When was weaving started

The early evidence for the utilisation of plants for basketry is known from Israel 23, BP. Although plants were used most probably for making cord and possibly nets, there is, however, so far no tangible record indicating textile production Nadel et al. It is important to remember that the cold environment of the tundra in which textile production first appeared, rather than the warm climate of the Mediterranean or the Caucasus, does not necessarily mean that it was linked with clothing, since animals skins and fur unarguably provided the best protection against the cold.

My own research relating to the use of plants by Mid-Holocene north European fisher-gatherer-hunters has identified the use of particular plants sedges, nettles, birch and lime bast in weaving, and the production of basketry, cords and nets allowed me to focus on the use of plant fibre within the native environment outside the communities' reliance on domesticated plants and animals for clothing Janik By combining the three strands of evidence outlined above, this project will enhance understanding of the 'know how' of weaving technology.

Specific research questions include: 1 Which plants could be used? The methodology to be used in this project will build an understanding of plant utilisation in the process of textile production based on ethnographic, historical and archaeological data. To achieve this, a reference collection of plants known to have been used in textile production within the indigenous environment of temperate and cold climate of Eurasia has been established Phytoliths , answering the first question which plants could be used?

Plants that were introduced into temperate Eurasia by farming communities, such as cotton, flax or hemp, were not included in this stage in the reference collection. Different types of reference material for particular plant specimens have been acquired: 1 herbarium specimen, 2 phytolith specimen of steam, leaf and fluorescent part of the plant , 3 microscope-magnified photographs of phytoliths that are an integral part of the plant fibre.

The creation of phytolith reference specimens has been vital in trying to establish the presence of plant fibres in the archaeological record.

Phytoliths are inorganic plant structures created by depositing silica during the plant's lifetime, and recoverable from soil samples after all plant organic remains have decomposed. Such preservation allows the recovery of different plant remains and their parts as well as permitting the reconstruction of plant utilisation thousands of years ago without any organic preservation present on an archaeological site. For example, the phytoliths of sedges, rushes and nettles are very distinctive and preserve well in most archaeological contexts.

It was vital to create reference material to find out to what extent we can define phytoliths of particular species used as fibre versus, for example, a plant's genus or family. This has never been done before and there is no phytolith atlas or any other publication that will allow us to conduct such recognition based on already existing research.

By establishing the phytolith reference material, different scholars will be able to compare the phytoliths captured in archaeological samples on order to establish textile production and weaving without the presence of any organic remains. The plants included in the reference material are of two types: first, the particular plant species known to have been used in textile production; and second, plants that belong to genuses we know were used in textile making, although individual species are not defined.

The first category includes: common rush or soft rush Juncus effuses L. The second category includes the genus of club-rushes or bulrushes Scirpus sp , common reeds Phragmites sp , reedmaces Typha sp , sedges Carex sp and small-reed grasses Calamagrostis sp. In the second category, the four most common and distinctive species which were most abundant under prehistoric climatic conditions has been analysed. Selecting particular plants that are known to be used in fibre production from ethnographic, historical and archaeological records will allow the seasonality and scheduling of plant gathering and various activities associated with textile production to be established in the future Barber , Ericksen et al.

This in turn will allow us to answer the second and third questions what methods were used in preparing woven fibres? Those analyses have the potential to lead to a deeper understanding of the origins of weaving as well as developing a new understanding of the earliest technology of plant use, both in terms of technological 'know-how', and what symbolic significance weaving and woven materials had in the everyday life of Palaeolithic communities.

Web access to the plant reference material will provide a focus on the origins of weaving and plants use over the millennia. The research also offers an interdisciplinary platform for multi-disciplinary approaches to plant utilisation going beyond the discipline of archaeology itself.

Updated: Weaving became an indispensable skill for Neolithic people and was consequently closely connected to the family unit, a tradition that would endure for millennia. The art of weaving was slowly perfected and refined over thousands of years, eventually leading to highly specialised cloth produced by skilled practitioners.

It is no surprise that the production of this cloth, demanding higher levels of skill, coincided with the gradual movement of weaving away from the household and into the workplace.

By the Middle Ages, a well-developed supply chain consisting of dyers, spinners, weavers, fullers, drapers, and tailors had been implemented to support the booming textile and weaving industry that was fast becoming one of the most lucrative trades across Europe.

The city of Coventry was made particularly wealthy through the explosive weaving trade. At this time, weaving in Europe continued to take place at the loom that had dominated the weaving process for millennia, although a number of improvements, imported from China and other global empires, were gradually introduced to expedite the process.

For instance, in the 11th-century the introduction of horizontal, foot-operated looms enabled an easier, much more efficient weaving process. Furthermore, the spinning wheel, likely originating in India sometime between and CE and eventually imported to Europe from the Middle East, replaced the earlier method of hand spinning. Colonial America relied on Great Britain for manufactured goods so they began to weave cloth from locally produced fibers.

Cotton and wool was mostly used but because of the labor-intensive process to separate the seeds from the cotton fiber, wool was used more.

That changed with the invention of the cotton gin, a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds. Flax and hemp were also used as a material for fabrics. Plain weave was preferred at the time with decorations woven into the fabric or wood block printing.

Industrial revolution switched weaving from hand to machine. John Kay invented the flying shuttle in and enabled weaving of wider fabric as well as made it faster. The first factories for weaving were built in For many centuries the arrangement of the weaving tools did not change, horizontal looms with several heddles were used for fabrics, while tapestries and carpets continued to prefer the vertical loom.

As the industrial revolution approached, the logic of production and use of manufactured goods changed, the new requirements also involved weaving which, born as a family-run business, was now forced to respond to large-scale production demands.

The new socio-cultural context calls for a simplification and speeding-up of weaving operations by trying to mechanize the action of the loom. After several attempts, started around the second half of , E. Cartwright patented, in , the first mechanically driven chassis, driven by a steam engine, which formed the basis of industrial production.

Nevertheless, the processing of textured fabrics fabrics characterized by a design that is not printed but is obtained with complex warp and weft weaves remained very complicated. The solution arrived in with the French entrepreneur J. M Jacquard: he built a weaving machine to be applied to the loom, which allowed the automatic movement of the single warp threads by means of a perforated card. The Jacquard loom is probably the most important invention in the textile sector, besides allowing the processing and production of very complex fabrics, it reduces the need for manpower because it replaces the drawlooms or heddles, originally the weaver had to be assisted by a helper, who had to manually move the heddles.

Despite being very innovative, the new loom was not well received; on the contrary, its spread was long opposed by the weavers themselves for fear of losing their jobs, and the Council of the City of Lyon even ordered its destruction.