Ancient Roman Textiles: In Past Societies and in Modern Museum Collections
This project concerns textile in and from ancient Roman society. It consists of two sub projects of which the first focuses on how textiles and dress in particular are represented and presented in ancient literary and visual sources. Everyone in Roman society used clothes and the clothed body was the social norm, and a means of visually communicating the status of the wearer. Clothes were used every day, from ordinary life to public ceremonies. Very little remains of a once extensive textile production and one must turn to other sources for complementary information. Project 1 will result in a publication where ancient literary and visual sources on Roman dress will be systematically presented, critically annotated and contextualised in order that its value for the understanding of dress be optimised. Project 2 deals collections of ancient textiles in modern museums. The textiles stem mainly from Egypt where the dry climate of the desert have preserved them better than elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Some collections are the result of purchases by visitors in Egypt around 1900, and later sold to museums. Often they are not part of current exhibitions and thus, form a hidden cultural heritage. Based on a couple of previous workshops, project 2 is the preparation of a publication where a group of international researches and scholars present a selection of textile collections, their history and cutting-edge research on ancient textiles in modern museums in a unique publication.
Final report
This twofold project implies two book project
1. A Sourcebook on Roman Dress
The first sub project is a sourcebook about dress in ancient Rome; A Sourcebook on Roman Dress, (contracted by Bloomsbury Academic). In this volume is presented a number of thematic chapters based on both written and visual sources which in various ways mirror the looks, functions and practices of dress in ancient Rome. The overaching aim of this volume is to demonstrate a number of aspects of how dress functioned in the socially stratified Roman society and how dress was a means of visually communicating the status of an individual. The study covers the time period from 200 BCE-200 CE.
The volume starts with a general introduction, followed by a chapter about the major textile fibres used by the Romans (Textiles). It is followed by a chapter about ordinary Roman clothing items (What did Romans wear? Basic Roman garments). In the third chapter of the book, the focus is on dress codes, status and gender (Dress codes, status, gender, and morality), further aspects of clohtes and morality is discussed in the sequel chapter (Silk and Roman morality) focussing specifically on silk dresses which, according to Roman offical views, represented a depravated life-style and low moral standards, especially for men. In the remaining two chapters the target is dress at special occasions and dress used around the Empire. The chapter on Ceremonial dress concerns outfits and costumes used at special occasions such as religious cermonies or those used at rites-of-passages, such as marriages. In the last chapter is exemplified dress of both Romans and non-Romans in the wider Empire. In both these chapters are used written as well as visual sources. Normally non-Romans are viewed from a Roman perspective, especially in written evidence, but particularly in visual sources, people in the Roman provinces had a possibilty of presentating themsleves with less Roman biases, especially in the decoration of private memorials. A recurrent detail of non-Roman men is the use of trouses, which occurred both in the Roman West and East, but never in Roman Italy and this was one of the most signifcant markers of ”barbarian” dress both in writing and in imagery.
The last three decades has witnessed a major dynamism in the study of historical textiles and by now, the biblography on historical dress and textiles is extensive. Several previous publications deal with ancient textiles and dress but the current volume is the first of its kind; a sourcevook on dress in ancient Roman society. This will furthermore be the first with an intentional balance of both written and visual sources. Most publications in the genre of sourebooks are based exclusively on written sources but in this volume, visual sources are of equal importance and it will form a considerable part of the evidence for this volume. Visual evidence is furthermore our best source of how Roman clothes and dress codes looked, or was supposed to look. As very little remains of the actual textiles, we need to rely heavily on other sources and it is of utmost importance to consider images in any study of ancient dress. This volume, with a balance between ancient written and visual evidence, will be a complement to previous studies on Roman dress,
The volume is written in collaboration with Dr. Mary Harlow (former Senior levturer in Roman History at the University of Leicester). In October 2022, we spent two work weeks together in Copenhagen, at the Centre of Textile Research, University of Copenhagen, in order to finalise the structure of the volume and especially decide on the images to be used in it. This book will be a complement to the growing bibliography on historical textiles but with a stronger emphasis on visual evidence than in many previous studies. Several images are used in every chapter of the volume; some illustrate information that can be identified in parallel written sources, others provide information per se. This is one direction of further research, which was identified during the work process.
While working together in Copenhagen we have developed some further thoughts about dress and visual evidence in a jointly written paper (for a Festschrift to be published in 2024). It is a methodological case study based on two male sculptures dressed in togas, in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek: Reading the Roman Toga from Sculpture. Similar case studies could be developed for other clothing items, or as a more comprehensive study based primarily on visual evidence. An idea also sprung from the collaborative work with the sourcebook is yet another jointly written chapter together with Harlow, about Age, dress and gender for a publication produced within the European Textile network, Euroweb.
