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Women's work : The first 20000 years : Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times

by: Barber, E.W.

Price: 49,00 EURO

(in stock)
 
Category: Greco-Roman History
Code: 17356
ISBN-13: 9780393035063 / 978-0-393-03506-3
ISBN-10: 0393035069 / 0-393-03506-9
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Publication Date: 1994
Publication Place: New York
Binding: Cloth
Pages: 334
Book Condition: New
Comments: 334 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm. / A tradition with a reason: why textiles were traditionally women's work --The string revolution: life in the Palaeolithic --Courtyard sisterhood: horticultural society in the Neolithic --Island fever: Bronze Age

2500 years ago, the women of Athens slaved at home, virtual prisoners of their husbands, expected to provide the cloth and clothing for their family. 4000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, there was a very different picture: respectable women were in business, weaving textiles at home to be sold abroad for gold and silver. Going back even further, 20,000 years ago women began making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibres. Indeed, for over 20,000 years, until the Industrial Revolution, the arts of weaving belonged primarily to women and were the principal vehicle for demonstrating their various roles as mother, provider, worker, entrepreneur and artist.


"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review

New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies.

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.

Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.

 
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Women's work : The first 20000 years : Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times

by: Barber, E.W.

  • ISBN-13: 9780393035063 / 978-0-393-03506-3
  • ISBN-03: 0393035069 / 0-393-03506-9
  • W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1994

Price: 49,00 EURO

(in stock)