Falkenhausen Kuhn review

Textile History, 2018

China Review International, 1996

Early craft specialisation provides insights into the emergence of social complexity. Textile production also offers a lens through which specialisation can be recognised. Here, the authors present a detailed contextual and technological analysis of a large assemblage of textile-production tools from Tianluoshan, a waterlogged Middle Neolithic site in the Yangzi Valley, China. Using the chaîne opératoire approach, tools are identified, their roles in the production process explained and their significance explored. The results trace the production of textiles from spinning through loom weaving to fabric construction with needles. The use of a variety of fibre-based plants is suggested and tentative evidence for the early use of ground looms explored.

Journal of the Textile Institute, 1989

This paper makes a brief review of textile manufacture during the Warring States Period. Archaeological reports and other specialist studies, previously published in Chinese, are used as the primary sources of factual information. Reference is made to recently acquired evidence that suggests the existence of a textile industry producing a wide range of woven, embroidered, knitted, and stencil-printed products.

The Roots of Asian Weaving: The He Haiyan collection of textiles and looms from Southwest China. Eric Boudot and Chris Buckley, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2015. This ground-breaking book documents the weaving traditions and textiles of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse areas, placing them in a regional context. It represents a novel approach to anthropological and ethnographic studies, based on detailed field reports and an explicitly comparative approach, integrating both statistical (Bayesian phylogenetic, Neighbornet) and classical methods to present a unified picture. The first three chapters describe the ethnographic and linguistic and historical background to the region, focussing on the diversity of ethnicities, and their (sometimes turbulent) relations with the dominant Han Chinese polity. The authors review historical and archaeological remains of textiles and looms from the region, and present a revisionist account of the development of loom technologies. The core of the book consists of detailed fieldwork, based on more than a decade of first-hand study. The authors record the traditions of Miao, Yao, Buyi, Dong, Zhuang, Maonan, Dai and Li weavers from Guizhou to Hainan Island. Their investigation focuses on decorated textiles made on the loom (as opposed to embroidery or appliqué), since these are the most complex and most conservative part of the weaver’s repertoire. They describe the looms and techniques of these groups, including diagrams, descriptions and photographs of the weaving processes and woven structures. Interviews with active weavers reveal the social dimensions of weaving and the items that are made from woven cloth, including marriage and burial related customs. Each tradition is illustrated with precisely provenanced examples of textiles from each sub-region, drawn from the He Haiyan collection in Beijing, including many nineteenth century examples. The research was carried out with a sense of urgency, since many traditions are disappearing, and in some cases are limited to a small number of elderly weavers. These accounts form a primary ethnographic source for weaving cultures in the region, many of which have never been documented before. In the final chapter the authors present a comparative analysis of loom technology across the Asian mainland, using techniques derived from linguistics and biology (Bayesian analysis and Neighbornet plots). They use these to chart the evolutionary history of looms in Asia, demonstrating that all the major traditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Island Southeast Asia are structurally and functionally related, in spite of their apparent diversity, and have their origins on the Asian mainland in the same region that includes the apparent homlands of many of the major linguistic groups. The results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of how complex culture develops and spreads. The findings also shed light on widely-discussed topics such as the development of the Chinese Drawloom, showing how key features of the complex patterning device on this loom were derived from Tai-Kadai looms.

