The emergence of textile activity was born out of personal necessity and in favour of self-sufficiency at the family level. Subsequently, and due to the development of societies and their economic and power systems, this domestic task became a production job in its own right, becoming one of the main economic activities for the societies of Protohistory and Antiquity.

The great expansion of this production is evident from the variety of tools used, work areas, types of fabrics obtained, commercial networks and economic contribution to the settlement and even to the families. The study of these issues allows us to assess their socio-economic importance for protohistoric societies, as well as to understand the structures and relations of power and gender roles. However, before understanding this phase, which will turn it into an increasingly important task until it becomes the textile industry it is today, we must study its beginnings, that is, how it was understood and valued by the protohistoric groups.

For this purpose, this approach has focused on the area of the Segura river basin, located in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain). Consequently, the sites of Los Almadenes (Hellín, Albacete) and El Oral (San Fulgencio, Alicante) have been selected, the former located inland and the latter on the coastline. Both settlements were founded ex novo and present a single horizon of occupation, with a sealed archaeological context and whose chronology is between the end of the 7th century and the middle of the 6th century BC in the case of Los Almadenes and between the end of the 6th century and the middle of the 5th century BC for El Oral. Likewise, both settlements have been excavated and studied with modern scientific methodology, which allows us to have objective and complete scientific data.

These dates place the study at the time of change between the 1st and 2nd Iron Age on the Iberian Peninsula. This period is associated with the important link between autochthonous and allochthonous Mediterranean groups and the flourishing of the important indigenous society, prior to the Romanisation of this territory, the Iberian Culture, whose great exponent is the figure of the "Dama de Elche".

The discovery of textile tools in both settlements indicates the presence and development of this activity. The study of these remains of movable materials and also of the typology of spaces -rooms, buildings and areas of the settlement- in which they were found, allow us to characterise production, understand the value of the activity and approach the associated socio-economic dynamics.

Consequently, we can observe an activity of self-sufficiency that cannot yet be understood as production on a larger scale, whose instrumental variety is associated with domestic contexts and relevant spaces and whose main protagonists were women. In short, it is essential to study this transitional period in order to understand its rapid subsequent development, since it was one of the main economic sources for Iberian societies.