Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: From the Orient to the Mediterranean - Paperback

by Mary Harlow (Editor), Cecile Michel (Editor), Louise Quillien (Editor)

This volume looks at how the issues of textiles and gender intertwine across three millennia in antiquity and examines continuities and differences across time and space - with surprising resonances for the modern world. The interplay of gender, identity, textile production and use is notable on many levels, from the question of who was involved in the transformation of raw materials into fabric at one end, to the wearing of garments and the construction of identity at the other.

Textile production has often been considered to follow a linear trajectory from a domestic (female) activity to a more 'commercial' or 'industrial' (male-centred) mode of production. In reality, many modes of production co-existed and the making of textiles is not so easily grafted onto the labour of one sex or the other. Similarly, textiles once transformed into garments are often of 'unisex' shape but worn to express the gender of the wearer.

As shown by the detailed textual source material and the rich illustrations in this volume, dress and gender are intimately linked in the visual and written records of antiquity. The contributors show how it is common practice in both art and literature not only to use particular garments to characterize one sex or the other, but also to undermine characterizations by suggesting that they display features usually associated with the opposite gender.

Author Biography

Mary Harlow is an Associate Professor in Ancient History at the University of Leicester, UK. She has published extensively on Roman dress and has been an editor and contributor to several of Bloomsbury's Cultural History series including Children and the Family (2010), Dress and Fashion (2017), Hair (2018) and Shopping (2019).

Cécile Michel is a Senior Researcher at CNRS, Archéologie et Science de l'Antiquité, France and Professor of Assyriology at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published books and studies on women, gender studies and ancient textiles including Textile Terminologies (2010 and 2017) Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean (2014) and The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East (2016).

Louise Quillien is a Researcher at CNRS, Archéologie et Science de l'Antiquité, France. She defended her PhD on Textiles in Mesopotamia, 1st millennium BC: manufacturing techniques, trade and uses in 2016.