ONE summer Elizabeth Barber, a linguist and archaeologist, chose ancient textiles as a topic for a short research paper. Nearly twenty years later, she is a world authority on cloth and its making during the past 20 000 years. In Women鈥檚 Work (W. W. Norton, pp 314, 拢18.50), she asserts that clothmaking was the foundation of economic life.
Textile remnants were often ignored in excavations. Barber shows that clothmaking tools were also widespread, and often mislabelled. A fascinating tale entertainingly told.
