The Cave of the Warrior refers to cave no. 13 which was found in 1993 in a survey in the Wadi el Makkukh near ancient Jericho. The cave contained a burial of a man dating around 3800 BC. The dry desert climate preserved many organica materials. Especially important are several garments belonging to the largest and best preserved of this period, ever found outside of Egypt.
The cave contained the remains of a man, around 45 to 50 years old at the age of death. He was once about 162 (± 3) cm tall. [1] Other finds include textiles, and a basket. a plaited mat and a twined mat, a wooden stick, arrows, a bow, a wooden bowls, sandals as well as stone tools. There were also found Hasmoenean coins (140 BCE to 37 BCE), evidently belonging to a much later period. [2]
The garments are of special importance. The largest piece is made of linen and is 6.9 m long and 1.96 m wide. Its main function might have been to cover the dead body. Several parts are missing. The modern colour ranges from white to brown. The cloth was not dyed and the colour might be the result of the decomposing body and other natural causes. A rectangular cloth is about 1.4 to 0.88 m large. Its original function is unknown. It might be another cover for the dead body, but it might also have been a dress item. Another textile was labelled sash by the excavators. It was once about 1.98 cm long and 16 to 25 cm wide. The so-called bandage was found in several fragments and was 1.43 cm long and about 6.8 to 8.2 cm wide. Several smaller fragments of textiles were found too, but their function is unknown. [3]
Clothing is any item worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head, and underwear covers the private parts.
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. The method in which these threads are interwoven affects the characteristics of the cloth. Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms.
The Pazyrykburials are a number of Scythian (Saka) Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley and the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another culture that has, and that makes some record of major historical events. At this point ancient art begins, for the older literate cultures. The end-date for what is covered by the term thus varies greatly between different parts of the world.
The Nazca culture was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley. Strongly influenced by the preceding Paracas culture, which was known for extremely complex textiles, the Nazca produced an array of crafts and technologies such as ceramics, textiles, and geoglyphs.
The Paracas culture was an Andean society existing between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and that made significant contributions in the textile arts. It was located in what today is the Ica Region of Peru. Most information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas site on the Paracas Peninsula, first formally investigated in the 1920s by Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello.
A funeral bundle is a method of enclosing a corpse before burial, practiced by the Paracas culture of the Peruvian Andes. The well-preserved funeral bundles of the Paracas have allowed archaeologists to study their funeral rituals in detail. Over 429 funeral bundles containing gift textiles, reams of plain cloth, and various ritual paraphernalia have been excavated from a necropolis at Cerro Colorado. These artifacts offer the largest source of pre-Columbian Andean textile arts known to date.
The study of the history of clothing and textiles traces the development, use, and availability of clothing and textiles over human history. Clothing and textiles reflect the materials and technologies available in different civilizations at different times. The variety and distribution of clothing and textiles within a society reveal social customs and culture.
Anglo-Saxon dress refers to the clothing and accessories worn by the Anglo-Saxons from the middle of the second century to the eleventh century. Archaeological finds in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have provided the best source of information on Anglo-Saxon costume. It is possible to reconstruct Anglo-Saxon dress using archaeological evidence combined with Anglo-Saxon and European art, writing and literature of the period. Archaeological finds have both supported and contradicted the characteristic Anglo-Saxon costume as illustrated and described by these contemporary sources.
The Andean textile tradition once spanned from the Pre-Columbian to the Colonial era throughout the western coast of South America, but was mainly concentrated in was is now Peru. The arid desert conditions along the coast of Peru have allowed for the preservation of these dyed textiles, which can date to 6000 years old. Many of the surviving textile samples were from funerary bundles, however, these textiles also encompassed a variety of functions. These functions included the use of woven textiles for ceremonial clothing or cloth armor as well as knotted fibers for record-keeping. The textile arts were instrumental in political negotiations, and were used as diplomatic tools that were exchanged between groups. Textiles were also used to communicate wealth, social status, and regional affiliation with others. The cultural emphasis on the textile arts was often based on the believed spiritual and metaphysical qualities of the origins of materials used, as well as cosmological and symbolic messages within the visual appearance of the textiles. Traditionally, the thread used for textiles was spun from indigenous cotton plants, as well as alpaca and llama wool.
