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Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles and Dress: An interdisciplinary anthology, edited by Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel & Marie-Louise Nosch, 2015. (Ancient Textiles Series 18.) Oxford/Oakville: Oxbow Books; ISBN 978-1-78297-719-3 hardback £38.00; xii+308 pp., 143 figs., 31 tables

This next instalment of the Ancient Textiles Series, published by Oxbow Books in collaboration with the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen (CTR), is part of a pair together with Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress: An interdisciplinary anthology, edited by Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch (2015). While the latter book has a chapter written by the editors that serves as an introduction to the collection of articles, the volume under review has nothing of the kind in order to unite its 13 contributions. Despite the title claiming this to be an interdisciplinary anthology, truly interdisciplinary studies are few, and those that are, follow the now standard method of combining written, archaeological and iconographic evidence. Several of the contributions in Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles and Dress: An interdisciplinary anthology use primarily archaeological evidence (textiles and textile tools) in order to approach broadly the technology and organization of textile production in specific areas or sites. The first article in the volume, ‘Investigating Neolithic and Copper Age textile production in Transylvania (Romania). Applied Methods and Results’ by Paula Mazare (pp. 1–42), summarizes the author’s PhD thesis, which is the first critical attempt to use archaeological evidence of textile imprints and tools to contextualize textile technology and production in prehistoric Romania. The contribution by Sophia Vakirtzi, Chaido Koukouli-Chryssanthaki and Stratis Papadopoulos analyses ‘Spindle whorls from two prehistoric settlements on Thassos, North Aegean’ (pp. 43–56). Based on the comparison of material from two settlements, Skala Sotiros and Aghios Ioannis, the authors propose that the decrease in the spindle whorl size at the later site Skala Sotiros may be due to a shift from plant fibres to wool. Caroline Sauvage provides a detailed catalogue and discussion of ‘Spindles and distaffs: Late Bronze and Early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean use of solid and tapered ivory/bone shafts’ (pp. 184–226), concluding that the evidence points towards the simultaneous use of high-whorl and low-whorl spindles in Cyprus during the Bronze Age. The author assumes that a low-whorl spindle produces a ‘z’ twist, while the use of a high-whorl implement will result in a ‘s’ twist (p. 185); the reality observed in archaeological textiles, however, is not as clear-cut. The only article in the volume to deal directly with the actual textiles is Orit Shamir’s ‘Two special traditions in