The Genesis of the Textile Industry from Adorned Nudity to Ritual Regalia documents and evaluates the changing role of fibre crafts and their evolving techniques of manufacture and also their ever-increasing wider application in the lives of the inhabitants of the earliest villages of the Ancient Near East. It is a broad-spectrum enquiry into fibre working in a broad swathe from Mesopotamia across Persia and Anatolia to the Nile Valley. It focuses, however, on the southern Levant from incipient sedentism in the Natufian culture, c. 13,000 cal BCE to the Ghassulian culture, c. 4500-3800/3700 cal BCE.

This is the first comprehensive study addressing the fibre technologies of the southern Levant on a long chronological axis. Currently, fibre crafts play only a minor role in archaeological thinking. This research demonstrates the magnitude and also the indispensable role that fibre crafts have played in the quotidian events, activities and practices of the inhabitants of the region. It has created an awareness of the substantial, often invisible, presence of fibre-craft products which was hitherto lacking in archaeological thought.

About the Author
Janet Levy is affiliated with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Her research focuses on a broad spectrum of fibre technologies attested from initial sedentism in the southern Levant c.13,000 BCE and their role within the regional cultures. In addition to the study of archaeological sources, her approach is based on experimental replication in tandem with ethnographic input, primarily from beyond the southern Levant.

Reviews
'This is a book of evidence. Levy has the tenacity of a bulldog in pursuing and dragging in every possible form of evidence for a very elusive subject that has been central to human existence for many millennia.' -- E.J.W. Barber * American Journal of Archaeology *



Book Information
ISBN 9781789694482
Author Janet Levy
Format Paperback
Page Count 338
Imprint Archaeopress
Publisher Archaeopress
Weight(grams) 1206g