I originally bought this book when it was first published in paper in
1995. It bored me to tears at the time and went the way of some books–to
the used bookstore for resale. However, sensibilities and interests
change. Recently, I was browsing the books at the local yarn shop, picked
this back up, read a few pages and plopped my money down. Then I took it
home and read it cover to cover in nearly one sitting.

Barber attempts to show the development of cloth and clothing and how it
relates to women and society in general from the Paleolithic up to the
late Iron age. Her first postulation is that clothing and cloth
manufacture have always traditionally been done by women because of the
need for flexible work that can be picked up or put down as the demands
of nursing an infant and toddler require. She then traces the development
of cloth from the simple string skirt of fertility rights to the more
elaborate clothing and tapestries of the Hellenic cultures. However,
since very few fragments of cloth are still extant, she relies quite
heavily on the remaining tools and artwork left behind when the cultures
finally failed. The most interesting discussion in the book concerns the
parallel development of vertical warp weighted looms versus horizontal
peg looms and how they created different weaving techniques and
ultimately different uses for the cloth.

The book isn’t for everyone. I am particularly fond of anything that
relates to fiber and textile development and for that I found it
fascinating. She uses myth as evidence a bit too much for me to buy all
her arguments. I also have a hard time completely accepting that women
did the spinning, weaving and sewing because they were tied to their
nursing children and the men went out to hunt and later to farm because
they were not. It seems too clean and simple.