What is it about?
At the onset of the 2nd millennium bc, a wool economy emerged across continental Europe. Archaeological, iconographical, and written sources from the Near East and the Aegean show that a Bronze Age wool economy involved considerable specialised labour and large scale animal husbandry. Resting only on archaeological evidence, detailed knowledge of wool economies in Bronze Age Europe has been limited, but recent investigations at the Terramare site of Montale, in northern Italy, document a high density of spindle whorls that strongly supports the existence of village-level specialised manufacture of yarn. Production does not appear to have been attached to an emerging elite nor was it fully independent of social constraints. We propose that, although probably managed by local elites, wool production was a community-based endeavour oriented towards exports aimed at obtaining locally unavailable raw materials and goods.
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Why is it important?
The lack of written evidence and the poor archaeological preservation of textiles has limited prehistorians’ ability to capture the organisation of Bronze Age textile economies outside the Mediterranean. Rather, outside this region, attention must focus on textile technologies and their tools, such as spindle whorls, which can be studied in terms of settlement and household variability as a means to describe labour specialisation and its multiple roles in the political economy. The evidence from Montale suggests for the first time in the history of European Bronze Age archaeology that textile crafts could have consituted a major settlement specialisation based on the capacities of local population to exploit environmental and human resources, including specialised labour, and – as to wool production – management of large herds. Montale’s community might, therefore, have managed production to meet wider continental demands, as documented for northern Europe, where woollen clothing, at least during the 14th and the 13th centuries BCE, was used apparently without convincing signs for local wool production.
Perspectives
The production of woollen textiles requires a complex organization of labour and resource management. Thus, European Bronze Age societies would probably not engage in such complex endeaviour if they were not aware of the value of this production and the benefit that its outcome may have had, for instance as an export commodity The introduction of wool production and trade must have therefore been a result of precise political economic choices. This article aims to contribute and enhance our understanding of the prominent historical, economic and political role of textile craft specialization for the development of Bronze Age societies.
Dr serena Sabatini
Goteborgs Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bronze Age Textile & Wool Economy: The Case of the Terramare Site of Montale, Italy, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, November 2018, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/ppr.2018.11.
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Resources
Bronze Age wool economy: production, trade, environment, husbandry and society
22nd European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting, Vilnius 2016
Wool economy during the Bronze Age
A number of studies over the last decades have considerably increased our knowledge about production and trade of woollen textiles during the Bronze Age in the Near East, the Aegean, and continental Europe. In the wider Mediterranean area, thanks to the abundance of available evidence, it has been possible to use the concept of wool economy as a frame of reference to define the complex mechanisms behind production and trade of wool. The main aim of this paper is to reflect upon using the concept of wool economy to enhance our understanding of the relevant archaeological evidence from Bronze Age continental Europe.
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