My Latest Rabbit Hole

 is clothing in ancient Greece.  I mentioned I'd been dipping into a book on the history of textiles - this was as part of my research for a story - and that set me off in search of how such ancient garments worked. If you're interested the textile book is called Women's Work - The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Mayland Barber

I might have studied ancient Greece (starting with the writing of Homer) as part of my history degree way back when but the actual way people of the time wore clothes didn't register. I knew what the various garments looked like and, after seeing the white marble statues of the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses, of course, it would be impossible not to be aware of how these were clad in graceful draperies. Somehow, though, it had never occurred to me how these would all be held together. I just assumed they would be sewn. Not so - instead it was a complicated combination of pins, brooches and girdle which must have made dressing without assistance especially for a woman sometimes quite challenging.

Now, thanks to modern archaeological advances, we know that these sculptures were actually painted. You can read about it in this article in The New Yorker. Instead of the ancients all parading around like beautifully draped pale ghosts they were as fond of colour as we are. What we've admired for centuries were actually the bases for these works of art. It shouldn't be a surprise, of course. The gifts of robes and mantles handed out as gifts among royalty in Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey are rarely white, more usually purple, red and black while in The Odyssey Helen of Troy is described as spinning purple yarn with her golden spindle at one point and in The Iliad, when she is living in under siege Troy, she is making a purple double cloak. 

No doubt there were other colours. As any modern day spinner or weaver knows many plants produce colours used in dyeing and they vary widely. Woad, weld, madder, onion skins and lichens are just a few that come to mind. While according to Barber some cloth was made in workshops and traded over vast distances and between different groups of people, much was also made in the home where as now the creativity of the spinners and weavers would almost certainly have led to different and imaginative fabric being produced. I don't think we can assume either that ancient people weren't interested in other adornments like weaving coloured patterns into their handiwork and embroidery while Homer mentions tassels and beads.

If we go further back in time the Minoans were already creating a range of textiles as we can see from their art. One of my favourite examples is a Minoan fresco known as The Saffron Gatherers found on Santorini. There are images of this fresco and other Minoan clothing at the end of this paper by Cristin J Donahue. The images of girls and young women gathering saffron (another plant dye and a very expensive one at that) are still clear enough for us to have an idea of some of what they are wearing. The range of colours is striking - red, blue, yellow, black and brown are obvious and there are others that have faded. To me the most interesting is a sheer yellow veil with a blue border and dotted with red (beads or embroidery perhaps) worn by one of the women. This shows considerable skill in weaving and I'd be very surprised if some of the skills to make such fabric hadn't survived the collapse of Minoan civilisation.

So my ideas about Mycenaean Greek clothing have undergone quite a change and I'm planning on going into my fabric stash and trying out a bit of draping of my own as soon as I can get someone to help me. There will not be pictures.