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The statues of young women in 6th century BCE Greece are remarkable for their elaborate textile clothing.\ud Despite this, the evidence from representations of textiles is frequently dismissed because the clothing portrayed\ud is considered too unreliable and confusing to interpret. This paper seeks to redress this issue by identifying the\ud type, number and quality of textiles represented as garments on these famous statues. It considers the history\ud of research that led to this lack of clarity and assesses the textiles on statues in the light of the archaeological\ud evidence. The results demonstrate the quality and quantity of textiles worn in these outfits and lead to a wider\ud discussion of the significance of these abundant and splendid materials.

Ancient Mediterranean iconography provides a wealth of information on the complex, colourful world of textiles. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and the processes of textile\ud production. As organic textiles have largely disappeared from the archaeological record, the iconography of\ud textiles is a crucial resource, complementing knowledge gained from written sources and preserved textiles.\ud Nevertheless, there is a persistent questioning of the reliability and relevance of iconographic representation.\ud Yet, its methodology and discoveries need be neither unreliable nor irrelevant provided certain conditions are\ud met: sufficient attention to the medium of construction; robust methods of analysis; appropriate comparison with\ud other sources of evidence; and a critical awareness of the relationship between evidence, cultural context and\ud interpretation. Through examining the iconographic evidence, this volume reveals the ephemeral world of textiles\ud and the important contribution the iconography of textiles makes to the history of textiles and, importantly, to\ud the history of everyday life in the ancient Mediterranean.

Faced with a growing population to feed and a lack of environmentally friendly agricultural interventions, researchers are turning to microbes as the next solution to improve crop yield. Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) are applied directly to crops or soil to increase plant development, survival or yields. One concern using PGPB-based interventions is that some of these bacteria do not maintain colonization on plant roots, forcing the grower to apply them multiple times to maintain any benefit. Multispecies bacterial communities often show synergistic traits, including in some cases increasing the survival or biomass of individual bacterial species. I thus hypothesized that bacterial co-inoculants could improve PGPB association with plant roots. In my dissertation, I examine root colonization dynamics of bacterial communities and analyze how co-inoculation with rhizosphere bacteria affects PGPB abundance and localization on the root. To measure the kinetics of bacterial association with plant roots, I created a fast, easy-to-adapt, high-throughput system for hydroponic growth of plants. During the generation and validation of this system, I found that different bacterial species colonize and maintain at different titers and localize at particular regions along the Arabidopsis thaliana seedling root. Bacterial species tested included the PGPB strain Pseudomonas simiae as well as three bacterial isolates native to the A. thaliana rhizosphere. I saw that the three rhizosphere bacteria colonized and maintained as both individuals and as a multispecies community. I also found that the model soil-dwelling bacterium Bacillus subtilis did not maintain initial colonization, mirroring a phenomenon reported in field trials of Bacillus PGPB interventions. I used this system to characterize 96 fully genome-sequenced bacterial strains isolated from the A. thaliana rhizosphere for their ability to maintain colonization on Arabidopsis roots. Of these 96 isolates, I also identified five bacterial strains that significantly improved the maintenance of B. subtilis. Of these, I characterized three strains for their effects on B. subtilis over a longer time course and determined their spatial localization along the seedling root. I found that these rhizobacteria also increased the maintenance of two commercially available PGPB strains of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. Furthermore, I showed the combination of all three strains increased maintenance of each of the three Bacillus strains. The long‐term goal for this research is to identify functional microbial consortia that can associate with plant roots consistently over time and thus improve plant health and yields. These results illustrate the utility of this model system to address questions about plant-microbe interactions and may help address observed inconsistencies across different PGPB intervention studies. In a wider context, this line of research could help enhance the strength and reliability of agricultural microbial bioadditives, which have the potential to become viable alternatives to environmentally and economically costly agrochemicals and pesticides.

