Textile Workers. Skills, Labour and Status of Textile Craftspeople Between the Prehistoric Aegean and the Ancient Near East.: Proceedings of the Workshop held at 10th ICAANE in Vienna, April 2016

International audienceThis volume aims at opening up new perspectives in archaeological textile research, focusing on a comparative analysis of textile workers in the Aegean and Near-Eastern world from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. While archaeological remains such as textile tools, fibres and fabrics have been widely analysed for the technical information they contain, they have not been adequately studied for their potential to provide valuable data about the workers involved in textile production. What can archaeological remains, combined with the iconographical and textual data, tell us about the prehistoric and early historic textile craftsmen and craftswomen? Using all available sources, the contributions of the volume set various questions about the actors of textile production. What were their gender and social status? What type of labour did they perform: domestic or professional? What was their specific working space – a house or a workshop area? How were they organised: working alone or in teams? What was the position of their body and what were their movements while working? Could they choose freely between different patterns, colours, materials or techniques? What specialised skills and intellectual knowledge did they apply during their work? Thanks to this collective work, we will be able to explore whether in all the fields and circumstances mentioned above we can detect exact parallels, similar patterns and mutual influences or, instead, significant differences between Near-Eastern and Aegean worlds