The competition of fibres : early textile production in Western Asia, South-East and Central Europe (10,000-500 BC) : international workshop Berlin, 8-10 March 2017

“The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here. Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe. The importance of wool in considerations of early textiles is due to at least two factors. First, both wild as well as some domesticated sheep are characterized by a hairy rather than a woolly coat. This raises the question of when and where woolly sheep emerged, a question that has not up to now been resolvable by genetic or other biological analyses. Second, wool as a fiber has played a major role both economically and socially in both western Asian and European societies from as early as the 3rd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, and it continues to do so, in different ways, up to the modern day. Despite the importance of wool as a fiber resource contributors demonstrate clearly that its development and use can only be properly addressed in the context of a consideration of other fibers, both plant and animal. Only within a framework that takes into account historically and regionally variable strategies of procurement, processing, and the products of different types of fibers is it possible to gain real insights into the changing roles played by fibers and textiles in the lives of people in different places and times in the past. With relatively rare, albeit sometimes spectacular exceptions, archaeological contexts offer only poor conditions of preservation for textiles. As a result, archaeologists are dependent on indirect or proxy indicators such as textile tools (e.g., loom weights, spindle whorls) and the analysis of faunal remains to explore a range of such proxies and methods by which they may be analyzed and evaluated in order to contribute to an understanding of fiber and textile production and use in the past.” SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology Les principaux thèmes abrodés dans ce nouveau titre de la collection à succès sur les textiles anciens sont d'une part les relations entre les ressources en fibres et leur disponibilité, et d'autre part les façons dont ces ressources ont été exploitées pour produire des textiles. Les procédés technologiques et les pratiques économiques - par exemple les stratégies d'acquisition et de préparation des matières premières - dans la production des textiles jouent un rôle majeur dans les études rassemblées ici. Les contributions étudient les débuts de l'utilisation de la laine en Asie occidentale et en Europe du sud-est. L'importance de la laine dans les recherches sur les premiers textiles est due à au moins deux facteurs. Premièrement, les moutons sauvages et certains moutons domestiques se caractérisent par un pelage poilu plutôt que laineux. Cela soulève la question de savoir quand et où les moutons laineux sont apparus, une question qui n'a pas pu être résolue jusqu'à présent par des analyses génétiques ou autres analyses biologiques. Deuxièmement, la laine en tant que fibre a joué un rôle majeur, tant sur le plan économique que social, dans les sociétés d'Asie occidentale et d'Europe dès le troisième millénaire avant Jésus-Christ en Mésopotamie, et elle continue de jouer ce rôle, de différentes manières, jusqu'à nos jours. Malgré l'importance de la laine en tant que ressource fibreuse, il est évident que son développement et son utilisation ne peuvent être correctement abordés que dans le contexte d'une prise en compte des autres fibres, tant végétales qu'animales. Ce n'est que dans un schéma qui tient compte des stratégies d'approvisionnement, de transformation et de production de différents types de fibres, variables d'un point de vue historique et régional, qu'il est possible de se faire une idée réelle de l'évolution des rôles joués par les fibres et les textiles dans la vie des gens en différents lieux et à différentes époques du passé. À de rares exceptions près, quoique parfois spectaculaires, les contextes archéologiques n'offrent que de mauvaises conditions de préservation des textiles. En conséquence, les archéologues dépendent d'indicateurs indirects ou de substitution tels que les outils textiles (par exemple, les poids des métiers à tisser, les fuseaux) et l'analyse des restes de la faune pour examiner une série de ces indicateurs et de méthodes permettant de les analyser et de les évaluer afin de contribuer à la compréhension de la production et de l'utilisation des fibres et des textiles dans le passé The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here.0Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe. The importance of wool in considerations of early textiles is due to at least two factors. First, both wild as well as some domesticated sheep are characterized by a hairy rather than a woolly coat. This raises the question of when and where woolly sheep emerged, a question that has not up to now been resolvable by genetic or other biological analyses. Second, wool as a fiber has played a major role both economically and socially in both western Asian and European societies from as early as the 3rd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, and it continues to do so, in different ways, up to the modern day. Despite the importance of wool as a fiber resource contributors demonstrate clearly that its development and use can only be properly addressed in the context of a consideration of other fibers, both plant and animal. Only within a framework that takes into account historically and regionally variable strategies of procurement, processing, and the products of different types of fibers is it possible to gain real insights into the changing roles played by fibers and textiles in the lives of people in different places and times in the past