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A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Centre for Textile Research Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD 2017 A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East: Tools, Raw Materials and Natural Resources for the Finishing of Textiles Elena Soriga University of Naples “L’Orientale” Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/texterm Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Art and Materials Conservation Commons, Classical Archaeology and Art History Commons, Classical Literature and Philology Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Indo-European Linguistics and Philology Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Museum Studies Commons, Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, and the Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Soriga, Elena, "A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East: Tools, Raw Materials and Natural Resources for the Finishing of Textiles" (2017). Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD. 4. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/texterm/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Centre for Textile Research at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East: Tools, Raw Materials and Natural Resources for the Finishing of Textiles Elena Soriga, University of Naples “L’Orientale” In Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD, ed. Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel, & Marie-Louise Nosch (Lincoln, NE: Zea Books, 2017), pp. 24-46. doi:10.13014/K2CJ8BNP Copyright © 2017 Salvatore Gaspa, Cécile Michel, & Marie-Louise Nosch. Photographs copyright as noted. 2 A Diachronic View on Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East: Tools, Raw Materials and Natural Resources for the Finishing of Textiles Elena Soriga mong the operations required in the overall Textual, iconographical and archaeological evi- cycle of the ancient production of textiles, dence from the Greek and, especially, Roman civili- AGreek and Roman sources refer to the fulling zations provide together quite a complete picture of of woollen fabrics as the most complex and expen- the procedures, the tools and the raw materials in- sive technical process performed both in the 1st mil- volved, with special emphasis on their natural and lennium BC and the 1st millennium AD. Indeed, the geographical origins.1 In contrast, for pre-Classical finishing of woollen clothes needed a large amount of fulling, archaeological and epigraphical evidence on time, energy and labour, as well as involving the use the technical phases in the finishing of textiles are un- of specialized skills and costly raw materials. Full- fortunately very scanty, deficient and often of doubt- ing fulfilled two functions that were necessary for the ful interpretation. This situation applies to Mesopo- proper finishing of cloth, namely the scouring and tamia too. Here the earliest cuneiform texts related consolidation of the fibres in the fabric. Woven cloth to the finishing of woollen textiles date back to the straight from the loom has a rather open, loose tex- end of the 3rd millennium BC, while seals and seal- ture and the woven threads needed closing or tight- ings representing scenes of fullers at work attest the ening. The fulling process was intended to consoli- presence of this technology even around the middle date and thicken the structure of the fabric by matting of the 4th millennium BC according to some histori- the fibres together more thoroughly and by shrinking ans.2 In fact the terminology of the cuneiform texts them. Thus the process transformed the cloth from a limits itself to the name of the textile workers in- loose ‘net’ of threads into a compact, tight, textural volved, the woollen fabrics undergoing the different whole. This is why in ancient economies, fulled tex- operations, and a few raw materials, but they do not tiles, proof against water and the wear inflicted by describe how technical operations were carried out weather and time, were considered among the most and the sources of the materials the fullers utilized. luxurious and prestigious of fabrics. Therefore, the study of natural resources mentioned 1. Zawadzki 2013. See in general Flohr 2013; Forbes 1956, 80-89; Singer et al. 1962, 216-221. 2. Algaze 2008, 81, 85, 86 and figs. 14, g-h provides as evidence of that seals and sealings of the Uruk periods (ca. 3500-3200 BC). Nonetheless, these iconographical data constitute only a circumstantial evidence because the representations of the men at work are ambiguous: they are interpretable as tanners or other artisans not engaged in textile manufacturing. The first evidence in support of the hypothesis of activities for finishing wool fabrics in Bronze Age Mesopotamia is some Early Dynastic Period texts dated to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. See also Peyronel 2004, 72. 