Textile Production in the Uruk Period: New Insights from Glyptic Imagery
Author(s): Holly Pittman
Year: 2018
Summary
Production of textiles rose to an industrial level in the late Uruk period of southern Mesopotamia. Iconographic sources found in glyptic art provide a detailed visual description of aspects of this industry. Gender differentiation is clearly institutionalize, with women preparing the thread and skeins while males are engaged in the actual weaving. This paper presents a close analysis of a single motif in the glyptic iconography, offering an explanation of what has previously been identified as a "spider" motif. Rather than an abstract reference to the production of thread in nature, it is argued that the image is rather a device, a "machine" that was employed to store thread before it was deployed into skeins.
Cite this Record
Textile Production in the Uruk Period: New Insights from Glyptic Imagery. Holly Pittman. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 443913)
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Keywords
General
Bronze Age
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Craft Production
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Iconography and epigraphy
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spinning
Geographic Keywords
Asia: Southwest Asia and Levant
Spatial Coverage
min long: 34.277; min lat: 13.069 ; max long: 61.699; max lat: 42.94 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 21073