Visible Tools, Invisible Crafts: An analysis of textiles tools, textile production, and textile organisation along the south coast of Iron Age Britain

Textile production was an essential element of society in prehistory, supplying people with clothing, furnishings, and utilitarian items like sails, straps, and sacking. The fragility of textiles means few examples of prehistoric fabrics survive in Britain and northwest Europe outside of some special conditions. Thus tools that produced textiles are the main source of information on textiles created and how these were made. Textile tools also provide evidence that textile fragments cannot: where production occurred and how it was organised. Identifying areas and modes of production provides insight into how settlements and craft were organised; e.g. whether a craft and workers were independent or controlled by social elites. Analysis of tools can indicate levels of skill required for production, quality, and quantity of goods, providing evidence on the economy these tools contributed to. This study focuses on textile craft as an economic activity and its organisation during the Iron Age’s period of social change and development, c.800 BC - AD 43. This period of expansion saw changes in craft production and tools, and development of new forms of settlement across Britain and Europe. This thesis presents a unique study on textile tools from various settlement forms across Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and Kent in Britain, via analysis of such tools and their regional distribution. Five sites per county were chosen based on the number of textile tools, except Kent where few excavations discovered more than one or two textile tools. Comparing tool materials with local geology indicates the importance of textile production compared to other crafts at each site, indicating the status of textile work and its workers across the south coast. Data collected from the tools demonstrates what textiles were most likely produced at the selected sites, identifying areas with specialist workers and areas of basic household production, and highlighting how these communities organised this craft.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Ferrero, Lewis

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sørensen, Marie Louise

• Iron Age
• Archaeology
• Textile production
• Textile organisation
• Textile tools

Licence

• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.88867

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/341444