The Archaeology of the Woven: Textile Materiality, Craft Knowledge and Imperial Aesthetics in the Vijayanagara period
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Abstract
This study excavates the archaeology of the woven within the Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1336-1565 CE), centred in the Tungabhadra, Krishna, and Kaveri cultural region of peninsular South India. Interpreting textiles as repositories of savoir-faire, embodied memory and imperial aesthetics, it draws upon inscriptions, sculptures, murals, literary narratives, traveller accounts and material traces. The study reconstructs the chaîneopératoire of fibre, thread, loom and cloth, while examining sartorial practices as markers of hierarchy, identity and sovereignty. Vijayanagara textiles thus emerge as a forma culturale-a material language through which craft knowledge, commerce and imperial magnificence were woven into a distinctive South Indian visual order.
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