Ariadne’s Threads: The Construction and Significance of Clothes in the Aegean Bronze Age by Bernice R. Jones (review)

In Ariadne’s Threads: The Construction and Significance of Clothes in the Aegean Bronze Age, Bernice R. Jones “attempts to define and understand the construction of the garments, to seek foreign or indigenous sources for the designs, to chart influences abroad, to resolve issues of dating, and where possible to determine the significance of dress and its identification with roles of women” (p. 1). To present reconstructions of Minoan and Mycenaean garments, which is a large aspect of the book, Jones draws both upon visual arts, such as sealings, sculptural figures, and wall paintings, and prior scholarly literature. She provides a complex multifaceted study to treat the topic positioned as “among the least understood and most important artistic achievements of the Minoan civilization” (p. 1).

The analysis is presented in nine chapters accompanied by hundreds of illustrative figures used to build and demonstrate the points of arguments. For the recreations, the illustrations include photographs and redrawings of artworks, photographs of garment recreations worn by models, and pattern and construction diagrams. Many photographs are in color. Figure captions are not included, which impedes use of the book since the reader must refer to the list of figures in the front as well as search for facts and interpretive information in the text. Extensive footnotes and bibliography aid in following the author’s reasoning, but lack of an index foils attempts to review a topic throughout the book, such as terracotta artworks or discussions on weaving technologies and trade systems.

The book progresses chronologically. The first chapter provides background from the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods on fibers and weaving. Chapter 2 examines the scant evidence regarding textiles and dress from Early Bronze Age Greece and pre-palatial Crete. The next chapter covers the Minoan Middle Bronze Age, in which terracotta artworks and inscribed seals display more easily analyzed representations of the human body and dress elements. Comparanda from the Near East and from Egypt (including the Tarkhan dress) are introduced, suggesting influences, trans-cultural exchange, and precedents for Minoan garments.

Problems for the reader occur regarding terminology—problems that amplify as the study develops. Discussion of the distinction between a reconstruction and a recreation, for example, is missing, yet this distinction is crucial to comprehend and evaluate the arguments for the garment proposals. Jones uses the term reconstruction for her garment proposals made using modern commercial cloth as exemplars of prehistoric clothing. The word reconstruction is problematic in this usage, as it implies that remains or actual fragments of an original garment are the basis for making it anew. This is not the case, since the archaeological record has no extant Minoan or Mycenaean garments or confirmed identifiable parts of garments. To avoid such confusion, Elizabeth Barber (2003) argued for the use of the word recreation, explaining that successful recreations may indeed provide new solutions to understanding dress that we may only otherwise hypothesize because of the lack of concrete remains. Because Jones also uses the term reconstruction as a term to describe new arrangements of pieces of fragmentary artworks presented in the book, the reader may be confused as to whether she is referring to an artwork reconstruction or a garment reconstruction when she uses the term. Jones either does not concede there is a difference between the two concepts or missed Barber’s discussion of the issue.

Despite this, Jones’s artwork reconstructions are among the excellent contributions of the study and, by clarifying and/or correcting prior artwork reconstructions, they serve the goal “to determine the significance of dress and its identification with roles of women” (p. 1). In her artwork reconstructions Jones provides a new, often subtle, version of an artwork such as a fresco, by rearmament of misaligned pieces and...