The Relationships between Smallholders, their Textiles, and their Bone Tools: a Case Study at the Central Anatolian site of Kaman-Kalehӧyük

Summary

Textiles are rarely found in Near Eastern archaeological contexts due to the rarity of suitable environmental conditions for their preservation. Cuneiform texts and limited artifactual evidence have therefore often been the main sources informing archaeologists of the technological processes involved in textile production. Yet, scanty data exist specifically on textile-manufacturing tools made from bone, a readily available raw material, and the smallholders who crafted these tools. This paper investigates the production of bone tools for textile-working during the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1250 BCE) at the central Anatolian site of Kaman-Kalehӧyük. We probe how the production of textile-working bone tools was organized and whether this organization of production was influenced by economic, sociocultural, and gender domains differentially. Furthermore, we seek to determine if the smallholders producing the bone tools for textiles were full- or part-time specialists when their livelihoods were dependent on subsistence economies. Investigating the textile industry at Kaman-Kalehӧyük through a distinctive case study of bone tools associated with textile working allows us to explore how hinterland sites impacted textile trade networks during the development of complex societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Big Roles for Smallholders in Complex Societies

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