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The Fabric Of Gifts: Culture And Politics Of Giving And Exchange In Archaic Greece, Beate Wagner-Hasel

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When the Greek leader Agamemnon took for himself the woman awarded to Achilles as his spoils of battle, the warrior’s resulting anger and outrage nearly cost his side the war. Beyond the woman herself was what she symbolised — a matter of esteem rather than material value. In Archaic Greece the practices of gift giving existed alongside an economy of market relations. The value of gifts and the meanings of exchange in ancient societies are fundamental to the debates of 19th-century economists, to Marcel Mauss’s famous Essai sur le don (1923-4), and to the definition of experiential value by modern …

Listening For Licia: A Reconsideration Of Latin Licia As Heddle-Leashes, Magdalena Öhrman

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD

The semantic field of Latin licium and its plural form licia is undoubtedly wide, with the term applied to thread both generally and in specific legal, medical and magical usage as well as in relation to weaving, and this paper does not aim to survey Latin usage of this term comprehensively. Rather, it focuses on one of the uses of licia in Latin literary sources, namely those where licia appears to denote heddle-leashes. Two much-discussed passages occur in Augustan poetry where licia may be used in this sense: Vergil’s Georgics 1.285 and Tibullus elegy 1.6.79. Both passages have been subject …

Weaving A Song. Convergences In Greek Poetic Imagery Between Textile And Musical Terminology. An Overview On Archaic And Classical Literature, Giovanni Fanfani

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD

In an analysis of the household-management (οἰκο- νομία) in the first book of the Politics, Aristotle discusses the nature and use of tools (ὄργανα), both inanimate (τὰ ἄψυχα) and animate (τὰ ἔμψυχα). While such a distinction is functional, in Aristotle’s argument, to illustrate the priority of the latter group (represented by the assistant, ὁ ὑπηρετής, and the slave, ὁ δοῦλος) over the first, what interests us here lies mainly within the realm of inanimate tools. As commentators to the passage have not failed to notice, a first literary frame of reference for Aristotle’s exemplum fictum is to be found …

Remarks On The Interpretation Of Some Ambiguous Greek Textile Terms, Stella Spantidaki

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD

The study of written sources of the Classical period (5th and 4th centuries BC) reveals the existence of a very rich vocabulary related to textile production. There are terms referring to materials, tools, manufacture and decoration techniques, colours, people and places related to textile manufacture. Many terms are quite clearly defined, while others present major difficulties in their interpretation. Usually these concern terms for tools, such as κερκίς (pin beater or shuttle) and ἡλακάτη (distaff or spindle) or terms describing fabrics with some kind of decoration. Among the decorative terms, some refer to specific decorative techniques, such as κατάστικτος (embroidered) …

Ars Polymita, Ars Plumaria: The Weaving Terminology Of Taqueté And Tapestry, John Peter Wild, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD

In Roman Egypt papyrologists and archaeologists sometimes seem to inhabit two different, if parallel, worlds, each apparently unaware of the treasures to be found in the other. This paper, however, is a co-operative venture between an ancient historian with papyrological interests – Kerstin Droß-Krüpe – and an archaeologist – John Peter Wild. In the research field of textiles we overlap, and we want to offer you insights from each of our worlds. At some point in the later 2nd century AD an unnamed magnate in the territory of the Lingones in central Gaul dictated a will in which he stipulated …

Conceptualizing Greek Textile Terminologies: A Databased System, Kalliope Sarri

Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD

One of the major challenges in costume and textile research is dealing with the vast number of terms related to textiles and garments, especially because similar terms are found in different languages and dialects, in various regions and over long periods of time, where they have survived in a complicated network of linguistic and cultural interrelations. There have been many attempts to collect textile terms in glossaries as parts of costume studies or as parts of museum archival projects. These glossaries however are usually limited to specific topics, geographical areas, languages, and time periods.

Creating a diachronic and global costume …