Artefacts reveal insights into ancient textile production

AMMAN — Some artefacts help in reconstruction of the ancient textile production and loom weights found by archaeologists are one of them because of adverse soil and arid climate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The most important of these are loom weights used to stretch the warp threads of the hanging vertical loom. These weights were made of stone or clay and are left in the archaeological record. 

"The warp weighted loom can be traced through the recovery of loom weights, usually the only element of the loom that survives. The warp-weighted loom is a hanging loom on which the loom weights were tied to stretch the warp threads," said Jeannette Boertien associated to the University of Groningen.

"The loom consisted of two vertical wooden poles linked at the top by a horizontal beam from which the warp threads were hanging," Boertien added, noting that the strands held under tension by the weights, could be lengthened, thus enabling pieces if cloth to be woven, which were far longer than the height of the loom. 

The work progressed from top to bottom, the cloth being rolled around the upper beam. Each loom weight was fastened to a bunch of warp threads using a loop in between, Boertien continued, adding that the extra warp could be rolled up or looped and tied. 

One could even wind it around the loom weights. The possibility of rolling up the finished cloth and the easy way the warp could be lengthened made the warp-weighted loom very popular, the scholar emphasised.

Boertien added that no tools or benches were needed to make a long piece of textile, while patterns could easily be woven into the flexible weft, which made it much more practical than the fixed vertical loom known from Egypt. 

Furthermore, the use of the warp-weighted loom was an innovation in textile production that started in the Neolithic in Middle Europe. 

"From there it spread to the northwest and south. Via Greece, Anatolia and Cyprus it came to the Levant, where loom weights usually made of clay. Their weight and shape vary over the ages. in the Bronze Ages the loom weights conical, dome or cigar shaped and made of intentionally fired clay," Boertien elaborated.

The scholar added that during the Iron Age the amount of loom weights increases. Now the loom weights are made of unfired local clay. 

The pre-dominant group in this period is the donut-shaped loom weight. 

"Unfired clay loom weights were often incidentally fired by the conflagration that destructed the villages. In the Persian period the loom weights change in form, they are slightly pyramidal or oval and don’t-shaped weights are not found any more, while during the Hellenistic period the weights decrease in weight, the form changes to small pyramidal, rectangular or small spherical balls and they are slightly fired," Boertien said.

The scholar noted that the weight of a loom weight is important or the weft, but the actual form of the loom weight is of less importance to the weaving process.

The shape seems to be based on tradition and not on the functioning of the loom, Boertien said, noting that loom weights do offer a window into the life of ancient artisans, answering questions of where they worked, what tools they used and what products they manufactured.