Abstract
The densely occupied Bronze Age settlement on Koukonisi (an elliptical islet located in the innermost part of Moudros bay on Lemnos) was excavated under the direction of Chr. Boulotis and the auspices of the Academy of Athens from 1994 to 2016, with intermissions. Located in the north part of the islet, it provides an undisturbed sequence from the Early Bronze Age to the early Late Bronze Age, with sporadic finds of the early Mycenaean period (LH II–LH III A1) and a substantial phase of occupation corresponding to the developed Late Bronze Age (LH III A2–LH III B periods). Given the equation ‘presence of loom weights = use of the warp-weighted loom’, this paper discusses the introduction of the vertical (warp-weighted) loom in Koukonisi in the advanced or at the close of the Middle Bronze Age, when the earliest loom weights are detected in the settlement. Nearly 40 loom weights, discoid in their vast majority, either with a grooved or flattened top, can be assigned to the prominent South Aegean, and particularly Cretan type of loom weights, which indicates the adoption of Cretan weaving technology and probably reflects increased specialization in the textile industry. In any case, the suggested technological transmission presupposes a degree of human mobility within the Aegean during the Bronze Age. In search of a predecessor type of loom in Koukonisi, I argue that the most probable option would have been the horizontal (ground-) loom, although no direct evidence for its existence has so far been found in the settlement. Nevertheless, finds from the Middle Bronze Age Greek mainland and the wider Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean makes this suggestion reasonable, while the practice of other weaving techniques cannot be excluded.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the British School at Athens for the award of a grant from the Vronwy Hankey Memorial Fund for Aegean Studies (2019), which allowed me to carry out work in the archaeological Museum of Lemnos during the summer of this year. Special thanks are also due to Christos Boulotis for the opportunity to study the corpus of the textile implements on Koukonisi and for fruitful discussions on the site. I am very grateful to Robin Barber for his comments on the text and the solutions he offered in order to avoid language pitfalls. Last, but not least, the anonymous reviewer and the editors for identifying points for clarification.
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Boloti, T. (2022). Tradition versus Innovation? Horizontal (Ground-) and Vertical (Warp-Weighted) Looms at Koukonisi, Lemnos. In: Ulanowska, A., Grömer, K., Vanden Berghe, I., Öhrman, M. (eds) Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92170-5_6
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