Survival textiles

A more fully comprehensive discussion of the underlying issues regarding fibre selection and fabric constraction and garment design can be found in Chapters 8 and 9. However, a more general account is presented here in order to give a more complete treatment of survival textiles as a whole. 

Leblanc s process survived him. Within several decades, it was almost the only one used to produce washing soda for the textile, soap, glass, and papermaking industries. And eventually his synthetic sodium carbonate put the barilla and kelp collectors out of business. 

Because mankind, like other nonphotosynthetic organisms, developed survival strategies based on the exploitation of photosynthetic plants, there are many traditional uses for biopolymers that are unlikely to be replaced in a foreseeable future. The largest use of cultivated plants is as human food, as animal feed, and in fiber production, with a relatively tiny acreage devoted to specialty crops for spices, herbs, drugs, and textile fibers (77). 

The example of the textile chain demonstrates (i) how much the techni-cal/aesthetic quality of products and chemicals-related product security are interdependent and (ii) what requirements exist for a quality management system beyond the supply chain level. Only the major brands can take this initiative on a global scale. For cosmetic, medical devices and food products, as well as technical products with high safety requirements (such as aircraft), management systems beyond supply chain level have now become a matter of survival. The same holds true for products that are subject to special waste and design regulations in Europe (such as automotive vehicles and electronic equipment). 

While it is often stated that few textiles survive from archaeological sites in eastern North America, some examples with preserved features have been uncovered. These materials have survived burial conditions because of the peculiarities of the burial context or due to some feature of their composition that made them less susceptible to microbial degradation. These preserved materials often are very fragile handling them results in the loss of small particulate material. Rather than discarding this particulate, collection and analysis may provide some clues to the content and condition of the artifact. 

Functional fibres, filaments and yams are the basic building blocks of electrotextiles. The textile industry has demonstrated a remarkable capability to incorporate both natural and man-made filaments into yarns and fabrics to satisfy a wide range of physical parameters which survive the manufacturing process and are tailored to specific application environments. Electronic components can be fabricated within and/or on the surface of filaments and can subsequently be processed into functional yams and woven into fabrics. Passive components such as resistors, capacitors and inductors can be fabricated in several different manners. Diodes and transistors can be made on long, thin, flat strands of silicon or formed in a coaxial way. Progress has been made in the development of fibre batteries and fibre-based solar cells. In addition, a variety of actuated materials (piezoelectric, etc.) can be made into multiple long strands (filaments) and subsequently be woven into fabric. 

Figure 7.2 Textiles recovered from a mass grave at Kasr-el-yahud in the Jordan valley. This was the result of an act of intercommunal violence in 614 AD. The bodies were skeletonized with surviving cotton and linen clothing. (Photo R. C. Janaway.) (See color insert following p. 178.)...

The two most common natural textile fibers encountered in modern fabrics have contrasting responses to soil burial. Under most soil burial conditions cellulose will degrade rapidly whereas wool will decay at a slower rate. These phenomena are demonstrated by the degradation of textile fibers from the Experimental Earthworks Project (Janaway 1996a). Figures 7.9 and 7.10 compare wool and linen buried in the chalk environments at Overton Down for 32 years. The linen is denatured to the point that there is little surviving morphology, whereas the wool retained some fiber structure. 

Although it is difficult to determine just when each respective civilization began to use dyes, it is possible to date textile fragments and temple paintings, which have survived the ensuing centuries. The ancient Egyptians wove linen as early as 5000 BC, and paintings on tomb walls infer that colored wall... 

Just as baffling is the presence of pseudomorphs after feathers in conjunction with spaced weft twined fabric and fine yams yet, no interworking of feathers into either fabric or yam structures could be ascertained. The significance of the feathers is pertinent here. Their position only on the underside of the plate near its center may mean that the feathers were placed there for a special mortuary purpose and bear no relation to the fabric. On the other hand, the pseudomorphs after feathers could be part of one of the fabrics, surviving only because of their association with the copper. Fabric, feathers, and copper plate may be parts of ceremonial garb. The ornaments were not placed next to the skeleton, but rather they were beneath its remains and separated from it by soil fill. Church (18) also points out the presence of textiles or preserved textiles adhering to copper plates found on chest or loins of human remains in the Ohio Hopewell finds. She does not mention feathers as part of the plate-textile finds. Scholtz (12) has found feathers used in yams recovered from the Ozark Bluff shelters, but the manipulation of the feathers appears to be closer to the Etowah fabric No. 1145 than to the feather pseudomorphs of Tunacunnhee. 

STUDY AND RECONSTRUCTION OF EARLY CULTURES usually rely upOU whatever evidence can be recovered from their archaeological contexts. Pottery, stone, and metal artifacts often form the basis for the knowledge of how people lived and worked in the past. Textile fabric products, however, function in much closer associations with people than do the more durable implements. As a result, these products contain valuable information about those who produced, used, and ultimately discarded them. Nevertheless, except in a few rather well-known cases, textile fabrics do not survive the vicissitudes of environmental conditions that follow the final textile use and encourage decay. 

In the last phase of the Stone Age, about 8,000-9,000 years before our age, marked by the domestication of animals, development of agriculture, and the manufacture of pottery and textile, the human population on earth approached the one million level. Thereafter, however, the population increase necessarily went from strength to strength. By the beginning of the Common Era it had reached the 300 million level, grew to 1.6 billion by 1900, and is at present around 6.5 billion. There is a compelling reason to curb this rate of population increase, as it already endangers human survival. 

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