Recherche par auteur > Basso Rial Ricardo E.

The economic, social and symbolic importance of textile production in Iberian societies during the second half of the 1st millennium BCE has been recognised by research thanks to the large amount of evidence related to this productive activity, both at the archaeological level, with the presence of working tools and iconographic representations, and from references in classical sources. However, to date there have been few studies that have looked in depth at the origin and development of this process in previous centuries, at a time characterised by important transformations in the communities of Iberia, especially after the establishment of Phoenician colonies on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula between the 9th and 8th centuries BCE and the growing integration of this territory into the commercial dynamics of the Mediterranean. In this context, textile production seems to have played an important role that has not been sufficiently appreciated until now, being the basis of the spectacular textile development that followed.

In order to explore these aspects in greater depth, this work analyses different production contexts and the textile tools found in different indigenous and Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE. From this evidence it is possible to observe substantial aspects of textile activity, which reflect continuities with the previous societies, but above all important transformations. Although there is a clear continuity in the use of techniques and raw materials that were already relevant at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, contact between the different social groups from the 9th-8th centuries BCE onwards led to an intensification of production, as well as significant changes in working tools, in the organisation of production and in the forms of consumption of textiles.