Review: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years - Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

I came across this book as part of the reference material in another book, which is often how I develop out my reading list, hopping through topics like stones across a creek. Though I purchased it last December in a post-Christmas book buying, I didn't start it for several months. Even so, this is not what I would call a quick read. It's an academic text written by an archaeologist (and weaver). Thus, it takes a methodical look at the evidence (and lack of evidence) around the work women did in the first 20,000 years of civilization. It requires a level of mental engagement that prevented it from moving quickly.

I didn't realize what I was getting into when I bought the book. I'm not sure I even knew what I was expecting until I got to chapter ten, Behind the Myths, in which she discusses the fascinating correlations between certain items of myth (such as a shirt dipped in dragon's blood will kill the wearer) and textile knowledge of the era (that there was a dye favored by royals which was nicknamed Dragons Blood and, if left in contact with the skin for a duration, would absolutely kill someone). That entire chapter was incredible, but I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it the way I did if she hadn't spent the previous nine chapters laying out the development of weaving, dying, sewing, and other crucial skills of the era. Just as I didn't know what I was expecting from the book, I didn't know how to accomplish it until the author did it for me.

History in this sense is not my forte. I love history for the stories it imparts and the lessons learned, but dates have never stuck well in my head, and so while I can recite entire sagas of the English Monarchy and discuss at length why Queen Victoria conducted her court as she did and how it influenced the courts of her descendants all the way through Elizabeth II, I have a rough time remembering when she ascended the throne. Thus, the first several chapters which are discussing the development and migration of society, and the references to those dates throughout are a bit lost on me. Barber, however, is a professor and has clearly encountered people like me before, so she provides graphs to help me follow along.

Speaking of her provided aids, Barber makes incredible use of her artistic skill to reproduce a number of important visual references. Early in the book, she shows how actually taking the time to try to reproduce historic weaving teaches a great deal about the context is which it is created, and provides the pictures of her own work doing so. When she talks about a Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian weaving shop painted on a tomb discovered in the thirteenth century, she reproduces it for the reader. When she discusses the trade routes men took to sell wares while their women produced them, she draws simple line maps to give an idea of scale and distance. When she suggests that the Venus de Milo, whose arms would be held in an awkward position were they present, is in fact created in the exact position that Greek women held their spinning, she provides an artistic rendition of how the statue would look had the wood and wool accessories not been lost to time.

This makes a huge difference between an academic text and an engaging collaboration in understanding. I got to discover for myself the artwork that shows a change to the type of loom used in Egyptian weaving because the artwork was provided for me to examine. This elevates the text and provides engagement in a way that can be lost in a somewhat difficult topic to grapple with as history measured over the course of centuries.

The last chapter, technically labeled a postscript, was one that really pleased me to see, which was an examination of her methodology. Early in the book she explained that a lot of what constituted women's work in this part of civilization was made of perishable items - food, fabric, farming - and thus discounted for much of archaeology. That she takes such care to discuss how she went about doing the research that led to this book in the face of those challenges was both interesting and reassuring, as a description of methodology is often lacking in academic text provided for mass consumption. It pleased me greatly. She says, in reference to a gentleman who had influenced her in the field, "He never let his ego get in the way of learning, by hanging on to an idea because it was his." Wise words.

The book can be summed up by her last paragraph, and I hope that if Dr. Barber every stumbles on this she will not mind it reproduced here: "We women do not need to conjure a history for ourselves. Facts about women, their work, and their place in society in early times have survived in considerable quantity, if we know how to  look for them. Far from being dull and in need of fanciful paint to make it more interesting, this truth is sometimes (as far as the saying goes) stranger than fiction, a fascinating tale in itself."