Prehistoric costume

The present state of knowledge about prehistoric times enables us, with all the necessary reservations, to assess the little data we possess about costume in the quaternary period of about six hundred thousand years, covering the history of tool-mak­ing man.

It is as well to remember from the outset that the develop­ment of prehistoric civilizations is influenced by the geography of the continents, which, though broadly as it is today, had numerous differences in detail, such as the land link between Britain and the continent of Europe.

The information we possess about prehistoric costume for the whole of the quaternary age is divided between the earlier, longer period (until about 10,000 bc) known as the Palaeolithic period, and the shorter, more recent Neolithic period, which lasted for a few thousand years and was followed by the Bronze and Iron Ages.

In spite of glacier movements, the general climate in the greater part of the ancient world was fairly constantly tropical or sub-tropical, comparable to the climate of present-day Africa or central Asia, and favouring a fauna of hippopotami and elephants. Only after the last Ice Age (100,000 to 10,000 bc) did the temperature of the northern hemisphere fall, causing changes in fauna and flora.

The various ways of life of these first men changed accord­ing to these climatic conditions, which also influenced cos­tume. Men in tropical regions lived in forests or on plains, in camps or shelters, and left traces of their clothing industries in the valleys and steppes. Men in the areas affected by the last glaciations took refuge in grottoes and caverns, where the vesti­ges of their primitive clothing are to be found.

Prehistoric civilizations therefore show a succession of changes of level, influenced by the prevailing climatic con­ditions, by increasing technical skills, and perhaps by changes in the physical type of primitive man.

These are the dominant factors which, in conditions that are often difficult to establish and are complicated by over­lapping and mixture, influenced the evolution of prehistoric costume.

Textiles

We have very little evidence that definitely relates to Iranian textiles, so that it is difficult to determine their use, particularly in Sassanian Persia.

Between the first quarter of the third century ad and the middle of the seventh, when it collapsed under the thrust of Arab invasions, the Sassanian dynasty preserved in its civili­zation ancient art forms and symbols inherited from the old peoples of the Middle East.

Sassanian towns such as Samarkand and Bokhara - great silk markets whose caravans came bearing the precious textile from the Far East or carrying supplies of finished cloth to the West - and probably other cities as well, possessed looms on which silk was woven in accordance with processes borrowed from China.

It seems that Persia must have known this industry at least two centuries before Byzantium.

Sassanian textiles, fragments of which have shown the tech­nical virtuosity of the weaving as well as the decorative richness, were adornments worn by the upper classes. We find in them the taste for scenes of action to be noted in sculpture and metalwork: horsemen at the gallop turn in their saddles to fire arrows, a characteristic theme among the Parthian, Me-dean and Turkish peoples. This hieratic decorative style in­variably used facing or addorsed animal or human figures, sometimes enclosed in circles or rowels, and with a variety of other motifs.

We know that textiles of this kind, the rare surviving speci­mens of which are generally preserved in European church treasuries, were used as shrouds and religious vestments. But above all they provided cloaks and mantles. The cloth used for ceremonial robes generally incorporated woven portraits of kings or signs symbolizing royal dignity.

The stylization of Sassanan textiles had a great influence on Byzantine weaving, and this influence is also apparent in a Chinese cloth. In Byzantium, where the in­fluence of Chinese art made itself felt in luxury textiles, decor­ation followed the Sassanian arrangement of isolated or linked wheel motifs, and also horizontal bands or geometrical patterns. Cloth decorated in this way was called either rotata (in wheels) or scutalata (in squares).

After the Arab conquest, which threw the industry of the defeated Sassanians into temporary confusion, the Persian manufactures resumed their activity, to meet the customary sartorial needs of the country.

By modifying the forms of its traditional decoration, Sassan­ian production thus remained at the centre of the silk trade network, which soon covered the Middle East with the exten­sion of Arab power. The proverbial luxury of Asia became that of most Moslem princes and caliphs, Abbassids, Fatimites, etc., who wore silk in their palaces and tents. The textile industry developed among the Islamic peoples, it abandoned its former Sassanid motifs.