the space in between the teeth of a comb

#The space in between the teeth of a comb series#

Textile productions Textile environment and labour standards at Middle Bronze Age Erimi Finally, we will combine these different perspectives to interpret the social construction and status of textile actors in a Prehistoric ‘start-up’ context. We will then compare these data with analogous evidence of extra-masticatory dental defects associated to plant fibre processing within and beyond Prehistoric Mediterranean contexts.

After a brief overview of the textile environment in the Kouris region during the Bronze Age, we will consider the suite of archaeological evidence for textile production and producers at MC Erimi, focusing on new evidence obtained from skeletal remains recovered in chamber Tomb 428.

#The space in between the teeth of a comb series#

2 From a broader perspective, both the concepts of start-up and community of practice have common traits, and may both help us in outlining the emergence of new forms of community identity and new forms of labour organization in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus.Ĥ In this paper, we present a series of recently discovered archaeological and anthropological data from Middle Bronze Age (MC) Erimi, in the Limassol district, with the purpose of exploring aspects of textile activities of this Prehistoric community. These specific organizations tend to represent themselves as small communities with worldwide ambitions and need myths and ritual elements to sustain themselves and grow. Sociological debate has described start-up entrepreneurship as a cultural phenomenon, involving the popular role of founders and the creation of an identitarian narrative. Given the low degree of preservation of organic materials in dry contexts, on the one hand, and the absence of complementary written sources in pre- or proto-literate societies, on the other, reliable data-sets are prevalently formed by raw materials and processing tool kits and installations, with scarce evidence of actual products and possible secondary evidence of products’ trade.ģ Over the last decade, start-up entrepreneurship has been referred to as a form of business venturing, that intends to grow large by adopting a combination of businesshypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. The available archaeological record led us to transform this scene in the study of early Mediterranean societies. Today, the vast majority of people are familiar with textiles (and with textiles shops), and a significant minority may know nothing about standard textile tool kits (and textile workshops). In a traditional model we may argue that textile products and the dynamics of interactions between consumers, intermediaries and producers is clearly the centre of our contemporary focus, while production techniques and tools tend to be in the background. Introductionġ Assessing the interaction between production and actors (producers and consumers), is crucial to the understanding of textile production as a social practice. Many thanks to Thomas Kiely, to Mia Amadio, to Katherine Kinkopf, to Francesca Iurlaro, and, especially to Giulia Muti, who read an earlier draft of this article, making valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank Anna Osterholtz for granting permission to reproduce pictures from her 2015 PhD Dissertation. The project would like to thank the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for support, particularly the Director, Marina Solomidou-Ieronymidou, along with Yiannis Violaris, Demetra Aristoteleous and the staff of the Kourion and Limassol District Museums.