The Archaeology of Textiles in the Sumerian and Pre-Sumerian Periods

It is ingrained in the minds of people in the West and the East that the Sumerians founded one of the oldest human civilizations, if not the first. Defenders of this belief usually rely on certain definitions that differentiate between the concept of civilization and that of culture. This article raises the question again in the light of textile archaeology, the science that traces and investigates textile industry in human history since its beginning, thousands of years before the emergence of the Sumerians.

Introduction

Did you know that the writer Zecharia Sitchin, who achieved a remarkable success in the sales of his books, went further, as he imagined that the Sumerians were descendants of aliens from a planet called Nibiru? This indicates the extent of interest, contemplation, reflection and illusions that this very ancient culture arouses, and continues to arouse despite the thousands of years that separate us from it. However, the issue here is not to rewrite a false history worthy of the best science fiction stories, but rather to listen to what academic circles tell us about the Sumerian civilization and the cultures that preceded it in the Chalcolithic and Neolithic periods. Research into these very distant periods has been based mainly on three disciplines:

• Linguistic studies that search for a supposed Indo-European language that preceded Sumerian and constituted a linguistic stratum from which Sumerian borrowed certain words.
• The study of Mesopotamian mythology, such as the stories of the goddess Inanna, an important goddess worshipped in a large part of the area under study.
• Finally, the textile archaeology, which has developed significantly in recent years and has enabled new advances in the research into pre-Sumerian cultures.

Needless to say that the new knowledge about the “Ubaid” culture, one of the pre-Sumerian cultures, is also providing the academic community with exciting discoveries.

The Pre-Sumerian Era

It is not easy to summarize all the research conducted in relation to the archaeology of textiles during the period from the Neolithic to the Sumerian era. However, these studies agree on the fact that spinning has been known since the Epipaleolithic, before the Neolithic. This conclusion follows the discovery of a simple cord at the archaeological site of Ohalo II in northern Israel and another less ancient one in the caves of Lascaux in the southwest of France. Researchers in the field agree that the manufacture of cords, nets and baskets was the first step in the history of textile manufacturing.

Some traces of more developed textiles manufactured in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (ca. 8,000 BC) have been found in the Nahal Hemar cave in Israel as well as at the archaeological site of Tel Halula in present-day Syria. Specialists have confirmed that these textiles were made without a loom. The loom was in fact invented later between 6000 and 5000 BCE. However, these researchers do not exclude the use of a needle´-or-a wooden frame to facilitate the twine weaving technique, an old method of making fabrics using active and passive elements. Scientists are still debating whether these pre-Sumerian cultures already knew the spindle whorl as a spinning tool. An anthropologist from New York University, Rita P. Wright, estimates in a scientific article published in 2012 that the spindle whorl was invented around 7000 BCE in Mesopotamia.
The journal Paléorient still proposes two hypotheses regarding the spinning techniques used at Tel Halula. The first talks about obtaining a thread by spinning the fiber in the palm of the hand´-or-against a wooden surface. The other technique involves the use of spindle whorls, of which there is no trace today because they were made of wood and did not withstand the test of time.
As for the nature of the fiber, the Spanish Historical Heritage Institute confirms that it was made of linen. Similarly, for the textiles discovered in Nahal Hemar, the researchers again believe that linen was the plant used in the spinning process.
Moving on to the Late Neolithic of the northern Levant, the archaeological site of Shir in Syria, 12 kilometers from the city of Hama, provides us with ceramics that some researchers consider to be "cord impressed", literally "im--print--ed with cords". However, this hypothesis is not unanimous. The researchers confirm that the surfaces of the ceramics were deliberately roughened, but they cannot say for sure whether this was done with fingernails´-or-another sharp object. Researchers in the field classify ceramics found on the site according to the appearance of their im--print--s. For example, there is a category for “cord impressed” ceramics whose im--print--s resemble textiles, another whose shapes resemble baskets and finally, a category for patterns similar to fringes.

The traces of flax seeds uncovered by the excavations can also be considered as proof that textile manufacturing took place during the pre-Sumerian period.

Finally, I will mention an archaeological site in southern Iraq, Tell el-Ouelli, which is located in the region occupied by the Obeid culture before the Sumerians. The use of flax for textile manufacturing around 4500-4000 BCE is also attested there.

