Chiara Spinazzi-Lucchesi

Project title

Exploiting Nature: Plant Fibre Technologies and Economies in Ancient Egypt

What is your project about?

When we think of Ancient Egypt, we picture pyramids, temples, and towering statues. Yet much of daily life was built not of stone, but of plant fibres. Thanks to Egypt’s dry desert climate, objects that usually perish over time (baskets, ropes, sandals, and fine linen textiles) have survived for over three thousand years.  

Producing such huge amounts of textiles and objects was no simple task. It required not only skilled workers but also fertile land and water – resources that were also needed to grow food. This raises an interesting question: how did ancient Egyptians balance fibre production with the demands of feeding themselves and livestock?  

Using Deir el-Medina as a case study, a village of workmen near Luxor, the project will investigate which plants were used, how fibres were processed and who was involved in cultivating and preparing them.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by ancient objects – from fossils to dinosaurs, and eventually ancient Egypt. What interests me most is how people lived day to day and how the objects they used were made. Textiles were fundamental to ancient life – from the finest fabrics made for pharaohs to the simplest cloth used by ordinary people, as well as objects for the home and for work. Reconstructing how much time and resources it took to create something we today buy with a single click puts us in a position to understand why the Industrial Revolution started precisely from textile production.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

To understand how many resources were needed to make a textile or a basket, we first need to identify which fibres were used – flax, palm, or papyrus? – and how they were prepared. This allows us to reconstruct where these plants could grow and what water and soil conditions they required. We will then combine this information with ancient texts to understand how fibres arrived at Deir el-Medina and if temples or palaces were involved in their distribution. The project also includes experimental archaeology: a specialist spinner and weaver will reconstruct ancient textiles to help us understand how they were made and how much time, fibre, and water their production actually required.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

Today the fashion industry is one of the most polluting in the world, and the processing of plant fibres has been an environmental problem for centuries. Yet these are not new challenges. Ancient Egypt had to produce textiles, ropes, and baskets for an entire society within a limited agricultural landscape, while simultaneously feeding its population from the same land and water. Understanding how they managed these competing demands offers a concrete historical perspective that is directly relevant to how we think about sustainable textile production today.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

The Sapere Aude grant will allow me to build my own research group and position myself in an important and largely unexplored field of Egyptology and ancient economic history. My vision is to establish a group whose unique strength lies in its ability to combine archaeobotanical, textual, and experimental evidence to reconstruct how ancient societies managed plant resources. The grant will allow me to consolidate my current position in this emerging field and will provide a strong platform for future applications, as the methods and models developed here have the potential to generate important knowledge into ancient land and water management.