Edition Open Access eBooks, 2020

Historical Silk Technologies history of sericulture, published in 1984 in Joseph Needham's monumental project Science and Civilisation, Dieter Kuhn thus expanded the view to practices and cultural change, but at the same time equally adhered to the history of technology's most sacred paradigms: "there are many ways to write about textile technology. One could concentrate on the function of devices and machinery, or discuss the subject in strict chronological order or focus on the influence of inventions and innovations on society." 4 It took Francesca Bray's contribution in 1997 to make apparent the inextricable linkage between society and technology by sug gesting that technics were also "a creative way of looking at how societies give material form to their ideas." 5 The academic attention that silk has received as a sociotechnical and cultural arte fact since the 1990s "cultural turn" and the 2000s "material turn" is remarkable. 6 Textile historians, conservators, museum curators, anthropologists as well as practitioners of the various strands of history (art, science, technology, and many others) have explored in great detail the varied cultural and social histories of silk and shed light on the relation between silkmaking and what Mumford called the "wishes, habits, ideals, and goals" of individu als and societies across the world. 7 The focus has shifted from implements and technical analysis (that is, the tracing of production logics and logistics) to social practices, intellec tual and economic ideals, and everyday skills in craftsmanship and labor. Global history, for instance, no longer considers traders and travelers merely as those who brought explicit technical descriptions and implements, but instead sees them as information brokers who also conveyed information about customs, habits, and desires, thus making a comprehen sive impact. 8 Another contribution of global and textile historians is the highlighting of the role of markets, money, and aesthetics which has revealed the idiosyncrasies of local and global consumption patterns that, as historian of technology Ruth Cowan Schwartz suggests, critically influenced the developmental direction of technologies. 9 The social, financial, and political histories that make up "silk" has thus substantially diversified. At this time when the social and cultural importance of silk in the premodern global world is increasingly evident, we suggest returning for a moment to the issue of "technol ogy" and inquiring into the ways in which actors determined the nature of silk by deploying, selecting, or pursuing certain sets of technics, practices, or ideals (while dismissing or ig noring others). This approach pays attention to the subtle nexus that actors identify between "conditions" or "postulates" on the one hand, and the possible variables in technological efforts on the other. Throughout history actors deliberately or unconsciously accepted, lim ited, or expanded the material parameters-geology, climate, geography, economy, social structure-of silk technologies. While they often adapted operational sequences, that is: combinations of tools, agents, knowledge, and skills to produce silk-to make them work in different localities, they also, often simultaneously, insisted on the continuation of certain 4 Kuhn 1988, xxx. 5 We acknowledge our debt to Francesca Bray's concept of "gynotechnics" which she defined as "sets of tech nologies that produce ideas about women and gender, as a creative way of looking at how societies give material form to their ideas." Bray 1997, 380. 6 For a historiographical analysis of the material and cultural turn, see for instance Hicks 2010, 25-98. 7 The literature on this topic is huge and quite region specific. Partnering with this project, is a book that brings together the role of silk in the premodern world. Schäfer, Riello, and Molà 2018. For exemplary cases reflecting the varied nature of studies on silk, see:

2020

2022

Following the growth in textile studies over the past decade, we aim to present a comprehensive update of the state-of-the-art summarised in the seminal 2010 paper “Old Textiles – New Possibilities” by E. Andersson Strand, K. M. Frei, M. Gleba, U. Mannering, M.-L. Nosch and I. Skals. The diverse developments of the last decade, along with the increased recognition of the importance of textile studies in adjacent fields, now merit a dedicated, full-length publication entitled “Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles”. With this volume, we also wish to illustrate the current impact of textile archaeology on the scholarly perception of the past (not limited to archaeology alone). The volume presents new insights into the consumption, meaning, use and re-use of textiles and dyes, all of which are topics of growing importance in textile research. As indicated by the title, we demonstrate the continued importance of interdisciplinarity by showcasing several ‘interwoven’ approaches to environmental and archaeological remains, textual and iconographic sources, archaeological experiments and ethnographic data, from a large area covering Europe and the Mediterranean, Near East, Africa and Asia. The chronological span is deliberately wide, including materials dating from c. 6th millennium BCE to c. mid-14th century CE.

2022

The diverse developments in textile research of the last decade, along with the increased recognition of the importance of textile studies in adjacent fields, now merit a dedicated, full-length publication entitled “Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles”. With this volume, the authors and the editors wish to illustrate to the current impact of textile archaeology on the scholarly perception of the past (not limited to archaeology alone). The volume presents new insights into the consumption, meaning, use and re-use of textiles and dyes, all of which are topics of growing importance in textile research. As indicated by the title, we demonstrate the continued importance of interdisciplinarity by showcasing several ‘interwoven’ approaches to environmental and archaeological remains, textual and iconographic sources, archaeological experiments and ethnographic data, from a large area covering Europe and the Mediterranean, Near East, Africa and Asia. The chronological span is deliberately wide, including materials dating from c. 6th millennium BCE to c. mid-14th century CE. The volume is organised in four parts that aim to reflect the main areas of the textile research in 2020. After the two introductory chapters (Part I: About this Volume and Textile Research in 2020), follow two chapters referring to dyes and dyeing technology in which analytical and material-based studies are linked to contextual sources (Part II: Interdisciplinarity of Colour: Dye Analyses and Dyeing Technologies). The six chapters of Part III: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Textile Tools discuss textiles and textile production starting from the analyses of tools, whether functional or as representative of technological developments or user identity. Archaeological and cultural contexts as well as textile traditions are the main topics of the six chapters in Part IV: Traditions and Contexts: Fibres, Fabrics, Techniques, Uses and Meanings. The two final chapters in Part V: Digital Tools refer to the use of digital tools in textile research, presenting two different case studies.