Textiles are sensuous; we respond to them through touch, vision and smell, movement, sound and temperature. Through sensations, textiles embody emotions of identity, and define hierarchies of power and value. Yet through the taphonomy of decay, ancient textiles are frequently devoid of their original sensory properties, they come to us as faded, fragile, dirty rags. A sensory archaeology of textiles, therefore, requires a suite of methods to reveal these sensations and a contextual analysis to interpret them within their chronological and regional archaeologies. In raising to this challenge, this chapter proposes for the first time a sensory archaeology of textiles. Through innovative case studies, the author invites the reader to recognise the implications of a sensory archaeology of textiles, and to consider the consequences for their own research fields.

Recent research into plant bast fibre technology points to a Neolithic European tradition of working fibres into threads by splicing, rather than draft spinning. The major issue now is the ability of textile specialists and archaeobotanists to distinguish the technology of splicing from draft spun fibres. This paper defines the major types of splicing and proposes a method to observe, identify and interpret spliced thread technology. The identification of spliced yarns is evaluated through the examination of textiles from Europe, Egypt and the Near East. Through the application of this method we propose that the switch from splicing to draft spinning plant fibres occurred much later than previously thought. The ramifications of this shift in plant processing have profound implications for understanding the chaîne opératoire of this ubiquitous and time-consuming technology, which have to be factored into social and economic reconstructions of the past., ERC

No abstract available.

The organic finds preserved in a young adult’s burial on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor are the first evidence for decorative textiles, braids and baskets in Early Bronze Age Britain, and they transform current understanding of this period. These fabrics are intricately made and show an imaginative use of materials, textures and shape. The layers and wrappings in the burial deposit provide a rare glimpse of the role of organic materials in burials. In this paper, the archaeological evidence is presented and these finds are discussed in their broader technological and aesthetic context.

Studies of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe have focused on plants and animals exploited for food. However, the exploitation of plants for fibres underwent a significant change with the addition of domestic flax as a fibre crop. While the technology of flax fibre processing is increasingly understood by archaeologists, its material value as a fibre crop in comparison to indigenous fibre is less well explored. We examine the mechanical properties of flax and two indigenous fibres (lime bast, willow bast), by testing fibre strips for tensile properties and discuss the results in the light of material choices in these periods.

This resource is a single blog post created as part of the Day of Archaeology initiative. The Day of Archaeology project aimed to provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world. The project asked people working, studying or volunteering in the archaeological world to participate in a 'Day of Archaeology' each year by recording their day and sharing it through text, images or video on the Day of Archaeology blog.The project asked anyone with a personal, professional or voluntary interest in archaeology to get involved, and help highlight the reasons why archaeology is vital to protect the past and inform our futures. The resulting Day of Archaeology project archive demonstrates the wide variety of work the archaeological profession undertakes day-to-day across the globe, and helps to raise public awareness of the relevance and importance of archaeology to the modern world.The first ever Day of Archaeology was held in 2011 and, since then, the project had thousands of archaeologists take part in the event, from those working in the field through to specialists working in laboratories and behind computers. The last Day of Archaeology was on Friday 28th July 2017.

In the light of recent discoveries of early to middle Bronze Age burials with mats and fibrous material in Scotland, for example at Langwell farm and Forteviot, it was deemed timely to re-evaluate earlier finds of this period, several of which were discovered and initially reported on nearly a century ago. As part of this research it was noted that three Bronze Age finds from the old literature were reported as clothing or shrouds made of hair moss (Polytrichum commune). Three of these are reassessed here, with a detailed re-examination of the “hair moss apron” from North Cairn Farm. Technological analysis of this find showed no evidence for the twining previously reported and SEM fibre analysis shows that it is unlikely to be hair moss or indeed Bronze Age. However, there is other evidence for hair moss artefacts from other British Bronze Age and Roman contexts. These suggest it is possible that hair moss fibre was used in Scotland in the Bronze Age, but that the North Cairn Farm fibrous object should no longer be considered among this evidence.

The textiles from Over Barrow, Cambridgeshire, England present the opportunity to examine the burial practices at the end of the Early Bronze Age. They were excavated from a pit pyre cremation along with cremated bone, a bone needle/pin and two small sherds of a collared urn. Preserved in charred clumps of multiple layers, they have the potential to provide clues as to how the textiles were used in the cremation, for example, whether they were used as clothing, shrouds or for other purpose such as binding strips. These possibilities raise a number of questions as to the role of textiles in Bronze Age cremation burials in the early second millennium BC in Britain.

