General Information

Repository Name: The Textile Revolution
Additional Name: WOLL
Description: The research project “Textile Revolution” integrates studies on the introduction and spread of the woolly sheep and wool usage from different scientific fields. Wool production is closely connected to the domesticated sheep and specifically to those animals that carry a woolly coat. With the keeping of woolly sheep, not only did the economy of prehistoric communities change, but also the textile technology, meaning both, the tools and the techniques for thread and textile making.
The origin of woolly sheep and the paths and speed of their dispersal throughout the Old World are still open questions and form one of the major topics in this research project. The use of wool provided the basis for new and rapidly growing textile production which, without exaggeration, had numerous economic and social consequences. Therefore, the multidisciplinary research group investigated archaeological, archaeozoological and geo-archaeological types of evidence from material culture between 6500 - 1500 BC in the Near East and Europe attributing the innovation to the spread of sheep husbandry and wool processing.
Past herd structures of domesticates are investigated on the basis of bone finds, textile tools provide information on textile production technology and herding-related vegetation disturbances are investigated using pollen -, charcoal - and geochemicaldata. The objectives of the research project were:

- To form a more precise notion of the innovation of wool production and processing by determining when and where it first emerged, and how it spread.

- To form a more precise view of the introduction of wool-bearing sheep through indirect, archaeozoological methods (metrics, herd demographics).
- To quantitatively determine (model) regional environmental changes related to grazing pressure and to interpret them in the context of increasing sheep herding.
- To comparatively investigate textile tool assemblages and document technological changes.

The data collection comprises sets of bone data, environmental data and textile tools.