Category Archives: fiber arts

Women’s work in Ancient Crete

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Women have always worked. And up until the modern era, their jobs they’ve done remained fairly consistent.

First and foremost, the care of children. The work that women have done has been tasks that can be scheduled around childcare.

Across cultures, women have been responsible for food production – babies can be brought to the garden – and clothing their families. Although men did some farming, they owned oxen, most of the crops they relied upon were not cereals but orchard crops such as olives and grapes.

Weaving, up until modern times, has always been one of a woman’s primary jobs. Without the textiles the women made, there would be no cloth. Flax – and linen – known since Neolithic times, was joined by wool. Wool is easy to work with since it has a little more stretch than linen. Wool comes in a variety of shades, black gray, cream and more. It takes dyes easily as well How can we be sure they were weavers? Spindles and looms weights have been discovered in the excavations. I saw them myself in Akrotiri, a town buried by ash and now being revealed.

The Minoan men traded these textiles all over the Mediterranean.

The designs were very complicated, so complicated we can only assume a long learning curve, especially if the patterns had to memorized. One of the popular patterns consisted of heart spirals set point to point with red diamonds in the center. Colored spirals were another favorite. How do we know this? Statuary and wall painting depict gorgeously clad women in elaborate clothing dancing, picking saffron, and more. And not just in Crete either. The patterns have been recorded by Egyptian artists.

No wonder Nephele, Martis’s mother is horrified when Martis refuses to become a weaver.

It was not until the Industrial Revolution and mechanization of weaving that hand weaving ceased to be an in-house task and a profession.

Next time: Priestesses.

Politics and cloth

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One of the things I have found so interesting is the way politics infuses everything; even the simplest article.

For example, cloth. We take it for granted. But cloth is important and has a very involved history.

But back to politics and calico.

Cottons, especially the calicoes, imported from India became very popular in the late 1700s. In Salem, calicoes were one of the primary imports into the new United States.

In England, however, which had always had a thriving wool trade, various protectionist laws were established to protect the woolen industry from this threat. First the printed calicoes were banned. This created trade in the gray unfinished cloth (fustian) which was sent to London to be finished.

A flourishing industry in India was almost destroyed to protect the English wool trade.

Then the wool trade objected when the imports of cotton recovered. Parliament passed a law fining anyone caught wearing dyed or ‘stained’ calico, but they exempted neckcloths and fustian.

In 1783 Thomas Bell invented a process to print cotton using copper rollers. At first only a few pieces were printed but by 1850 over 20,000 pieces were completed.

Now the Calico printers in their turn took steps to protect their product.  In 1916, they and the other printers joined and formed a trade association. This then set minimum prices for each ‘price section’ of the industry. This held until 1954 when it was challenged by the government Monopolies Commission.

Even printed cloth has a political history.

Bronze Age Tool

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When we look back in time we often assume those civilizations that have gone before are primitive and the people barbarians. (A Greek word by the way. It meant that non-Greeks could only say bar-bar-bar. But I digress.) Nothing is further from the truth. Although some of the cultures look uncivilized to us and certainly the technology was not the same – or even present – some cultures enjoyed a very high level of – well – culture. The Minoans, for example, were affluent with beautiful art and a cohesive society that lasted at least a millennia. Because their Navy, the best in the World at that time, kept the island safe so the cities did not need to be surrounded by walls. I read one source that claimed that Knossos was the first real city. (I am sure other Mid-eastern scholars would disagree.) The Minoans also enjoyed indoor toilets. A visitor to Akrotiri can see the remains.

Akrotiri was a Minoan city outside of Crete. It was buried by the explosion on Santorini (Thera) and is under excavation.

So, what does this have to do with tools.

Well, I would guess that modern households have a particular tool now, the design of which has not changed since Neolithic times.The humble needle, once made of bone.

In Minoan times, the needles were made of bronze. If one thinks of the short tight jackets with short sleeves and the long skirts, it is not difficult to see that sewing would have been a required art. (The Minoans excelled in the fiber arts: weaving, dyeing and more and the items they made were important for trade.)

The iron needle did not come in until approximately 1195 B.C. – after the smiths had learned to harden iron.