Mediterranean Fabrics in the 1st Millennium BC and Latest Revelation

Textiles represent one of the oldest human craft technologies and applied arts. The Textile production had been one of the most important time consuming, resource and labour consuming activities in the ancient time. Finding the evidence of textiles are very rare because they were made up of organic material and it was very much difficult to preserve them. It is more difficult where the conditions were unfavourable, like in Mediterranean Europe. During 1000-400 BC, after the death, people were buried with a lot of metal goods such as personal ornaments, tools and utensils. Due to the presence of these metals textile preservation is somehow possible because, these metals are helpful in the preservation of textiles, as the metals has the feature to consume the micro-organism that consume the organic material of the textiles. On the other hand the metals produce metal-salts that preserve the moisture of the textile fibres. Using micro analysis using digital and scanning electron microscopy, high performance liquid chromatography and other advanced methods scientists are able to get a lot of information like texture, diameter, twist direction weaving pattern of textiles. It has been found that during the Iron Age, textiles in Italy were more like Central Europe. Textiles are valuable indicators of individual and group identity as they reflect the living pattern of people of certain time.

By: Anita Aishvarya

Content: www.sciencedaily.com