A seminar and discussion about material religion and fabric. This online event will include talks by Dr Alexandra Sofroniew and Mary Danisi.
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Talk titles
Loom Weights at Sacred Sites in Pre-Roman Italy: Offerings, Weaving and Cloth
Alexandra Sofroniew
The Knot that Remembers Everything: Binding the Soul in Athenian Funerary Rites
Mary Danisi
Fillets, woven bands, appeared in a variety of ritual contexts in Ancient Greece. They were dedicated as ex-votos, tied upon the sacrificial victim, suspended from sacred architecture, as well as crowned athletic victors and Hellenistic kings. While the symbolism of these objects has long been recognized, fillets have been generally excluded from studies of cultic textiles. The fillet, however, was a product of considerable technical skill, as well as an embodied apparatus that facilitated religious experiences.
After providing a brief introduction to the techniques of their production, I examine the application of fillets at the gravesite in 5th century Athens. Women were largely responsible for the handcrafting of these specialized textiles, and routinely secured the strips of fabric around funerary monuments in order to commemorate the dead. The paintings on contemporary white-ground lekythoi suggest that, when properly handled, fillets formed tactile substitutes for irrecoverable contact with the deceased. Their regular knotting around stelai enabled visitors at the cemetery to work through their grief. Meanwhile, they were even thought to summon the phantom image of the dead. Circulated within the gestures and songs of ritual lamentation, the fillet produced fleeting moments of presence in the acute awareness of absence. The ephemeral nature of their woven structures only contributed to their efficacy. Fillets—unraveled, frayed, and faded from their exposure to the elements—were the complex media through which ruptures and repairs were experienced in the social fabric. The fiber arts, once regarded as a set of marginalized crafts, truly fashioned the seams of ancient cult practice.
