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The history of cotton can be traced from its domestication, through the important role it played in the history of India, the British Empire, and the United States, to its continuing importance as a crop and commodity. The history of the domestication of cotton is very complex and is not known exactly. [1]
The history of textile arts is also the history of international trade. Tyrian purple dye was an important trade good in the ancient Mediterranean. The Silk Road brought Chinese silk to India, Africa, and Europe, and, conversely, Sogdian silk to China. Tastes for imported luxury fabrics led to sumptuary laws during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Scraps of wool fabric from the Bronze Age and Iron Age have been found in the salt mines of Hallstatt Austria. The fabric scraps were residuals of rags used in the mines. The rags, in turn were scraps from worn out garments. The Bronze age fabrics are relatively coarse in part due to the coarse wool available from the sheep at the time.
The fabric had turned into peat, but was still identifiable. Many bodies at the site had been wrapped in fabric before burial. Eighty-seven pieces of fabric were found associated with 37 burials. Researchers have identified seven different weaves in the fabric. One kind of fabric had 26 strands per inch (10 strands per centimeter).
Maue, however, remains hopeful about the power of textiles made by hand and women. As more women assume roles in academia and curation, their voices will be able to elevate this art form's importance.
Stemming most recently from the Middle French fabrique, or "building," and earlier from the Latin fabrica ('workshop; an art, trade; a skillful production, structure, fabric'), the noun fabrica stems from the Latin faber" artisan who works in hard materials', which itself is derived from the Proto-Indo-European dhabh-, meaning 'to fit together'.
The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru.
It can be assumed that the animal skins were used for clothing throughout the human history, although in the ways that are primitive when compared to the modern processing, the earliest known samples come from Ötzi the Iceman (late 4th millennium BC) with his goatskin clothes made from leather strips put together using sinews, bearskin hat, and shoes using the deerskin for the uppers and ...