Der Spiegel reappraises Roman textiles

[richsc]

Pointing to a sophisticated textile industry, with gussets!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...81214.html

and, no red for the army
"The idea of soldiers draped in red cloaks, meanwhile, is absolute nonsense. Lustrous crimson robes worn by centurions are an invention of the 20th century. In reality, the military probably favored grays and earth tones.

"Red was a feminine color reserved for women," Schieck explains. Wealthy ladies owned exorbitantly expensive dresses and coats dyed with secretions from murex sea snails found in Tyre, now in Lebanon."

[Graham Sumner]

Hi Richard

I first saw this article last year. Previously when I was preparing an article on Roman military dress for the 2010 Ancient Warfare Special and to show how you can be misled by translations, there was another mention by the same archaeologists that implied that some new textile finds from a military site in Germany were brown. This I duly incorporated into the reconstruction I was working on. However fortunately before finishing the painting I contacted the authors directly and of course what was really mentioned was that the textiles, were brown when discovered! So I had time to change things. There was the possibility that the original textiles had been yellow but just because they were found on a military site there is no certainty that the textiles were military or even from clothing.

The idea of soldiers draped in red cloaks, meanwhile, is absolute nonsense. Lustrous crimson robes worn by centurions are an invention of the 20th century. In reality, the military probably favoured grays and earth tones.

It is not clear in the above article who said this, whether it was the archaeologists who I know, or an interpretation by the journalist of what the archaeologists said. Clearly the idea that crimson robes worn by centurions is not an invention of the 20th century or Hollywood for that matter. (Look at my avatar based on a Roman original.)


"Red was a feminine colour reserved for women," Schieck explains. Wealthy ladies owned exorbitantly expensive dresses and coats dyed with secretions from murex sea snails found in Tyre, now in Lebanon."


That is certainly the impression one gets from the portraits from Egypt. However there are many references to men both in literature and art wearing red. One civilian example is the drunk partygoer from a fresco in Pompeii who has a red cloak pallium.

I prepared a paper for a recent RAT Conference and updated it for 'The Textiles from the Nile Valley' conference in Antwerp which illustrated how red clothing was associated with the Roman military from modern times back through history to see where the idea had originated. I found many examples in particular of the Centurion at the Crucifion. Numerous 'Byzantine' versions had also clearly copied earlier originals but the idea of red clothing for the military went way back into Roman and pre-Roman art history. I had hoped Annette Schieck would be there so I could discuss it with her but she arrived the following day and I unfortunately was too ill right after my talk to meet anyone.

What is more interesting from this article is the inserted gusset in the pants which as mentioned is something not normally associated with Roman clothing. However it fits into the idea of adopting local fashions which has been discussed over on the Trousers thread.

Graham.

[Cheyenne]

I would tend to agree with Graham on this article. It seems from reading it, that there is some pretty ropey journo-interpretation going on there. The theory that red was a feminine colour cannot fall in line with current archaeological evidence of red cloth as a majority find from sites exhibiting textiles which have been dye processed.

gussets in pants are absolutely nothing new either. I find that the majority of complete examples of pants from the very well known sites have such construction.

There are also a complete pair in the museum in Antwerp that you showed me in that rather nice book Graham, where are they from? They also clearly have a gusset construction.

I get the impression that the writer of this article has only just discovered the evidence we have been using for years!

[M. Demetrius]

I get the impression that the writer of this article has only just discovered the evidence we have been using for years!

Right! and they only had to come here to get all the arguments they wanted. No need to start them afresh somewhere else... :roll: