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Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times First Paperback Edition.
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"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.
- ISBN-100393313484
- ISBN-13978-0393313482
- EditionFirst Paperback Edition.
- PublisherW. W. Norton
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1996
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
- Print length336 pages
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Product details
- Publisher : W. W. Norton ; First Paperback Edition. (January 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0393313484
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393313482
- Lexile measure : 1360L
- Item Weight : 9.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #104,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #100 in Archaeology (Books)
- #290 in Women in History
- #1,437 in Unknown
- Customer Reviews:
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I have not read similar books, so I have no comparison, but the book certainly more than met my expectations and I would recommend it to others who seek this type of information. The author writes in a friendly, casual tone, but certainly provides the detailed documentation you would expect from her credentials. This is both a book for an educational setting (history, women's studies, textiles), as well as for readers with a more casual interest.
It is absolutely fascinating how the authoress explains how traditional jobs(hunting/gathering/herding/weaving/etc.) were sorted out by sheer necessity of gender, ie: women had to stay home to gestate and raise children; men could roam farther away from home and undertake more dangerous tasks.
The details and research seem to be plentiful as well as fascinating and it made me imagine the days when a woman was never seen without her spindle in hand, making the thread to produce the cloth that her family would need endlessly. (There is even a tale about a solid gold spindle found by archaeologists.) Just the thought of the amount of work it took to produce a single thread makes me almost swoon at the thought of a person being laid out in yards of cloth just to be buried.
If you don't weave, this is a very interesting book. If you are a weaver, you have to read this book from cover to cover and keep it on your bookshelf forever. It's priceless information for any woman/weaver.
Update, October 2011: Because of this book, I have started spinning and weaving. I'm rereading the book as I learn how to make my own yarn from wool roving. I feel the connection to all the thousands and thousands of years of spinners that have gone before me. It's amazing how relaxing spinning can be and weaving is equally zen-like. Warping a loom takes a long time but it still makes me feel that connection to all weavers and I find it very calming while I'm doing it. Find a local weavers guild, get this book and get going! You'll love it.
"Women's Work" tells the story of textiles in human history. In nearly every society, spinning, weaving, and sewing have been done almost exclusively by women, so the history of textiles is also a history of women's work - or one important part of it. That's still reflected in our language, for example, when we refer to the "distaff side" - a distaff being a stick used to hold fiber for spinning.
Wayland Barber tells her story with with wit and clarity. And more than that, she tells the story of the story - that is, she traces not only what we know about textiles in ancient times, but describes how we know it. So, this is not only a fine history, but it's a fine, readable treatise on historiography as well.
I can warmly recommend this book to anyone interested in textiles, or women's history, or how history is written, or who has the blues and just wants to read a darn good book.
Top reviews from other countries
Die Autorin beschreibt die Herstellung von Textilien als originäre Beschäftigung
von Frauen, da sie während der Betreuung von Kleinkindern ausgeübt werden kann.
Die Entwicklung des Webens wird von Anfang an gezeigt mit vielen spannenden
Einblicken in die unterschiedlichsten Kulturen.
Die Autorin schreibt unglaublich interessant und obwohl dies ein Sachbuch ist,
liest es sich wie ein spannender Roman und trägt mich zuverlässig in andere Zeiten.
Die anderen Bücher der Autorin, wie z.B. The Mummies of Urumchi kann ich auch
sehr empfehlen!
progressing through the history with logic and academic knowledge. What amazed me
is the parallel between archaeology and linguistics. E. Barber gives us an in-depth
and well-researched analysis of textile history. I would advise this book
to the people really interested in the subject.







