Textile production in second millennium Anatolia with reference to the archives of neighbouring regions

This thesis investigates the organisation of textile production in Anatolia in the Second Millennium B.C. During this period we see the development of the Hittite Empire from a series of much smaller city states. It has been shown in other areas of the world that such political changes are accompanied by a reorganisation of other aspects of life, including craft production. It is the effect of these changes on textile production we intend to assess through analysis of Anatolian archaeological evidence from ten excavation sites and historical records from Anatolia and contemporaneous societies in Northern Mesopotamia. The Middle Bronze Age kingdoms of Anatolia were the focus of the Assyrian Colony network. This involved the transport of textiles and tin from Assyria into Anatolia and their exchange for the rare metals found there. Despite this, the archaeological record does not suggest textile production was an institutionalised craft. After the development of the Hittite Old Kingdom (LBA I) we see a change in the number and form of textile production tools which implies changes in the organisation of textile production occurred. This would likely have involved the relocation of some textile craftspeople beyond the reach of traditional excavation boundaries. We expected these changes only to extend to the edge of the Empire at this period but the classical regions of Cilicia and Rough Cilicia also seem to have reorganised their textile production along similar lines. In the Hittite Empire period, textile production seems to have almost ceased in the areas uncovered in excavations. However the tools that we do find are of very particular forms and sizes: loom weights are crescentic and light and spindle whorls are small, light and undecorated. We conclude that the Hittite Empire was controlling production of textiles centrally and relocating the work away from the areas of settlements which we have so far excavated.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo