Author: Katherine Laczko
Laczko, Katherine, 2024 Mycenaean Textiles: Production and Maritime Trade, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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Extensive archaeological evidence suggests that the Mycenaean textile industry was a primary maritime export for the Mycenaean palaces. Linear B texts notate centrally administered production of textiles, but do not explicitly record the trade or sale of finished products. This paper explores the archaeological evidence associated with the widescale textile manufacture under Mycenaean palace administrations, and the supporting evidence to propose that textiles were produced on a scale which is indicative of a primary export commodity. These locally produced commodities were traded through maritime routes with neighbouring cultures for a range of exotic goods. Mycenaean textiles were composed of organic matter which rarely results in archaeological preservation, so this trade with surrounding cultures is instead mapped through ceramic artefacts, iconographic sources, and evidence of Mycenaean contact from other cultural contexts. Alternative means of textile consumption within the Mycenaean world will be weighed against the evidence for the argument of primary textile production for maritime export. This will support the assertion that the Mycenaean textile economy existed for maritime trade.
Keywords: Textile Archaeology, Maritime Archaeology, Bronze Age Aegean, Mediterranean Trade, Mycenaean, Mycenaean Textiles
Subject: Archaeology thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2024
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Jonathan Benjamin