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Çatal Hüyük—The Textiles and Twined Fabrics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Harold B. Burnham
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Extract

Ancient textiles in archaeological excavations are preserved only under unusual circumstances, and it is for this reason that the discoveries at Çatal Hüyük in 1961, and repeated in following seasons, of woven and twined materials possess an excitement out of all proportion to their visual appearance. Until these were found, the earliest woven fabrics known were from the Fayûm in Egypt which are usually dated to the fifth millennium B.C. The finds in Level VI of Çatal Hüyük push the history of the textile arts back to the beginning of the sixth millennium.

For textiles to survive in a more or less natural state requires either extremely arid conditions as in Egypt or Peru, or permafrost as in the Norse burials in Greenland, and in the tombs of the Scythian and Hunnish princes in Siberia. The presence of certain chemicals may act as a preservative: tannin in the Bronze Age burials in Denmark or metallic salts impregnating the fibres of the silks found in the patina of Chinese bronzes of the early dynasties. At Çatal Hüyük, a simpler agent is responsible for the survival of the fragments that have been found. In the fire that apparently destroyed the buildings of Level VI in which they were found, they were subject to intense heat. Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the space in which they were confined under the low clay platforms, the fabrics were not consumed, but only thoroughly carbonized. This made them chemically inert, and no longer subject to the growth of the destructive moulds that under normal conditions lead to the total decay of most animal and vegetal matter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 15 , December 1965 , pp. 169 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1965

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References

1 Caton-Thompson, D. and Gardner, E. W., The Desert Fayum (London, 1934)Google Scholar, Pl. 28.

2 Another textile find of the ninth century B.C. from Gordion has been described by Bellinger, Louisa, “Textiles from Gordion,” The Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Volume 46 (1962), pp. 5–33Google Scholar.

3 The writer is most grateful to Bay Raçi Temizer, Director of the Eti Arkeoloji Müzesi, Ankara, for his permission to study this material, as well as that from Patnos. He also wishes to extend his warmest thanks to Mr. and Mrs. James Mellaart for the full co-operation they gave so freely. My trip to Ankara was made possible by a special grant from the Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto, arranged by Dr. A. D. Tushingham, Chief Archaeologist.

4 Mellaart, James, “Excavation at Çatal Hüyük, First Preliminary Report, 1961,” Anatolian Studies, Volume XII (1962), pp. 41–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mellaart, James, “Çatal Hüyük, 1962, Second Preliminary Report,” Anatolian Studies, Volume XIII (1963), pp. 43–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mellaart, James, “Çatal Hüyük, 1963, Third Preliminary Report,” Anatolian Studies, Volume XIV (1964), pp. 39–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Helbaek, Hans, “Textiles from Çatal Hüyük,” Archaeology, Volume 16, No. 1 (1963), pp. 33–46Google Scholar.

5 Mellaart, op. cit., “First Preliminary Report,” p. 56, and “Third Preliminary Report,” pp. 57, 66, 73.

6 The technical terms used here are those established by Centre International d'Etude des Textiles Anciens in the English versions of the important international project: A Vocabulary of Technical Terms (Lyon, 1964).

7 cf. Hoffman, Marta, The Warp-Weighted Loom (Oslo, 1964), pp. 151–183Google Scholar.

8 Burnham, Harold B., “Four Looms,” Annual, 1962, Art and Archaeology Division, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto (Toronto, 1963), pp. 77, 84Google Scholar.

9 Marta Hoffman, op. cit., pp. 310–314, Figs, 131, 132.

10 Helbaek, op. cit., p. 46.