Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
- Book Review,
by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
From Publishers Weekly
While men dominated early agriculture, women for millennia took primary responsibility for sewing, weaving textiles and making clothing. In this beautifully illustrated study, Barber ( Prehistoric Textiles ) retrieves an important chapter in the history of civilization by drawing on archeological evidence, ancient texts, myths and linguistics to reconstruct women's paramount role in the fiber arts until the start of the late Bronze Age, about 1500 B.C., when, Barber observes, the advent of commercial textiles brought men to the looms. In prehistoric Europe, women invented elaborate textiles with complex designs; women of ancient Anatolia ran cloth-making establishments. Barber begins her saga with the description of a Paleolithic "Venus figure" that dates from about 20,000 B.C. and is carved wearing a skirt woven of loose strings. Ranging from Egypt to Greece to Sumatra, covering the period from 20,000-500 B.C., Barber illuminates women's changing social status as makers of cloth and clothing. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this age of ready-to-wear clothing and shopping malls, we sometimes forget that for the first 20,000 years of human existence, all textiles-from everyday clothing to ship's sails-were made by women (and sometimes men) who used a hand spindle to spin threads and a loom to weave the threads into cloth. As an archaeologist and a knowledgeable weaver capable of reproducing the cloth remnants she is studying, Barber is ideally qualified to investigate early textile production and its relation to women's changing roles in ancient societies. Here she reconstructs the history of textiles (primarily in Europe and the Near East), based on the hard evidence of archaeology, geology, art, and ancient texts. Her approach is scholarly yet presupposes no practical knowledge of textile production on the part of the reader. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries.Janice Zlendich, California State Univ. Lib., FullertonCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Employing diverse, thorough methodologies and research sources, the author of Prehistoric Textiles (not reviewed) traces the roles of women and cloth through 20,000 years of history. Prehistoric women primarily worked with food and clothing, neither likely to survive the elements, and male historians traditionally felt little need or desire to write about cloth and textiles; thus, much of women's work history has been lost, and we are left with few details for reconstruction. However, Barber's innovative research found that ``data for ancient textiles lay everywhere, waiting to be picked up.'' By reproducing remnants of ancient cloth and garments, she also reproduced women's actual labor, which often required hours upon hours of tedious, painstaking work. Her justification for the assumption of female responsibility for cloth rests on their childbearing and -rearing duties. Women needed to stay close to home, and they required work compatible with youngsters running around--labor that could be interrupted when necessary. According to Barber, women held important positions in society as the primary producers of clothing for millennia, even into the age of emerging capitalist economies. She also deduces, from the patterns and designs of ancient material, that clothing for both sexes served as a visual means to communicate such information as fertility and marital status. (For example, many skirt remnants hold designs assumed to follow the shape of and emphasize the pubic bone.) Although this seems a logical conclusion, there's not really any empirical evidence for it. An important contribution, in terms of both historical material and interpretation, to the study of women's work. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From Book News, Inc.
Barber uses data gathered by sophisticated new methods of studying the past, shaping a wealth of information on textiles as one of women's most important contributions to past societies. She examines the relationship of women and their textile work to society and economics over the huge span of prehistoric and early historic times, and chronicles the growth of the textile industry, fashion, and ancient costume. Includes numerous b&w drawings and some photos. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Ilene Rosoff
Elizabeth Wayland Barber is an archeologist and a weaver, and it was her knowledge of cloth making that led her to the discovery of its importance in ancient societies, and in the lives of women. Prior to the Bronze age, when male-run guilds commercialized the textile industry, it was women who ruled the fiber arts (most likely because cloth production, like food production, was compatible with childrearing) as weavers, spinners, cloth and clothing makers. Their work helped build the economies of early societies and led to advances in technology and the art of mass production. Women's cloth making also built a symbolic language in the coded messages women wove-as tribal insignia and cultural trademarks in patterns woven into cloth, and as social and sexual status symbols. Tracing the roles of women's cloth making in societies worldwide over the last 20,000 years, Women's Work reclaims the great impact of clothing in women's lives and of women's cloth making on society.
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