The final manuscript of the Sourcebook of Roman Dress will be delivered to the publisher on the 15th of March 2023.
2. From Deserts to Museums
The second sub project is also related to textiles from the Roman Empire but with a focus onmodern collections and the collecting of textiles. The volume is a multi-authored, edited volume with contributions from both researchers and museum curators in Europe and Israel. This volume presents partly a historical survey of collections pf ancient textiles, partly new ways of researching such textiles. A selection of museum collections in Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Israel and more, are presented with the individual history of each collection. A majority of collections of this genre were establsihed around the turn of the century 1900 and they are largely based on textile finds from Egypt, dating from around 100 CE onwards. In the dry desert climate, ancient textiles are better preserved than in many other regions. Many of the early textile collections were modelled on the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, inaugurated in 1852, and the collections were normally built-up by a combinations of purchases made by a museum and by private donations. The process of building up a collection usually took place over several decades. One example is the Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg (the Röhss museum) which was founded in 1904, but it did not open to the public until 1913. Already from the founding of the museum, the building up of collections was initiated and ancient textiles were constantly bought and accepted by donations until the early 1970s which have resulted in a substantial collection of so called Coptic textiles.
Later research has shown that several museum collections contain smaller pieces of an originally larger textile which has been cut into pieces before offering them for sale. So called Coptic textiles are still collected today as is shown in the contribution by Arnaud Quertinmont,”Collecting Coptic Textiles Today. The Collector’s View, however, collecting with a different perspective than in the earlier 20th century. In another chapter, ”Matching fragments” by Petra Linscheid, it is discussed and demonstrated how new methodologies have been developed which enable researchers, such as Linscheid, to work with textiles from various museum collections and match them together to a bigger textile, more like the original find. This is important as it will tell us more about ancient technologies, types of textiles and how they may have been used in an original context. This methodology has great potential to add new knowledge about ancient Roman and later textiles.
The study of Coptic textiles is a lively, international field of research with a tradition of publications in French and German, but less frequently in English. As this volume is in English, there is the possibility of a different outreach, both in terms of ongoing research and by presenting some less well-known collections of Coptic textiles. My own contribution, in addition to the introduction of the volume, presents the collection at the Röhss museum in Gothenburg, the most extensive of its kind in Sweden but – hitherto largely unpublished and as such, with only limited use to international research. Working with this volume has lead to the idea of an international collaborative project about the collection of the Röhss museum; documenting and contextualising the collection, matching fragments and finally to publish it, to make it available to further research and museum visitors. One scholar to be invited to take part in the project is Dr. Maria Mossakowska whom I met at the CTR in October 2022. Her expertise in late Antique-early Medieval Coptic textiles woudl be invaluable to a project of this kind and she has recently worked with a similar collection at the National Museum in Copenhagen. Such a project, emanating from the collection at the Röhss museum, would be an important addition to international scholaship on ancient/Coptic textiles, museum history and issues on cultural heritage.
1. A Sourcebook on Roman Dress
The first sub project is a sourcebook about dress in ancient Rome; A Sourcebook on Roman Dress, (contracted by Bloomsbury Academic). In this volume is presented a number of thematic chapters based on both written and visual sources which in various ways mirror the looks, functions and practices of dress in ancient Rome. The overaching aim of this volume is to demonstrate a number of aspects of how dress functioned in the socially stratified Roman society and how dress was a means of visually communicating the status of an individual. The study covers the time period from 200 BCE-200 CE.
The volume starts with a general introduction, followed by a chapter about the major textile fibres used by the Romans (Textiles). It is followed by a chapter about ordinary Roman clothing items (What did Romans wear? Basic Roman garments). In the third chapter of the book, the focus is on dress codes, status and gender (Dress codes, status, gender, and morality), further aspects of clohtes and morality is discussed in the sequel chapter (Silk and Roman morality) focussing specifically on silk dresses which, according to Roman offical views, represented a depravated life-style and low moral standards, especially for men. In the remaining two chapters the target is dress at special occasions and dress used around the Empire. The chapter on Ceremonial dress concerns outfits and costumes used at special occasions such as religious cermonies or those used at rites-of-passages, such as marriages. In the last chapter is exemplified dress of both Romans and non-Romans in the wider Empire. In both these chapters are used written as well as visual sources. Normally non-Romans are viewed from a Roman perspective, especially in written evidence, but particularly in visual sources, people in the Roman provinces had a possibilty of presentating themsleves with less Roman biases, especially in the decoration of private memorials. A recurrent detail of non-Roman men is the use of trouses, which occurred both in the Roman West and East, but never in Roman Italy and this was one of the most signifcant markers of ”barbarian” dress both in writing and in imagery.