24 2. Fulling Technology in the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East 25 in 1st millennium Classical texts is extremely use- fabrics had its own chaîne opératoire, entailing the ful: it helps first to close the loopholes in both ear- performance of consecutive and different steps of fin- lier and contemporary cuneiform documentation, and ishing: washing, felting, rinsing and drying and often, then to better understand the economic and cultural but not always, raising, shearing of the nap and crop- role played by specific plants, animals and miner- ping of the resulting hair.4 als belonging to the Near Eastern ecosystems before Some of these technical operations are recorded the advent of mechanized fulling. Several scholars by various cuneiform texts of the early 2nd millen- have stressed the substantial uniformity of the tech- nium BC: a few tablets from the Old Assyrian city nology of fulling, whose procedures and raw materi- of Kanesh (modern Kültepe), in Cappadocia, and an als remained unchanged from Classical antiquity un- Old Babylonian text, whose provenance remains un- til the end of the Early Middle Ages, when the fulling known, provide very accurate instructions on how to of cloth was carried out in a textile water mill.3 It is full textiles.5 These cuneiform texts demonstrate that hence believable that even before the 1st millennium many of the technical processes, as well as the greater BC Near Eastern fullers were exploiting the same or part of tools and raw materials, required in Middle analogous natural resources for cloth-making, using Bronze Age finishing of textiles were essentially com- them in the finishing of woollen fabrics in the same parable to those employed in the fulling of woollen technical operations. cloth during the Iron Age and further described by Therefore, this present research employs 1st mil- Greek and Roman sources. lennium BC and AD sources to draw an ethnographic Nonetheless, the textual evidence of some tech- parallel with the fulling operations, tools and raw ma- niques is sometimes ambiguous because several verbs terials recorded in Near Eastern textual documenta- exist to describe common processes occurring in di- tion during the two previous millennia. Sumerian and verse finishing treatments. For instance, the washing Akkadian terminology linked to technical procedures, of fabrics was conducted by fullers in many different but also to the names of plants, animals and miner- tasks: in the scouring and the rinsing of the woollen als occurring in the cuneiform texts concerning the textiles intended to be fulled, in the ordinary clean- finishing of woollen textiles, will be analysed in the ing of soiled garments, in the bleaching of linen items light of the historical and anthropological compari- and finally in the partial or comprehensive restoration sons with the Greco-Roman world. This should re- of damaged fabrics.6 veal new or overlooked aspects of the Mesopotamian This indistinctness in terminology applies too and Near Eastern fulling as performed in the Bronze to the very occupational name of the fullers them- and Iron Ages. selves and thus on the how the technical processes they performed was known. Indeed, the elusive na- Terminology and technology. Names of ture of the ancient fuller’s work has already been of- procedures, tools and textiles ten stressed by eminent scholars who intermittently have translated this occupational name as ‘laundry- Archaeological, iconographical and textual sources of man’, ‘bleacher’ or more simply as ‘finisher’ or ‘tex- the Classical times prove that the fulling of woollen tile worker’.7 3. Uscatescu 2010. Around the 10th century AD, Muslim engineers invented water-powered fulling mills and introduced them through- out the Mediterranean area. See also Peyronel 2004, 73. 4. Smith 1875, 551-553; Flohr 2013, 99-180. 5. For the Old Assyrian text TC 3/I 17, see Veenhof 1972, 104 and Michel & Veenhof 2010. For the Old Babylonian tablet AO 7026, see Lackenbacher 1982. 6. See Firth 2013. 7. Starting in the mid-3rd millennium BC, cuneiform texts mention a professional class of artisans engaged in the finishing of textiles. Since the Early Dynastic period, the Lexical lists record the Sumerian ašlàg GIŠ.TÚG.(PI.)KAR.DU and lúazlág/lúazlag as pro- fessional designations for the finisher of textiles. Cf. Lexical List Diri III (ašlāku) in MSL XV; see also discussion in CAD A/II, 447 26 Elena Soriga in Textile Terminologies (2017) It is well known that being derived from cellu- to the caustic action of the lye.11 During the 1st mil- lose, flax lacks scales and thus its fibres are not able lennium BC, as the availability of flax in Mesopo- to felt.
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