My PhD research focuses on the social context of cloth from the Neolithic to Bronze Age with case studies from the Alpine area. One aspect of this is the interrelationship of the technologies used to create flexible, thin sheets of material that can be wrapped, folded, shaped and tied. This includes fibre-based cloth such as textiles, netting and twining as well as animal skins (leather and fur). This short report summarises preliminary research findings stemming from the examination of animal skins from the Bronze Age Hallstatt salt mines. These mines offer an ideal preservation environment for cloth as the salt inhibits the action of microorganisms that would otherwise lead to the decay of organic materials, such as plant and animal fibres, and animal skins. Of these the least commonly preserved in contexts outside the salt mines are animal skins, making finds of this type significant for my research.

This resource is a single blog post created as part of the Day of Archaeology initiative. The Day of Archaeology project aimed to provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world. The project asked people working, studying or volunteering in the archaeological world to participate in a 'Day of Archaeology' each year by recording their day and sharing it through text, images or video on the Day of Archaeology blog.The project asked anyone with a personal, professional or voluntary interest in archaeology to get involved, and help highlight the reasons why archaeology is vital to protect the past and inform our futures. The resulting Day of Archaeology project archive demonstrates the wide variety of work the archaeological profession undertakes day-to-day across the globe, and helps to raise public awareness of the relevance and importance of archaeology to the modern world.The first ever Day of Archaeology was held in 2011 and, since then, the project had thousands of archaeologists take part in the event, from those working in the field through to specialists working in laboratories and behind computers. The last Day of Archaeology was on Friday 28th July 2017.

A well-preserved burial, discovered during peat clearing on Langwell Farm in Strath Oykel, Easter Ross, consisted of a stone cist that held the skeleton of a woman who had died in 2200–1960 cal bc. Although the cist contents were disturbed and partly removed before archaeological investigation took place, the burial rite can be interpreted to some extent. The woman, who died in her late 20s, had been wrapped in brown cattle hide, and wooden and woven objects were placed with her body. Periodic waterlogging created conditions that allowed the rare, partial preservation of the organic materials. Analysis of bone histology indicated that decay of the human remains had been arrested, either by deliberate mummification or by waterlogging. The cist had been set into a low knoll on the valley floor and it may have been covered with a low cairn or barrow. This spot had been the site of a fire several hundred years earlier, and it may have been a node on a cross-country route linking east and west coasts in the Early Bronze Age. The use of animal hide suggests the creation and use of particular identities, linking the dead to ancestors and to powerful spiritual properties attributed to the natural world. The work was carried out for Historic Scotland under the Human Remains Call-off Contract.

The study of leather is a specialist field in archaeology, yet focuses on one of the major materials in the past, the use of which continues into the present. The common occurrence of these animal skin products through time, whether tanned leather, parchment, vellum, oil or fat cured skins or rawhide attest to the enduring utility and desirability of animal skins as a material. Traditionally, these products have all been grouped together as leather, although their fundamental differences are increasingly recognised and published in the archaeological literature. For those without a specialist interest in leather it is easy to overlook the variability of products among this group of materials and to lose sight of the specific reasons behind the choice of leather in particular situations and according to different cultural and temporal contexts. In this volume, the authors address the question Why leather? through investigating the nature of animal skins, the behaviour of skins and leather in use and the network of decisions made by the makers, designers and users in bringing raw materials to a finished object and its place in the social fabric of life. The authors also address why leather works in certain situations, and indeed sometimes why other materials were and are chosen in preference to leather. The response to such questions is not only addressed through the properties of materials, but also how leather, like all materials, is viewed with the dimensions of culture and beliefs which surround it. The aim of this introduction is to place the conference theme and chapters herein within the field of leather in archaeology and current issues surrounding the study of materials in the past. This volume benefits from the insights of archaeologists and authors from other professions, whose specialist knowledge provides the archaeologists with the benefit of seeing their topic from a new perspective.