The last three decades has witnessed a major dynamism in the study of historical textiles and by now, the biblography on historical dress and textiles is extensive. Several previous publications deal with ancient textiles and dress but the current volume is the first of its kind; a sourcevook on dress in ancient Roman society. This will furthermore be the first with an intentional balance of both written and visual sources. Most publications in the genre of sourebooks are based exclusively on written sources but in this volume, visual sources are of equal importance and it will form a considerable part of the evidence for this volume. Visual evidence is furthermore our best source of how Roman clothes and dress codes looked, or was supposed to look. As very little remains of the actual textiles, we need to rely heavily on other sources and it is of utmost importance to consider images in any study of ancient dress. This volume, with a balance between ancient written and visual evidence, will be a complement to previous studies on Roman dress,
The volume is written in collaboration with Dr. Mary Harlow (former Senior levturer in Roman History at the University of Leicester). In October 2022, we spent two work weeks together in Copenhagen, at the Centre of Textile Research, University of Copenhagen, in order to finalise the structure of the volume and especially decide on the images to be used in it. This book will be a complement to the growing bibliography on historical textiles but with a stronger emphasis on visual evidence than in many previous studies. Several images are used in every chapter of the volume; some illustrate information that can be identified in parallel written sources, others provide information per se. This is one direction of further research, which was identified during the work process.
While working together in Copenhagen we have developed some further thoughts about dress and visual evidence in a jointly written paper (for a Festschrift to be published in 2024). It is a methodological case study based on two male sculptures dressed in togas, in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek: Reading the Roman Toga from Sculpture. Similar case studies could be developed for other clothing items, or as a more comprehensive study based primarily on visual evidence. An idea also sprung from the collaborative work with the sourcebook is yet another jointly written chapter together with Harlow, about Age, dress and gender for a publication produced within the European Textile network, Euroweb.
The final manuscript of the Sourcebook of Roman Dress will be delivered to the publisher on the 15th of March 2023.
2. From Deserts to Museums
The second sub project is also related to textiles from the Roman Empire but with a focus onmodern collections and the collecting of textiles. The volume is a multi-authored, edited volume with contributions from both researchers and museum curators in Europe and Israel. This volume presents partly a historical survey of collections pf ancient textiles, partly new ways of researching such textiles. A selection of museum collections in Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Israel and more, are presented with the individual history of each collection. A majority of collections of this genre were establsihed around the turn of the century 1900 and they are largely based on textile finds from Egypt, dating from around 100 CE onwards. In the dry desert climate, ancient textiles are better preserved than in many other regions. Many of the early textile collections were modelled on the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, inaugurated in 1852, and the collections were normally built-up by a combinations of purchases made by a museum and by private donations. The process of building up a collection usually took place over several decades. One example is the Museum of Design and Craft in Gothenburg (the Röhss museum) which was founded in 1904, but it did not open to the public until 1913. Already from the founding of the museum, the building up of collections was initiated and ancient textiles were constantly bought and accepted by donations until the early 1970s which have resulted in a substantial collection of so called Coptic textiles.
Later research has shown that several museum collections contain smaller pieces of an originally larger textile which has been cut into pieces before offering them for sale. So called Coptic textiles are still collected today as is shown in the contribution by Arnaud Quertinmont,”Collecting Coptic Textiles Today. The Collector’s View, however, collecting with a different perspective than in the earlier 20th century. In another chapter, ”Matching fragments” by Petra Linscheid, it is discussed and demonstrated how new methodologies have been developed which enable researchers, such as Linscheid, to work with textiles from various museum collections and match them together to a bigger textile, more like the original find. This is important as it will tell us more about ancient technologies, types of textiles and how they may have been used in an original context. This methodology has great potential to add new knowledge about ancient Roman and later textiles.
The study of Coptic textiles is a lively, international field of research with a tradition of publications in French and German, but less frequently in English. As this volume is in English, there is the possibility of a different outreach, both in terms of ongoing research and by presenting some less well-known collections of Coptic textiles. My own contribution, in addition to the introduction of the volume, presents the collection at the Röhss museum in Gothenburg, the most extensive of its kind in Sweden but – hitherto largely unpublished and as such, with only limited use to international research. Working with this volume has lead to the idea of an international collaborative project about the collection of the Röhss museum; documenting and contextualising the collection, matching fragments and finally to publish it, to make it available to further research and museum visitors. One scholar to be invited to take part in the project is Dr. Maria Mossakowska whom I met at the CTR in October 2022. Her expertise in late Antique-early Medieval Coptic textiles woudl be invaluable to a project of this kind and she has recently worked with a similar collection at the National Museum in Copenhagen. Such a project, emanating from the collection at the Röhss museum, would be an important addition to international scholaship on ancient/Coptic textiles, museum history and issues on cultural heritage.