Textiles represent one of the earliest human craft technologies and have been a fundamental part of subsistence, economy, and exchange for millennia. Knowledge of textile history is thus key to our understanding of a multitude of human issues. Textiles can tell us about social, chronological, and cultural aspects of past societies and at the same time give us a unique opportunity to come very close to the individual people in their capacity as both users and makers of textiles.

Iconographic sources indicate that textiles were used for a variety of purposes by the Etruscans and other peoples of ancient Italy, but until recently, little was known about what these textiles were like and how they were produced. The latest and ongoing studies of the surviving fabric remains found primarily in burial contexts and textile tools from settlements are, for the first time, permitting not only qualitative but also quantitative assessment of textile production and consumption in pre-Roman Italy and more broadly across Europe.

Margarita Gleba is an associate professor at the University of Padua. She specializes in the prehistory and protohistory of the Mediterranean region, the archaeology of textiles and other organic materials, and the use of scientific methods in archaeology.

This free, public event is supported by the Kozma Lecture Fund. Join us in the Rackham Amphitheatre, located on the fourth floor of the Rackham Building (915 E. Washington Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109).

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