Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk In Late Anglo-Saxon England

The paper aims to explore the different environmental conditions that favored the development of wool and silk trade in England and Byzantium, respectively, and to study the economic, political, religious and cultural dimensions of it. Wool was the most important source of wealth in medieval England and the principal means of financing the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Wool manufacturing had a great impact on the society and provided an important foundation for medieval urbanization. Byzantium, on the other hand, established a monopolistic imperial silk weaving industry from the fourth century onwards. The Byzantines demonstrated their technological superiority in silk art crafts and impressed the West that assimilated it and tried to imitate it.

Published online: https://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/43114.

Dynamics and Organisation of Textile Production in Past Societies in Europe and the Mediterranean, Fasciculi Archaeologiae Historicae, Fasc.31, 103-114. Łódź: Polish Academy of Sciences, 2018

This paper reviews the archaeological evidence for the Anglo-Saxon textile industry. It argues that through much of the Anglo-Saxon period (the 5th to 11th centuries AD), textile production was a farm-based, rural industry. The Middle period, however, saw the appearance of large estate centres, producing high quality goods for an elite group, while in centres of population, such as wics, non-farming households were making cloth with the same tools as in the farmsteads. As towns began to emerge, opportunities for local and overseas trade increased. Textile production in Late Anglo-Saxon towns can be seen as a phase of technological, social and economic change, as a local supply network was established and foundations were laid for both urban gilds and the export trade in the Anglo-Norman period (later 11th and 12th centuries AD). The countryside, however, remained a producer and was ready to take on greater importance in later centuries.

Antiquity, 2013

Textiles and clothing are among the most visible aspects of human social and symbolic behaviour and yet they have left all too few traces in the archaeological record and it is easy to overlook their importance. Luxury textiles such as silk can additionally provide evidence of long-distance contact, notably between Europe and China during the Han dynasty and the Roman empire. But can these connections be projected back in time to the prehistoric period? The late Irene Good proposed a number of identifications of silk in Iron Age Europe and was instrumental in bringing the issue to wider attention. Closer examination reported here, however, calls those identifications into question. Instead, the case is put that none of the claimed Iron Age silks can be confirmed, and that early traffic in silk textiles to Europe before the Roman period cannot be substantiated.

Textile History, 1996

Shamir O. 2022. Silk Textiles from the Byzantine period till the Medieval period from excavations in the Land of Israel (5th-13th Centuries): Origin, Transmission, and Exchange. ACTA VIA SERICA 7:53-82., 2022

The Hebrew word for silk, meshi, is mentioned in the Bible only once1 and there is a possibility that the item to which it referred was made of local wild silk. Although Jewish historical sources from the Roman and Byzantine periods mention silk many times, only a few silk textiles have been discovered at a sited dated to the Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries CE). The word “silk” occurs in the New Testament, although only once.2 A turning point in the history of the Negev (Southern Israel) occurred around 400 CE when it underwent a period of prosperity related to the advent of Christianity and pilgrimage, which enabled the purchase of imported silk textiles. The Early Islamic period (7-8th centuries CE) yielded four (out of 310) silk textiles from Nahal ‘Omer on the Spice Routes joining Petra, in the Edom Mountains of modern Jordan, and the mercantile outlets on the Mediterranean Sea, notably Gaza and El Arish. The most important silk textile assemblage in the Southern Levant was found near Jericho at Qarantal Cave 38 and dates to the medieval period (9th-13th centuries CE). Linen textiles decorated with silk tapestry originating in Egypt date back to the 10-11th centuries CE. Mulham textiles — silk warp with hidden cotton wefts — were discovered in the medieval fortress on Jazirat Fara’un (Coral Island) in the Red Sea, 14 kilometers south of Elat and today located in Egypt. Mulham is mentioned in literary sources of the ninth century in Iraq and Iran, whence it spread through the Islamic world. The article will present aspects of the origin, transmission, and exchange of these textiles

There are only a limited number of readers that master the Danish language, and since I wanted to make this essay available to all the other people potentially interested in it, I have decided to translate it. I shall point out, however, that a couple of cognitions (some of which appear to be essential to the core statement of the essay’s conclusion) have become obsolete over the years. Thus, consider this text as a document of its time.

Medieval Archaeology, 2001

2015

of ceramic studies in the commercial sector. Together, these papers provide a clear statement of where we are, and where we are going wrong. The volume contains much of interest, but would have benefited from a final chapter or expanded introduction, reflecting on the experience of bringing artefact research together from across specialisms and time periods, and considering whether the editors found the disciplinary/ professional faultlines that concern them to be persistent. More (colour) illustrations would have helped too. In sum, this is a welcome exemplar of the current health of artefact studies, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the explanatory power of finds research, as well as its professional and scholarly context.