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Introduction Into The History Of The Textile Collection At The Ethnological Museum Berlin, Beatrix Hoffmann

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

When the Ethnological Museum at Berlin was founded, it counted already with several hundred pieces from South America. Only a minor part them belonged to pre-Columbian cultures from the Andes. While most of these pieces were ceramics almost no ancient fabrics could be found in the collection. This reflected the collector’s interests focusing on objects made of ceramic, stone or metal and on human remains. Consequently, the first pieces of fabric reached the museum at Berlin as parts of mummy cloths. This did not change until 1879, when the collection of Reiss and Stübel was acquired for the museum. It …

The Arizona Openwork (Tonto) Shirt Project, Carol James

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In 1923 a pair of hikers came across a series of objects in a cave near the Salt River in Arizona. Among the objects was an elaborate sprang shirt, later given to the Arizona State Museum where it remains to this date. The cotton yarn in the shirt was subjected to Carbon Dating and assigned a probable origin date of the 12th century. In order to better understand the shirt, a replica was made in early 2015. Diverse technical challenges included hand spinning an appropriate cotton yarn, mapping the pattern, accurately copying the irregularities, and creating the neckline. The project …

Mexica Textiles: Archaeological Remains From The Sacred Precincts Of Tenochtitlan And Tlatelolco, Leonardo López Luján, Salvador Guilliem Arroyo

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In contrast with the rich written and iconographical data from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries concerning Mexica textiles, discoveries of such materials in archaeological contexts in Mexico City are quite rare. This paucity is reflected in our archaeological collections, in spite of the fact that the imperial Mexica capital received in tribute and trade copious amounts of unprocessed cotton, thread, cord, fabric, and clothing, and that the sister cities, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, were bustling centers of textile production. The few Mexica examples extant today are in poor condition and have survived thanks to being carbonized during rituals prior to their …

Shattered Ceilings: Roof Tile Analysis On Survey Archaeology Projects, Rebecca Salem

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Finding a roof tile on an archaeological survey demonstrates that a structure had previously stood nearby. Rarely found in their entirety, tiles are fabricated from terracotta, which, while durable when in its proper place, breaks when falling from a roof. The nature of these fragmentary finds has made tile analysis limited and tiles are often not included in publications or only a select few are included with ceramic finds. Additionally, unlike pottery with its typographic chronology, roof tiles have restricted dating potential. However, there are several specific types of tile that can greatly help with dating. Though limited, some of …

Precolumbian Textiles In The Ethnological Museum In Berlin, Lena Bjerregaard, Torben Huss

Zea E-Books Collection

The Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany, houses Europe’s largest collection of PreColumbian textiles—around 9000 well-preserved examples. Lena Bjerregaard, editor and compiler of this volume, was the conservator for these materials from 2000 to 2014, and she worked with many international researchers to analyze and publicize the collection. This book includes seven of their essays about the museum’s holdings – by Bea Hoffmann, Ann Peters, Susan Bergh, Lena Bjerregaard, Jane Feltham, Katalin Nagy, and Gary Urton. The book’s second part is a 177-page catalogue, arranged by periods and styles, of 273 selected items that represent the collection as fully as possible, …

What Can Gis + 3d Mean For Landscape Archaeology?, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Until recently Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have held center stage in the archaeologist's geospatial toolkit, and there is no doubt that archaeologists have moved beyond the mapdbut into what? In the early years, criticisms voicing GIS as environmentally-deterministic were abundant. What methods and tool have archaeologists used to overcome these criticisms? New geospatial technologies such as airborne lidar and aerial photogrammetry are allowing us to acquire inordinate amounts of georeferenced 3D datad but do these 3D technologies help overcome criticisms of environmental determinism? TogetherdGIS þ 3Dd can link georeferenced 3D models to underlying data adding a ground-based humanistic perspective lacking …

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 …