Sumerian Textiles

Unlike the pre-Sumerian period, there is much information about the Sumerian textile industry from the Sumerian textual corpus, the imagery generated by statues, seals, engravings, roofs, and artwork. The anthropologist Rita P. Wright has studied Sumerian clothing in particular and we know thanks to her that Sumerian men wore kilts that extended to their knees, while women’s clothing reached their ankles. We also know that the Sumerians clothed their slaves using the lower quality fiber. The other three categories of higher quality fiber were of course used for the higher social classes and the nobles.
Sumerian military uniforms are also known and thanks to the standard of Ur, we can easily distinguish the uniform of an ordinary trooper and that of a charioteer. Troopers are distinguished by their capes, but charioteers are recognizable by their sashes on their left shoulders

It should also be noted that nudity was generally associated with priests.
Specialized clothing such as menstrual clothing for women and underwear are evidence that the Sumerian textile industry was well developed.
Even the accessories and colors associated with each social class and gender were known. The king, for example, dressed in bright yellow and the nobles wore multi-colored clothes. Women s clothes were sometimes dark´-or-black. White was a neutral color and was not assigned to a category of people. Sumerian tablets actually describe other types of clothing by noting their shape, length, width, point, as well as their names in Sumerian. A garment called guzza for example was square with segments of 3.5 m in length.

Sumerian clothing did not lack accessories such as ribbons and decorations such as fringes. Fringes are indeed very remarkable on their clothing regardless of the type of clothing, its use´-or-the person wearing it.

It is clear that the Sumerians had a developed textile industry. Their techniques survived until the beginning of the modern European revolution. On the other hand, what people do not know is that the Sumerians did not invent new techniques as far as spinning and weaving are concerned. They certainly contributed to developing the textile industry in terms of mass production by relying on their agricultural and pastoral civilization. Tablets from the Sumerian city of Umma during the Third Dynasty of Ur describe the procedures well: the number of animals whose fleece was plucked per day, how many centimeters of textile a worker completed each day, etc. As for dyeing, there is not enough archaeological evidence to say that the Sumerians practiced this industry, despite the Umma tablets providing information on colored garments.

The Shift to Wool

Textile fiber could be obtained from a variety of resources, but there is no evidence that cotton, hemp,´-or-jute were used in Mesopotamia. Our anthropologist, Rita Wright, mentions four fiber resources used in Mesopotamia: reeds, palm, wool, and flax, the main resources of the Sumerians. Another anthropologist from Ohio University, Joy McCorriston, estimates that the Sumerian shift to wool influenced the production of textiles for the masses and reduced the reliance on flax to only 10% by the third millennium BCE.

In short, the most essential tools for the textile industry (the spindle whorl and the loom) were invented a few thousand years before the Sumerians. Therefore, it can be said that the Sumerians did not contribute much to the development of the textile industry. They benefited from their developed agricultural and pastoral culture and the abundance of farm animals they had by producing too much wool. This abundance of animal wool paved the way for their mass textile production.

References :

Alfaro Giner Carmen. Textiles from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Site of Tell Halula (Euphrates
Valley, Syria). In: Palé-;---;--orient, 2012, vol. 38, n°1-2. pp. 41-54--;--
doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2012.5457
https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2012_num_38_1_5457
Andersson Strand Eva, Breniquet Catherine, Nosch Marie-Louise, Tengberg Margareta.
Introduction au dossier «Pré-;---;--histoire des Textiles au Proche-Orient» / Introduction to the file
“Prehistory of Textiles in the Near East”. In: Palé-;---;--orient, 2012, vol. 38, n°1-2. pp. 13-20--;--
doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2012.5455 https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-
9345_2012_num_38_1_5455
Nieuwenhuyse Olivier, Bartl Karin, Berghuijs Koen, Vogelsang-Eastwood Gillian. The cord-
impressed pottery from the Late Neolithic Northern Levant: Case-study Shir (Syria). In:
Palé-;---;--orient, 2012, vol. 38, n°1-2. pp. 65-77--;-- doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2012.5459
https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2012_num_38_1_5459
Wright, R. (2013). Sumerian and Akkadian Industries: Crafting Textiles. In H. E. W.
Crawford (Ed.), The Sumerian World (pp. 395-417). Routledge Press.

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