Textiles and the Archaeological Record

The pervasive presence and cultural importance of textiles is not reflected in the archaeological record. As products of technology, objects of trade, markers of identity, and bearers of constructed meanings, and sometimes as works of art, textiles can convey massive amounts of information about human societies and their economies. They represent a range of forms and functions; they are expressive of cultural ideals and norms, government decrees, and human ideals, desires, and aspirations. Textiles articulate relationships among individuals, identities, and cultural groupings. Representing sophisticated understandings of materials and their properties, and manipulated through diverse technologies, textiles embody human ingenuity, creativity, and pragmatic solutions to everyday problems of the human condition. But, in spite of their profound significance, they factor minimally in the archaeological record due to a variety of factors such as their fragile nature, organic composition, patterns of use and wear, and general tendency to decompose in most environments. With few exceptions (in areas of extreme dryness, permafrost, and anaerobic or low-oxygen environments), historically, textiles have either been absent from archaeological contexts, or neglected in the course of documentation because of their scrappy condition. Today, newly developed analytical techniques permit a vast array of data to be extracted from tiny fragments, so that textiles are beginning to attract the attention they deserve in relation to the roles they serve in all cultural traditions. Many approaches to the study of textiles and society can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological remains. Ethnographic documentation and analogy, art historical analysis of pictorial representations, the recognition of influences in other media, and the exploration of structures, patterns, and patternmaking as visual expressions of mathematical ideas, are among the approaches that offer great potential for understanding textiles within the study of human societies based on archaeological remains.