Outward Appearance versus Inward Significance: Addressing Identities through Attire in the Ancient World

Outward Appearance versus Inward Significance: Addressing Identities through Attire in the Ancient World

Editor(s): Aleksandra Hallmann

 

ISAC Seminars 15

Clothes are often considered mundane, yet they play a crucial role in people’s lives beyond mere bodily protection. The meaning of a piece of clothing changes the moment it is worn, as it becomes associated with its wearer. Because attire can demonstrate affiliation with a particular religious, ethnic, or political group, it serves as an important means of constructing self-identity and plays a vital role in social acculturation and assimilation. To understand what clothing reveals about the ethnicity, beliefs, social rank, profession, gender, or age of the wearer, one must examine its sociocultural context and the nonverbal language it conveys.

This volume takes a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to dress studies in the ancient world. Spanning a wide geographic spectrum, from the Near East and North Africa to the Mediterranean world and the Americas, it explores the cultural, social, and political significance of attire and engages the reader in a debate about the cross-culturally developed role of dress in construing and projecting various identities. Essays by experts from a range of disciplines, including art history, anthropology, archaeology, classics, Near Eastern studies, and conservation, approach the subject from different perspectives, apply varied methodologies, and draw on a diverse array of primary sources, including artifacts, iconography, and texts, to offer a nuanced understanding of the clothed self in ancient societies. This book will be of interest not only to experts in dress studies but to everyone interested in the cultural anthropology of dress and fashion.

Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, 2025

ISBN 978-1-61491-127-2

Pp. viii + 566, 189 figures, 8 tables

Paperback, 7 × 10 inches

 

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Approaches to Addressing Identities through Dress in the Ancient World Aleksandra Hallmann

Part I: Clothing and Imperial Identity

1. Dress and Empire in the Ancient Americas. Claudia Brittenham
2. "Silver for Clothing . . .": Textiles and Diplomacy in the Late Bronze Age Near East. Jana Mynářová
3. Changing Textiles—Shifting Identities? The Transformation of Dress Practices in Gebel Adda, Late Antique Nubia. Magdalena M. Wozniak and Elsa Yvanez
4. Regional Dress in the Imperial Rhetoric of Achaemenid Persia: Subjective (Identity) and Objective (Ascription) Processes. Margaret C. Miller

Part II: Distinctive, Associative, and Transformative Functions of Dress

5. Dress and Undress in the Akkadian Period. Benjamin R. Foster
6. The So-Called Persian Costume in Late Period Egypt Revisited. Aleksandra Hallmann
7. Clothing as a Marker of Ethnic Identity: The Case of the Libyans. Robert K. Ritner, with minor contributions by Foy Scalf
8. Dress in Rome’s Northern Provinces. Ursula Rothe

Part III: Construction of Cultic and Religious Dress

9. Divinely Royal: Garments of Kings and Priests in Ancient Greece, with Comparisons from the Ancient Near East and the Levant. Marie-Louise Nosch
10. "A Religion without Priests"? Dressing the Dynamic Identities of Greek Religious Personnel. Laura Gawlinski
11. The Phenomenology and Sensory Experience of Dress in Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Allison Thomason
12. The Hasanlu Lion Pins and Communal Identity: The Case for Empathy in Interpretation. Megan Cifarelli
13. The Color of Cloth as a Transformative Marker of Identity in Ancient Egyptian Temple Rituals. Katarzyna Kapiec 

Part IV: Textiles and the Socioeconomic Functions of Dress

14. Textile Cultures of Mediterranean Europe in the Early First Millennium BCE: Technology, Tradition, Aesthetics, and Identity. Margarita Gleba
15. Wearing Wealth: Cloth and Clothing as Currency in Ancient Egypt. Brian Muhs
16. Identity Based on Coptic Textile Terminology in Late Antique Egypt. Tasha Vorderstrasse
17. Textile Dye Technology in Prehistoric Northern Chile. Hans Barnard, Ran Boytner, and Vicki Cassman

Part V: Responses

18. Looking at, Trying on, and Giving Away Other People’s Clothes. Ann C. Gunter
19. Perspectives on Clothing and Identity in the Ancient World. Brian Muhs
20. Understanding the Material World: Weaving, Dress, and Meaning. Rita P. Wright 

Index