. Elisabeth Trinkl, The Wool Basket. Function, Depiction and Meaning of the kalathos
10. Kerstin Droß-Krüpe and Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Unravelling the Tangled Threads of Ancient Embroidery: a compilation of written sources and archaeologically preserved textiles
11. Francesco Meo, New Archaeological Data for the Understanding of Weaving inTextile Herakleia, Southern Basilicata, Italy
12. Lena Larsson Lovén, Roman Art: What can it tell us about dress and textiles? A discussion on the use of visual evidence as sources for textile research
13. Amalie Skovmøller, Where Marble Meets Colour: Surface Texturing of Hair, Skin and Dress on Roman Marble Portraits as Support for Painted Polychromy
14. Jessica Dixon, Dressing the Adulteress
15. Elizabeth Bevis, Looking Between Loom and Laundry: Vision and Communication in Ostian Fulling Workshops
16. Zofia Kaczmarek, Roman Textiles and Barbarians: Some Observations on Textile Exchange between the Roman Empire and Barbaricum
17. Ines Bogensperger, The Multiple Functions and Lives of a Textile – the Reuse of a Garment
18. Laura Rodriguez Peinado, Ana Cabrera Lafuente, Enrique Parra Crego and Luis Turell Coll, Discovering Late Antique Textiles in the Public Collections in Spain: An Interdisciplinary Research Project
19. Pilar Borrego and Carmen Vega, A New Approach to the Understanding of Historic Textiles
20. Catherine C. Taylor, Burial Threads: A Late Antique Textile and the Iconography of the Virgin Annunciate Spinning
21. Author descriptions, and Acknowledgements
