Textiles and War in Europe and the Mediterranean from Prehistory to Late Antiquity

This volume primarily consists of a collection of papers presented at the conference ‘Textiles and War in Europe and the Mediterranean from Prehistory to Late Antiquity’, held in Bucharest in May 2023. Its main goal is to explore the opportunity to establish a new and well-defined direction of academic investigation: the autonomously conceived research of the textile items used or manipulated by prehistoric and ancient armed groups.

The book revolves around two central issues. The first is outlining the main sources and methodologies with the potential to provide noteworthy results, starting by sketching a map of the current state of the research in the field. The second is topical and deals with highlighting a few relevant themes that could be tackled, such as particular studies on specific textile items used in the military field, the systems of production and acquisition of garments and other textile materials for the armies, the expression of military rank and status through textile items, the economic and cultural effects of military campaigns in the field of textiles acquisition and consumption.

The 13 papers operate with a wide array of archaeological, iconographic and written sources to examine various aspects of the use of textiles and leather by armed individuals and armies in diverse regions of the prehistoric and ancient world, from western Iberia to northern Mesopotamia and from the bogs of northwestern Europe and the rugged mountains of the Balkan peninsula to the Arabian desert, preserving however as focal points Greece, Rome and the Italian peninsula.