AFRICA
BY SUSAN COOKSEY
Textiles produced on the continent of Africa in the period
between 10,000 b.c.e. and 400 c.e. were made from both
plant and animal fi bers, including bark, reed, grass, cotton,
and wool. Among textiles’ many purposes were as clothing,
sheets, blankets, bags, carpets, tents, and burial shrouds.
Moreover, textiles were important items for trade, adorn-
ment, and markers of social, political, and economic sta-
tus. Textile production in Africa and elsewhere indicates a
sedentary society with skills in agriculture and husbandry;
technologies used for dyeing, spinning, and various types of
construction, such as weaving; and artistic ability to produce
cloth that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Sim-
ply woven cloth probably served for everyday use, while more
elaborately woven and patterned cloth was reserved for lead-
ers and elite members of society.
In North Africa textile production was greatly aff ected
by the infl ux of technologies and materials developed and
distributed throughout the Mediterranean. Th e Phoenicians
were some of the greatest purveyors of textiles, materials for
textile productions, and textile technologies. Aft er settling
along the Tunisian coast, the Phoenicians introduced the
eastern vertical loom to the urban Berbers, the indigenous
people, around the 12th century b.c.e. In Carthage and other
Phoenician towns local craft smen wove linen and woolen
rugs. In the rural areas of Tunisia textiles made of rush, reed,
and alfa were produced and used for constructing tentlike
dwellings for local inhabitants. Important people in rural so-
cieties may have owned woven wool textiles.
Th e Phoenicians are known to have traded in dyed wool
by 1700 b.c.e. A purple dye derived from extracts from the
murex, a shellfi sh, became increasingly popular in the Medi-
terranean world during the fi rst millennium b.c.e. As the
Phoenicians expanded trade in murex dye and murex-dyed
textiles, they sought the shellfi sh from as far away as Africa’s
Atlantic coast. Evidence of textiles with murex-dyed fabric
has been found in excavations of ancient Meroitic sites in
Sudan, dating from 332 to 30 b.c.e. Th e Romans razed Car-
thage in 146 b.c.e. and, in the course of their occupation,
taught the urban Berbers how to use a Latin loom to produce
various textiles.
Cotton threads found in Dhuweila, in present-day Jor-
dan, dated to 4450–3000 b.c.e. may have been imported
across the Red Sea from India or from the area that is now
the states of Sudan and Ethiopia, where a diff erent variety of
cotton was known at the time. Evidence of cotton cultivation
and cotton fabrics dates back to the early fi ft h century b.c.e.
in Meroë, located in the Nile Valley in the present-day state
of Sudan.
Many Nile Valley textiles have been found in tombs.
One collection from the areas of Ballana and Qustul includes
burial cloths from three Nubian eras, beginning in 332 b.c.e.
Textiles found in the tombs were made of various fi bers, in-cluding wool from sheep, camels, and perhaps goats as well
as silk, linen, and cotton. Th e silk samples were imported
and from a later era. A few burial cloths were made of horse-
hair or coarse grass or reed. However, most of the textiles
were made of animal fi bers. Both animal fi bers and cotton
were available in the area much earlier than the fourth cen-
tury b.c.e. It is estimated that sheep were in the Nile Valley
for thousands of years before that and were among the fi rst
domesticated animals in the region. Th e sheep brought to
Nubia were probably a breed domesticated in Egypt. Goats
and camels were imported to Egypt later and eventually
brought to Nubia.
Cotton was introduced into Nubia later than animal
fi bers, though a type of cotton may have grown locally as
early as 3100 b.c.e. Th e earliest samples of cotton cloth date
from the fourth century b.c.e., but it is possible that cotton
cloth was produced at an earlier time in Nubia. Early ac-
counts of cotton—such as that of the Roman historian Pliny
the Elder (ca. 23–79 c.e.), who referred to the “wool-bearingUgandan woman wearing a bark cloth dress; bark cloth began to
be produced in Africa before 4000 b.c.e. (© Board of Regents of the
University of Wisconsin System)1074 textiles and needlework: Africa0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1074 1074 10/10/07 2:30:58 PM