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Archaeological Evidence for Textiles in Pre‐Islamic Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Trudy S. Kawami
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Extract

The production of textiles began very early in the Near East, even before the development of settled villages and the domestication of plants and animals in the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age, the 7th and 6th millennia B.C.). Flax was one of the first fibers to be woven; it appears in an elegantly knotted net with a woven border found in the Nahal Hemar Cave on the southwest banks of the Dead Sea. “Flax also appears about the same time in Anatolia at Çatal Hüyük, a partially excavated site once covering some 32 (?) acres. The Çatal Hüyük textiles, which also included wool ormohair worked in S- and Z-spun two-ply yarns, came from intramural burials where they bound up the bones of the dead and in one case filled a skull. Unfortunately, the fires that destroyed the site on several occasions charred the fabrics so that no trace of color now remains. However, the dye plants woad, madder and weld are native to the region, and the excavator believed that they were used at Çatal Hüyük.

Type
Pre-lslamic Textiles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1-2: The Carpets and Textiles of Iran: New Perspectives in Research , 1992 , pp. 7 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1992

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References

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77 Fujii, 1983-84, pp. 178 and 181; anon., “Excavations in Iraq 1983-84,” Iraq 47 (1985), p. 225.

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86 Hansman, J. and Stronach, D., “A Sasanian Repository at Qumis,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1970), no. 2, p. 155.Google Scholar Kawami, Trudy S., “Ancient Textiles from Shahr-i Qumis”, Hali 59 (Oct. 1991), p. 99.Google Scholar See also Appendix II.