Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years [*] Elizabeth Wayland Barber

So this book is about spinning, weaving and women's lives in pre-historic up to early-classical Europe. It is very readable but I found myself wish for just a bit more detail on a lot of things. The author uses traditional ages: stone age, bronze age, Iron age -- which I think are problematic because they imply tech advance is linear. Barber uses a wide variety of methods, including linguistic reconstruction; the study of physical objects such as: a artifacts used to make fabric, actual bits of a fabric and string that have been preserved, depictions of clothing and depictions of making fabric; and the study of written works including Mesopotamian letters for weaver wives to their trader husbands. There is lot of good stuff here. Over all a very pleasant read.


[*] The full title is: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.