engleski

Cut from the same cloth - two communities linked by textile production?

Textile is rarely witnessed through direct archaeological remains, but many aspects of the process of production can be frequently indirectly observed by analyzing textile production tools. In prehistory, the main tool used for spinning was the spindle, and thankfully to the common use of ceramic spindle whorls on wooden spindles, there is a fair amount of evidence that precisely this type of spinning tool was used in the Bronze and Iron Age in Central and Mediterranean Europe. Spindle whorls in archaeological contexts vary in shape and size, and these differences in form of various whorls throughout a single archaeological site indicate that different types of yarn were being produced there. This concept is additionally simbolized through the burial context, where textile production tools, and in particular spindle whorls, may have simbolized femininity, textile production related profession and/or special status of a deceased during their life. The question that remains is whether the whorls inside the graves were indeed the property of the deceased and, if so, whether the different types of whorls in different graves on a single necropolis indicate different origin of the buried individuals. The basic idea argued here is that the textile craft and its production tools were transferred between different communities or down the family line through marriage and as dowry, mostly as a possession of a woman moving to marry but still encouraged to continue her tradition of spinning. In view of the mentioned problem, some finds of spindle whorls from the sites of Kaptol in eastern Croatia and Donja Dolina in norhern Bosnia and Herzegovina might illustrate particularly this situation. As has been argued previously, these two sites, although pertaining to similar but separated complexes, continuously communicated throughout the Iron Age as reflected by findings of various similar prestigious goods. In addition to this intentional and strategic object interchange, there might have occurred a more subtle one. Possibly moving between these two communities to marry, women might have conveyed different knowledge and textile crafts as part of their local identity thus resulting in rare and specific types of spindle whorls on one of the sites, which is, in contrast, quite common on the other one.

textile production tools ; Kaptol ; Donja Dolina ; Iron Age

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