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Textile production in Britain during the first millennium B.C.


Type

Thesis

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Authors

DeRoche, Carole Diane 

Abstract

This project investigates the textile production sequences in first millennium B.C. Britain and explores aspects of the organisation of this production in local, regional and interregional contexts. In addition to presenting a comprehensive description of the technology based on fabric remains and the implements used in their manufacture, it broadens the range of prehistoric technologies studied from ceramics, lithics and metalwork to include one based on organic matelials. In focusing on the sequence of processes for converting raw material to end product, in this case fibre into woven cloth,this work provides a new perspective for the study of production. Through a review of ethnographic and ethnohistorical examples, possible modes of organising textile production are defined and characterised. Archaeological evidence for textile production in Britain during the later Bronze Age and the Iron Age is discussed and the sequences of activities in the production process are reconstructed. The implements and structures required at each stage of fibre preparation, spinning, and weaving are described. It is these artefacts which complise the major part of the archaeological record pertaining to textile production. Detailed examinations are made of material recovered from selected sites occupied during the period between roughly 1000 B.C. and A.D. 50 in three regions, Eastern Yorkshire, Western East Anglia and the Upper Thames Valley. The stages of production represented at each site are identified and chronological changes and regional variations are noted. The implications of this diversity are evaluated and the integration of production systems is discussed in technological and soc io-economic tenns. The method used here for assssing the organisation of prehistoric British textile production is advocated as one which can be applied advantageously to diverse technologies in other regions and periods.

Description

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Keywords

Qualification

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Awarding Institution

University of Cambridge