Việt Khê is an archaeological site in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. Excavations there yielded a number of coffins containing relics of the Dong Son culture in Bronze Age. The Việt Khê construction site is located on the southern base of a hill which overlooks the Hàn River near Thủy Nguyên District, Haiphong. Five wooden coffins were excavated in 1961, each of which were aligned in the east-west direction, with at least two pairs of coffins being configured in a linear manner.
Daimabad is a deserted village and archaeological site on the left bank of the Pravara River, a tributary of the Godavari River in Shrirampur taluka in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state in India. This site was discovered by B. P. Bopardikar in 1958. It has been excavated three times so far by the Archaeological Survey of India teams. The first excavation in 1958-59 was carried out under the direction of M. N. Deshpande. The second excavation in 1974-75 was led by S. R. Rao. Finally, the excavations between 1975-76 and 1978-79 were carried out under the direction of S. A. Sali. Discoveries at Daimabad suggest that Late Harappan culture extended into the Deccan Plateau in India. Daimabad is famous for the recovery of many bronze goods, some of which were influenced by the Harappan culture.
The Paracas textiles were found at a necropolis in Peru in the 1920s. The necropolis held 420 bodies who had been mummified and wrapped in embroidered textiles of the Paracas culture in 200–300 BCE. The examples in the British Museum show flying shamans who hold severed heads by their hair.
Baker Cave is a prehistoric archaeological site, located on a small canyon near Devils River in Southwest Texas. Dating from circa 7,000–7,800 BCE, Baker Cave is a part of a system of rock shelters in the Lower Pecos Canyons region and was 120 feet long by 56 feet deep. The ceiling varied from 18 feet (5.5 m) at the mouth to just a few inches in the back.
Nahal Hemar Cave is an archeological cave site in Israel, on a cliff in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea and just northwest of Mount Sodom.
The textile arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are decorative, utilitarian, ceremonial, or conceptual artworks made from plant, animal, or synthetic fibers by Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Khentkaus III, often called Khentakawess III by news media, was an ancient Egyptian queen who lived during the Fifth Dynasty, around 2450 BC.
History of clothing in the Indian subcontinent The history of Indian clothing is deeply rooted in ancient civilizations, notably the Vedic and Indus Valley Civilization. Standard clothing in India can be traced back to these periods, around 5000 BCE, where evidence suggests the use of woven cotton fabric and the cultivation of silk from silkworms. The attire during this era included robes for priest-kings, turbans for men, knee-length skirts for women, and various jewelry like bangles, necklaces and other jewelry. The remnants of the ancient Indian clothing can be found in the various beautiful figurines discovered from the ancient and pre-historic sites, the rock-cut sculptures, the cave paintings, and human art forms found in temples and monuments. The vedic and other ancient scriptures also provide detailed information about the clothing in ancient period. Taking the instances of the sari to that of turban and the dhoti, the traditional Indian wears were mostly tied around the body in various ways.
Melkhoutboom Cave is an archaeological site dating to the Later Stone Age, located in the Zuurberg Mountains, Cape Folded Mountain Belt, in the Addo Elephant National Park, Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
A caftan or coat of linen with silk borders in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art represents the typical clothing worn by horsemen along the Silk Road in the North Caucasus during the 8th–10th centuries. The caftan is reconstructed from garment fragments excavated from a burial ground near Moshchevaja Balka. Moshchevaja Balka is considered part of the Saltovo-Mayaki archaeological culture.
Tamar Schick: The Cave of the Warrior: a Fourth Millennium Burial in the Judean Desert, Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalin 1998, ISBN 965-406-035-3