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’s Work (W. W. Norton, pp 314, £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.
