Ancient Textiles – Modern Hands

The goal of the Ancient Textiles Modern Hands project is to make historical textile research accessible to the general public, and at the same time to invite practitioners to contribute expertise through empirical analysis of ancient textiles. Building upon a research programme which is focused on Late Antique textiles from Egypt, Ancient Textiles Modern Hands advances scholarship by recruiting participants from the large global community of professional and leisure textile practitioners to apply their talents through experimental participation. The production of textiles was an important and highly specialised sector of the economy and trade of the ancient Mediterranean world. While, in most regions, organic material has not survived, the arid climate of Egypt has preserved thousands of ancient textile fragments from the Late Antique period (ca. 300800 CE). These materials provide important information about various aspects of production and the overall structure of the textile industry. This region has also preserved many thousands of papyrus documents from the same period. These texts contain crucial information about the manufacture and style of textiles and include a diverse set of terms for different types of garments. While the main project evaluates the papyrological evidence for Late Antique textiles, the TCS expansion project establishes contact between scholars and the worldwide community of textile producers. Their practical experience and skills are essential to recreate ancient production methods. A first step for active involvement of citizens in our research has already been accomplished by the interactive online Spiral Textile platform (https://spiraltextile.com), which invites textile artists from around the world to produce a design found on a single ancient papyrus. Spiral Textile serves as a pilot-project for the proposed expansion project, which intends to establish communication between scholars and practitioners on a significantly larger scale. The integration of textile research with crowdsourced experimental production represents a fresh interdisciplinary approach. The proposed project would be the very first global collaboration between historians, papyrologists, textile researchers and experimental archaeologists on one side with textile artists, professional weavers and leisure practitioners on the other. Thus, the project would raise the visibility, outreach and dissemination of historical textile research by integrating expertise through citizen science. This holistic approach will make a new and significant contribution to our understanding of the development of technology and the textile industry in Late Antiquity. The project will thereby bridge the gap between academic textile studies and textile production, combining these complementary approaches for a thorough examination of this centrally important sphere of ancient material culture.

The 'Ancient Textiles - Modern Hands' TCS expansion project made the results of historical textile research accessible to the public, and at the same time invited practitioners to bring their expertise into the empirical analysis of Late Antique textiles from Egypt. Based on the 'Texts and Textiles' research project (P 28282), the proposed initiative invited participants from the large global community of professional and leisure textile practitioners to contribute to empirical research. The production of textiles was an important and highly specialised sector of the economy and trade of the ancient Mediterranean world. While, in most regions, organic material has not survived, the arid climate of Egypt has preserved thousands of ancient textile fragments from the Late Antique period (ca. 300-800 CE), which provide important information about various aspects of production and the overall structure of the textile industry. This region has also preserved many thousands of papyrus documents from the same period. These texts contain crucial information about the manufacture and style of textiles and include a diverse set of terms for different types of garments. The main project P 28282 evaluated the papyrological evidence for Late Antique textiles and systematically confronted it with a corresponding group of surviving textiles. Based on results of the main project, the TCS expansion project established contact among scholars and the large community of textile producers within the framework of an open-source experimental archaeology activity. Their practical experience and skills are essential to recreate ancient production methods. The interactive online platform "Spiral Textile" (https://spiraltextile.com) and a Facebook group invited textile artists from around the world to produce a design found on an ancient papyrus using historic materials and techniques (https://www.facebook.com/groups/spiraltextile/). More than 150 participants from Europe, Australia, North and South America produced a great variety of samples, which in turn were on display in seven exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Slovacia and Rumania, and were presented in 18 lectures. Eight printed publications make the scholarly evaluation of the results available. The integration of textile research with crowdsourced experimental production represents a fresh interdisciplinary approach. The addition of a community participation component proved vital to advance historical textile research. The TCS-44 project was the very first global collaboration between historians, papyrologists, textile researchers and experimental archaeologists on one side with textile artists, professional weavers and leisure practitioners on the other. The project contributed significantly to the visibility, outreach and dissemination of the results of historical textile research, while it successfully added substantial empirical data and applied knowledge to the theoretical studies.