Have I mentioned before what a huge history nerd I am?
And that I love fabric crafts?
Well, putting those two facts together, it is no surprise that this book was in my TBR pile for a remarkably short time before I started it!
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, is a phenomenal text on history, craft, and the ways that archaeology can be used to learn about both of those things.
If you have even the slightest interest in either of these topics, you should read this book. It’s not just that the book lays out 20,000 years worth of history, which is amazing in itself, it’s that it weaves (pun very much intended) life and individual stories into that telling. Everything from mythology to the art on Ancient Egyptian tombs, to cloth’s imprints on clay is shown to the reader and we are taught how to understand them. How to recognise the worth in these small scraps of information that have been clawed out of the earth and the timestream. For example, before she lost her arms, the Venus de Milo was spinning, and anyone who has used a similar type of spindle would recognise her pose. At the time she was carved out of stone, everyone would have recognised what she was doing. But, thousands of years later, we don’t do that anymore, so she is a mystery until you know enough about the life of average women of her time. By building that connection, we learn and understand what people thousands of years ago would have thought obvious.
It’s also a love story to experimental archaeology. There are several anecdotes about how it was only when she (the author) tried making some of these fabrics and crafts that she realised something entirely new! That she could have NEVER known without putting the time and effort in to have a go and see what happens when you actually weave or spin or dye in such a way.
In similar ways, Wayland Barber looks at the linguistic history of the world, peeling things back until we can start to see where and when language started to include certain elements. Words have been passed down from unimaginably long ago eras and it is possible to map technological improvements over those words and see where and when they came about. And don’t even get me started on how fabric crafts have shaped fairy tales, that entire chapter made me rethink so many stories I thought I knew!
There are a couple of moments when I was reminded that it was written in the 1980s, and so some of the language is not ideal. Like, for example, when no mention of gender is made when discussing who exactly has caused Sappho of Lesbos to be distracted from her weaving. There are also a few points when descriptive terms made me raise an eyebrow, but on the whole, it is written empathetically and with a focus on how cool and smart the people of the past were to figure out these things. A much better way of viewing the past than looking down your nose and complaining that they haven’t worked such and such technique out yet. Which is something I come across surprisingly often.
So, in summary, this book was amazing, I highly recommend it. Not just because it covers a fascinating topic, but because Wayland Barber tells the story of fabric history with fantastic wit and the kind of enthusiasm that only comes when someone is telling you all about their favourite thing.
This book was great, you should read it!
K
If I have tempted you to pick up this book, here are some links to where you can pick it up. The Amazon UK Link is an affiliate link.
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