Studia mythologica Slavica, 2018

This study discusses the beliefs and rites related to spinning, textiles, robes, and nudity that markedly outline some coherent symbolic systems within European belief systems. Their deep structure consists in the symbolic series of oppositions of nature-culture, raw-cooked, and life-death. In this binary universe, nature is characterized by the absence of cultural processes and products: ploughing, sowing, domesticating wild animals, the furnace, smithery, the iron, spinning and weaving, clothes, and Christian sacraments. The paper will discuss how the "raw" world of nature was tamed; how human beings, born as natural beings, were transformed into social beings, in the course of which the main role among the basic working processes of human culture is attributed to spinning and weaving.

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

Evidence of the very first clothing is mostly indirect. Almost all of what we know about early clothes is based on conjecture and assumption. It is impossible to say when humans first started wearing garments. Based on the cave drawings, carved figures and other such evidences including remnants and traces of very early cloths, the archeologists suggested that humans may have begun wearing clothing between 100,000 to 500,000 years ago. Neanderthal man, who lived between 200,000 B.C.E. to 30,000 B.C.E., learnt to use the hides of the animals they hunted to keep themselves warm and dry, referred as the first known person to fabricate clothing. It's also possible that clothes were designed for other functions at first, such as adornment, worship, or prestige, and were later discovered to be useful as well. This paper includes the investigation about need and psychology behind the origin of clothing through some fundamental theories of clothing and their applications to perform very...

Studia mythologica Slavica, 2018

This study discusses the beliefs and rites related to spinning, textiles, robes, and nudity that markedly outline some coherent symbolic systems within European belief systems. Their deep structure consists in the symbolic series of oppositions of nature-culture, raw-cooked, and life-death. In this binary universe, nature is characterized by the absence of cultural processes and products: ploughing, sowing, domesticating wild animals, the furnace, smithery, the iron, spinning and weaving, clothes, and Christian sacraments. The paper will discuss how the "raw" world of nature was tamed; how human beings, born as natural beings, were transformed into social beings, in the course of which the main role among the basic working processes of human culture is attributed to spinning and weaving.

Clothes are often considered mundane, but they play a crucial role in people’s lives beyond only providing protection from the heat and cold. The meaning of a piece of clothing changes the moment it is worn, as it becomes associated with its wearer. Attire can demonstrate affiliation to a particular group, be it religious, political, ethnic, social, etc., serving as an important means to construct the self-identity of a person. In terms of social impact, attire can include, as well as exclude, an individual from a certain group, playing a part in acculturation or assimilation. In order to understand what clothes can reveal about the ethnicity, beliefs, social rank, profession and gender or age of the wearer, it is necessary to reconstruct its particular socio-cultural context and understand the non-verbal language the dress conveys. The conference creates a venue for a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to dress studies in the ancient world. It brings together scholars working inside broad geographical and chronological frameworks but pursuing common themes in their research. It gathers specialists studying ancient attire from different perspectives and applying different methodologies. Non-verbally, attire conveys important meaning that must be decoded through various methodological approaches, be it an artifact, visual- or text-oriented approach. The fragmentary corpus of evidence available to assist in the study of ancient costume in different geographic areas justifies searching for cross-cultural patterns in dress behavior. The goal of the proposed conference is to construct (a) definition(s) of the clothed self and investigate multiple trajectories of the dress’ role in the construction of various identities in the ancient world. https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/symposia/2018.html

Early humans were relatively naked, thin skinned and hairless and thus were quite defenseless against any kind of harmful elements. He lived in caves and under rocky cliffs which provided protection but were stationary; moreover, in early stages they depend on food and shelter rather than clothes. This paper serves in unveiling the fashion concepts, the journey from the prehistoric man's clothing needs and theory to the current fashion trends globally. The paper will be an eyeopener to fashion graduates yearning to understand the beginning of clothing. This also provokes many fashion graduates to understand and follow the fashion cycle and research scholars to identify the potential areas for designing and product development.

