Woven Threads: Patterned Textiles of the Aegean Bronze Age

Woven textiles are produced by nearly all human societies. This volume investigates evidence for patterned textiles (that is, textiles woven with elaborate designs) that were produced by two early Mediterranean civilizations: the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece, that prospered during the Aegean Bronze Age, c. 3000–1200 BC, contemporary with Pharaonic Egypt. Both could boast of specialists in textile production. Together with their wine, oil, and art, Minoan and Mycenaean textiles were much desired as trade goods. Artistic images of their fabrics preserved both in the Aegean and in other parts of the Mediterranean show elaborate patterns woven with rich decorative detail and color. Only a few small scraps of textiles survive but evidence for their production is abundant and frescoes supply detailed information about a wide variety of now-lost textile goods from luxurious costumes and beautifully patterned wall hangings and carpets, to more utilitarian decorated fabrics. A review of surviving artistic and archaeological evidence indicates that textiles played essential practical and social roles in both Minoan and Mycenaean societies.

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Spinning Ariadne’s Thread: An Introduction to Sources and Methodologies
Anne P. Chapin
2 Bronze Age Aegean Cloth Production: A Cottage Industry No More
Brendan Burke and Anne P. Chapin
3 Patterned Textiles as Costume in Aegean Art
Suzanne Peterson Murray
4 Palace and Household Textiles in Aegean Bronze Age Art
Maria C. Shaw and Anne P. Chapin
5 Textile and Stone Patterns in the Painted Floors of the Mycenaean Palaces
Emily C. Egan
6 Sailing the Shining Sea: Maritime Textiles of the Bronze Age Aegean
Maria C. Shaw and Anne P. Chapin
7 String Lines, the Artist’s Grid, and the Representation of Textiles in Fresco
Maria C. Shaw
8 Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Keftiu
Elizabeth J. W. Barber
9 Observations, Summaries, and Conclusions
Anne P. Chapin

Consolidated Bibliography

Maria Shaw was formerly Professor at the University of Toronto where she taught for more than 30 years until retirement. She specialises in many aspects of Minoan Crete and Greek archaeology in the Aegean area, is a leading expert on Minoan and Mycenaean wall painting and has intesets raging from Aegean-Egyptian interconnections to representations of natural landscapes in Aegean frescoes to the reconstruction of civic life in Crete.

Anne P. Chapin is Professor of art history and Archaeology at Brevard College, North Carolina where she specialises in the field of Bronze Age Aegean painting, particularly Minoan and Mycenaean and is actively involved in field research and excavation at Gournia, an important Minoan palace and town site on Crete.