Ancient Textiles
Publisher: Oxbow Books

Ancient Textiles is a long-running and very successful series established in collaboration between Oxbow Books and the Centre for Textile Research (CTR) of Copenhagen University. Initially a vehicle for publishing CTR’s research, in recent years the series has expanded to include submitted titles from a wide range of institutional and independent scholars. Titles cover many aspects of textile and clothing research from detailed analyses of specific cloths, weaves or dyes to discussions of technological developments in textile manufacture and production from prehistory to the medieval period, the use of textiles in specific contexts, and techniques of conservation.

Threads of Contact Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9798888571477
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2025
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 50 b/w drawings and photographs, 25 colour photographs, charts. maps
Description:
Textile tools offer a fascinating and yet intimate approach to ancient people. Textile production has been one of the core activities for millennia, spanning from domestic production to royal needs. Textiles were light and easy to transport goods, often exchanged over long distances.
RRP: £40.00
Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9798888570593
Pub Date: 15 Sep 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: 120 b/w figs, tbs, maps
Description:
Older than both ceramics and metallurgy, textile production is a technology which reveals much about prehistoric social and economic development. This book examines the archaeological evidence for textile production in Italy from the transition between the Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages until the Roman expansion (1000-400 BCE), and sheds light on both the process of technological development and the emergence of large urban centres with specialised crafts. Margarita Gleba begins with an overview of the prehistoric Appennine peninsula, which featured cultures such as the Villanovans and the Etruscans, and was connected through colonisation and trade with the other parts of the Mediterranean.
Textiles in Motion Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781789257984
Pub Date: 15 Apr 2023
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Dress is at the core of dance. It adorns dancers, defines various roles and forms symbolic expressions that, for example, either bind people together or opposes them. It is a communicative tool that gives crucial information for understanding the dance as well as the culture and the sociological effects of a group of people.
Exploring Ancient Textiles Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781789257250
Pub Date: 05 Jun 2022
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Over the past 30 years, research on archaeological textiles has developed into an important field of scientific study. It has greatly benefitted from interdisciplinary approaches, which combine the application of advanced technological knowledge to ethnographic, textual and experimental investigations. In exploring textiles and textile processing (such as production and exchange) in ancient societies, archaeologists with different types and quality of data have shared their knowledge, thus contributing to well-established methodology.
Textiles in Ancient Mediterranean Iconography Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9781789257212
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: Colour and b/w
Description:
This volume provides an ambitious synopsis of the complex, colourful world of textiles in ancient Mediterranean iconography. A wealth of information on ancient textiles is available from depictions such as sculpture, vase painting, figurines, reliefs and mosaics. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and through the processes of textile production.
Woven Threads Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 264
ISBN: 9781789257342
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Woven textiles are produced by nearly all human societies. This volume investigates evidence for patterned textiles (that is, textiles woven with elaborate designs) that were produced by two early Mediterranean civilisations: the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece, that prospered during the Aegean Bronze Age, c. 3000-1200 BC, contemporary with pharaonic Egypt.
RRP: £29.95
Crafting Textiles Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781789257595
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
New research into the techniques of tablet weaving, sprang, braiding, knotting and lace is presented in this lavishly illustrated volume written by leading specialists from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and USA. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Peter Collingwood, this publication explores aspects of these craft skills in the prehistoric, Roman and medieval world through scientific, object-based analysis and 'research through making'. Chapters include the growth of patterned tablet weaving for trimming garments in prehistoric Central Europe; recently identified styles of headdress worn in the Roman Rhineland and pre-Islamic Egypt; Viking-age Dublin as a production centre for tablet-woven bands; a new interpretation of the weaving technique used to make luxurious gold bands in the twelfth to late thirteenth centuries; and the development out of plaiting of bobbin lace borders in gold and silver threads from the fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries.
First Textiles Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781789256871
Pub Date: 01 Sep 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Textile production and the manufacture of clothing was one of the most essential daily activities in prehistory. Textiles were significant objects of practical use, and at the same time had cultural, social and symbolic meaning, crucial for displaying the identity, gender, social rank and status, or wealth of their users. However, evidence of ancient clothing is scarce due to unfavourable preservation of organic materials.
Crafting Minoanisation Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781785709661
Pub Date: 15 Aug 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
The mid second millennium BC material record of the southern Aegean shows evidence of strong Cretan influence. This phenomenon has traditionally been seen in terms of ‘Minoanisation’, but the nature and degree of Cretan influence, and the process/processes by which it was spread and adopted, have been widely debated. This new study addresses the question of ‘Minoanisation’ through a study of the adoption of Cretan technologies in the wider southern Aegean: principally, weaving technology.
Textile Activity and Cultural Identity in Sicily Between the Late Bronze Age and Archaic Period Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781789255997
Pub Date: 06 May 2021
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: B/w and colour
Description:
Clothing was an essential part of material culture in ancient societies both as a form of body protection and as house equipment. Besides a practical function, textiles played a crucial role in communicating various aspects of social and personal identity. Based largely on the analysis of textile tools, this book is intended to be the first systematic attempt at reconstructing textile culture in ancient Sicily.
The Dyer's Handbook Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781789255492
Pub Date: 01 Oct 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Description:
Persian blue, pomegranate flower, spiny lobster, wine soup, pale flesh, dove breast, golden wax, grass green, green sand, rotten olive, modest plum, agate, rich French gray, gunpowder of the English..
The Competition of Fibres Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781789254297
Pub Date: 01 Apr 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: Colour
Description:
The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here. Contributions investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe.
Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 472
ISBN: 9781789253801
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2020
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and some colour images
Description:
The history of the Ancient Near East covers a huge chronological frame, from the first pictographic texts of the late 4th millennium to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 BC. During these millennia, different societies developed in a changing landscape where sheep (and their wool) always played an important economic role. The 22 papers presented here explore the place of wool in the ancient economy of the region, where large-scale textile production began during the second half of the 3rd millennium.
The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789251449
Pub Date: 30 Sep 2019
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
This latest title in the highly successful Ancient Textiles series is the first substantial monograph-length historiography of early medieval embroideries and their context within the British Isles. The book brings together and analyses for the first time all 43 embroideries believed to have been made in the British Isles and Ireland in the early medieval period. New research carried out on those embroideries that are accessible today, involving the collection of technical data, stitch analysis, observations of condition and wear-marks and microscopic photography supplements a survey of existing published and archival sources.
Textiles and the Medieval Economy Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9781789252095
Pub Date: 25 Jun 2019
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations
Description:
Archaeologists and textile historians bring together 16 papers to investigate the production, trade and consumption of textiles in Scandinavia and across parts of northern and Mediterranean Europe throughout the medieval period. Archaeological evidence is used to demonstrate the existence or otherwise of international trade and to examine the physical characteristics of textiles and their distribution in order to understand who was producing, using and trading them and what they were being used for. Historical evidence, mainly textual, is employed to link textile names to places, numbers and prices and thus provide an appreciation of changing economics, patterns of distribution and the organisation of trade.
Ancient Textiles Modern Science II Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 146
ISBN: 9781789251203
Pub Date: 25 Nov 2018
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Ancient Textiles Modern, Science II follows the success of the first proceedings, published in 2013, that catalogued the Forum’s formative years. This proceedings highlights the range of subjects and approaches, from improved forms of notation for nålbinding and terminology for non-woven fabric structures, to presentation and practical interpretation of new and unique discoveries from Lengberg Castle and of Roman leather underpants. The significance of unrealised assumptions and unappreciated historic decisions is shown through the discovery of weaving tablets unrecognised during their excavation and the effects of water supply on the outcome of dyeing in Pompeii.