Theme:
1. The Material Record: Current Trends and Future Directions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Archaeology of Roman Textiles - A Story Told Through Threads
Content:
The recent academic interest in textile research demonstrates how much ancient fabrics can shed light on social and economic factors of past societies. They are one of the early tangible expressions of technology, culture, and identity.
During the Roman Empire, textile production and trade reached levels of globalisation not seen in Europe before, including Africa, Asia, and China via the Silk Roads. Despite the existence of historical sources, in-depth archaeological investigations of Roman textile production, trade, and distribution are still needed. While there has been considerable debate about textile production and trade in the Roman world, this has mainly taken place on a regional level. A systematic collection of data across the various regions of the Roman Empire is lacking, precluding their meaningful historical-archaeological evaluation. For this reason, a sound interpretive perspective of local textile features and peculiarities has yet to be gained that enables us to reconstruct a broader picture of Roman textile cultures.
This session aims to investigate the technology and economy of textile production in the Roman Empire by integrating data from a broad range of evidence such as fabrics, textile tools, literary sources, and archaeological contexts. The aim is to combine local and empire-wide scales of investigation to generate new knowledge regarding natural resources, technical operations, tools, workplaces, and social practices connected with Roman textile cultures. Textile consumption also will be explored in the session. Textiles have always played a prominent role, in everyday life as well as in death, being highly informative about self-perception, group identities, and ritual. The session seeks to provide new knowledge and data related to a potential standardisation in Roman textile economics by bringing together scholars from different disciplines and fostering interdisciplinary discussion which will result in a deeper understanding of textile craft development, production, and consumption.
Keywords:
Roman Textiles, Textile technology and economy, Textile consumption, Textiles and identity, Textiles and Funerary Ritual
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
EAA community for Textile Archaeology and Conservation (ComTex)
Main organiser:
francesca coletti (Italy) 1
Co-organisers:
Maureen Carroll (United Kingdom) 2
Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (Germany) 3
Affiliations:
1. Department of Classics. Sapienza University of Rome
2. Department of Archaeology. University of York
3. Department of Alte Geschichte. Ruhr-Universität Bochum
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