"The volume presents the range of current research into the study of textiles and dress in classical antiquity stressing the need for cross and inter-disciplinary in order to gain the fulllest picture of surviving material. Twenty chapters by a range of experts in the subject address issues such as: the importance of studying textiles to understand the economy and landscape of the past; different types of embellishments of dress from weaving techniques to the (late introduction) of embroidery; the close links between the language of ancient mathematics and weaving; the relationships of iconography to the realities of clothed bodies including a paper on the ground breaking research on the polychromy of ancient statuary; dye recipes and methods of dye analysis; case students of germents in Spanish, Viennese and Greek collections which discuss methods of analysis and conservation; analyses of textile tools from across the Mediterranean; discussions of trade and ethnicity to the workshop relations in Roman fulleries. Multiple aspects of the production of textiles and the social meaning of dress are included here to offer the reader an up-to-date account of the state of current research. The volume opens up the range of questions that can now be answered when looking at fragments of textiles and examining written and iconographic images of dressed in a range of media"--Back cover.