This volume looks at how the issues of textiles and gender intertwine across three millennia in antiquity and examines continuities and differences across time and space – with surprising resonances for the modern world. The interplay of gender, identity, textile production and use is notable on many levels, from the question of who was involved in the transformation of raw materials into fabric at one end, to the wearing of garments and the construction of identity at the other.
Textile production has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a domestic (female) activity to a more ‘commercial’ or ‘industrial’ (male-centred) mode of production. In reality, many modes of production co-existed and the making of textiles is not so easily grafted onto the labour of one sex or the other. Similarly, textiles once transformed into garments are often of ‘unisex’ shape but worn to express the gender of the wearer.
As shown by the detailed textual source material and the rich illustrations in this volume, dress and gender are intimately linked in the visual and written records of antiquity. The contributors show how it is common practice in both art and literature not only to use particular garments to characterize one sex or the other, but also to undermine characterizations by suggesting that they display features usually associated with the opposite gender.
1. Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: An Introduction Mary Harlow (Leicester, UK), Cécile Michel (CNRS, ArScAn, Nanterre, France) and Louise Quillien (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) Gendered Textile Terminologies 2. Textiles and Gender during the Middle Babylonian Period (ca. 1500-1000 BCE): Texts from Syria and Babylonia Philippe Abrahami (Independent Scholar, France) and Brigitte Lion (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) 3. The Goddess Nanaja’s New Clothes Francis Joannès (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) 4. Textiles and Gender at Ugarit Valérie Matoïan (CNRS, Proclac, France) and Juan-Pablo Vita (Independent Scholar, Spain) 5. Towards Engendering Textile Production in Middle Bronze Age Crete Agata Ulanowska (Independent Scholar, Poland) Gendered Textile Activities 6. A Man’s Business? Washing the Clothes in Ancient Egypt (Second and First Millennia BCE) Damien Agut-Labordère (CNRS, France) 7. Women, Men, Girls and Boys: Gendered Textile Work at Late Bronze Age Knossos Hedvig Landenius Enegren (Independent Scholar, Uppsala) 8. Female Dues and the Production of Textiles in Ancient Greece Beate Wagner-Hasel (Independent Scholar, Germany) 9. Gender and Textile Production in Roman Society and Politics Lena Larsson Lovén (Independent Scholar, Germany) 10. Work Gendering Space? Roman Gender, Textile Work and Time in Shared Domestic Space Magdalena Ohrman (University of Wales, UK) Gendered Wardrobes 11. Some Remarks on Textiles and Gender in the Ebla Texts of the 3rd Millennium BCE Maria Giovanna Biga (Rome, La Sapienza, Italy) 12. A Visual Investigation of Feminine Garments at Mari During the Early Bronze Age Barbara Couturaud (Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Iraq) 13. Belts and Pins as Gendered Elements of Clothing in Third and Second Millennia Mesopotamia Cécile Michel (CNRS, ArScAn, France) 14. ‘I made you put on garments, I made you dress in linen.’ Gender Performance and Garments in Sumerian Literature Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel (Unistra, Strasbourg, France) 15. The Gender of Garments in First Millennium BCE Mesopotamia: An Inquiry Through Texts and Iconography Louise Quillien (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) 16. White Men and Rainbow Women: Gendered Colour Coding in Roman Dress Cecilie Brøns (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Denmark) and Mary Harlow (Leicester University, UK) 17. Garments for Potters? Textiles, Gender and Funerary Practices in Les Martres-de-Veyre, France (Roman Period) Catherine Breniquet (Clermont-Auvergne, France ), Marie Bèche-Wittman, Christine Bouilloc and Camille Gaumat (Musée Bargoin, Clermont-Ferrand, France) 18. Fashioning the Female in the Early North African Church Amy Place (Leicester University, UK) 19. Climate Change and Clothing Changes in Late Antique Male Dress Nikki K. Rollason (Leicester University, UK) Afterwords 20. A Note on Gender and French ‘Haute Couture’ in 1970: ‘Les Sumériennes’ by Jacques Estérel Brigitte Lion (Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne, France) 21. Concluding Remarks Eva Andersson Strand (Independent Scholar, Denmark) Notes Bibliography Index
Mary Harlow is an Associate Professor in Ancient History at the University of Leicester, UK. She has published extensively on Roman dress and has been an editor and contributor to several of Bloomsbury’s Cultural History series including Children and the Family (2010), Dress and Fashion (2017), Hair (2018) and Shopping (2019). Cécile Michel is a Senior Researcher at CNRS, Archéologie et Science de l’Antiquité, France and Professor of Assyriology at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published books and studies on women, gender studies and ancient textiles including Textile Terminologies (2010 and 2017) Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean (2014) and The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East (2016). Louise Quillien is a Researcher at CNRS, Archéologie et Science de l’Antiquité, France. She defended her PhD on Textiles in Mesopotamia, 1st millennium BC: manufacturing techniques, trade and uses in 2016.
Reviews for Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: From the Orient to the Mediterranean
This essential volume provides a much-needed study of textiles, dress, and gender in the ancient world. With its wide chronological and geographical range, it provides students and scholars with useful information from the ancient Near East to late antique Rome in a series of essays that look not only at clothing and textile production, but also at how these categories were almost always cast in terms of gender in antiquity. -- Kelly Olson, Professor of Classical Studies, University of Western Ontario, Canada
