Çatal Hüyük—The Textiles and Twined Fabrics

• Published in: Anatolian Studies
• Main Author: Burnham, Harold B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1965
• Subjects: History; Cultural Studies; Archeology; Greenland; permafrost; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3642509; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0066154600002738

Ancient textiles in archaeological excavations are preserved only under unusual circumstances, and it is for this reason that the discoveries at Çatal Hüyük in 1961, and repeated in following seasons, of woven and twined materials possess an excitement out of all proportion to their visual appearance. Until these were found, the earliest woven fabrics known were from the Fayûm in Egypt which are usually dated to the fifth millennium B.C. The finds in Level VI of Çatal Hüyük push the history of the textile arts back to the beginning of the sixth millennium. For textiles to survive in a more or less natural state requires either extremely arid conditions as in Egypt or Peru, or permafrost as in the Norse burials in Greenland, and in the tombs of the Scythian and Hunnish princes in Siberia. The presence of certain chemicals may act as a preservative: tannin in the Bronze Age burials in Denmark or metallic salts impregnating the fibres of the silks found in the patina of Chinese bronzes of the early dynasties. At Çatal Hüyük, a simpler agent is responsible for the survival of the fragments that have been found. In the fire that apparently destroyed the buildings of Level VI in which they were found, they were subject to intense heat. Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the space in which they were confined under the low clay platforms, the fabrics were not consumed, but only thoroughly carbonized. This made them chemically inert, and no longer subject to the growth of the destructive moulds that under normal conditions lead to the total decay of most animal and vegetal matter.