2023

in: J. Becker/C.Beuger/B. Müller-Neuhof (eds.), Iconography and Symbolic Meaning of the Human in Near Eastern Prehistory, Proceedings of the Workshop held at 10th ICAANE in Vienna, April 2016, OREA 11, Wien, 97-110, 2019

The modern addiction to illustrating prehistoric men dressed and veiling the main sexual characteristics by gender specific clothing contradicts the iconographical record, which mainly shows naked persons. In addition, although technological knowledge about textile production was well established no later than the Late Neolithic, we cannot identify a significant change with regard to the degree of nudity within the iconography. Even burials provide scant information on garments and larger pieces of textile were only used for wrapping the bodies of the deceased. Nevertheless, from prehistoric art we know of examples of loin cloths, short skirts or long robes as early as the PPNA. However, it is striking that clothing was never intended to cover the body completely. In most cases, even during the era of the 8.2ka BC cooling event, the upper part of the depicted body is uncovered. Likewise, we can refer to ethnographic sources for surviving strategies of cultures living in similar cool conditions without elaborate clothing, or even naked. Some elements of early clothing, which are unisex until the end of the 4 th millennium BC, are still observed in later Mesopotamian art from the 3 rd millennium onwards. Here we find them gender-related in close association with ritual contexts or mythological figures. Even if we accept that the persons shown in the prehistoric record probably belonged to a mythological world, we can assume that the representation of the adornment was inspired by the everyday environment of the artist. Based on the high variation in style, clothing such as adornments, and body decoration or body modifications in the prehistoric Near East should be understood as an expression of the individual self.

Studia Mythologica Slavica , 2018

This study discusses the beliefs and rites related to spinning, textiles, robes, and nudity that markedly outline some coherent symbolic systems within European belief systems. Their deep structure consists in the symbolic series of oppositions of nature-culture, raw-cooked, and life-death. In this binary universe, nature is characterized by the absence of cultural processes and products: ploughing, sowing, domesticating wild animals, the furnace, smithery, the iron, spinning and weaving, clothes, and Christian sacraments. The paper will discuss how the "raw" world of nature was tamed; how human beings, born as natural beings, were transformed into social beings, in the course of which the main role among the basic working processes of human culture is attributed to spinning and weaving.

Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity, 2019

Fashioned Fashioned Fashioned Selves www.oxbowbooks.com e study of dress in antiquity has expanded in recent years, evolving from investigations of costume and ethnicity in ancient art and texts, to historical analyses of textiles and their production, to broader studies of the social roles of dressed bodies in ancient cultural contexts. is volume emerges from sessions at the Annual Meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2016 and 2017, as well as sessions relating to ancient dress at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in 2018. e collected essays bring overlapping bodies of evidence into play, including physical markings on the body, durable goods related to dressed bodies in archaeological contexts, dress as represented in the visual arts, as well as in texts. Examining materials from a range of geographic and chronological contexts including the prehistoric Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, the Aegean, Greece, the Roman world and Late Antique Central Asia, this volume takes as its starting point that dress does not simply function as a static expression of identity or status, inscribed on the body to be "read" by others, but is a dynamic component in the construction, embodiment, performance and transformation of identity. Taken together, these essays highlight the myriad ways in which dress mediates relationships and identities. Whether considering kings or queens, religious practitioners or worshippers, ordinary people or those at the lowest echelons of society, these essays argue that dress is the way human beings layer material identities onto the body. e persons that we see and engage with in the world, the identities that we cra and observe, are in every sense fashioned selves. Megan Cifarelli (PhD, Columbia University) is a Professor of Visual Studies and Art History at Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY. Her research focuses on the visual and material cultures of ancient Iran and Iraq in the rst millennium BCE, from expressions of Assyrian imperial ideology in large scale relief sculptures to the cultural e ects of powerful empires on societies at their margins. is is her second edited volume on the study of ancient dress.

2008