# Weaving

> Threads crossed into cloth

- Date: c. 6,700 BCE
- Era: Prehistory
- Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/)
- Rebuild stage: II (Settlement)
- Difficulty: 2/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/weaving/

Weaving makes cloth by passing a thread, the weft, over and under a set of stretched threads, the warp, row after row. The loom keeps the warp taut and opens it so that the weft crosses in one pass; the warp-weighted loom drawn here goes back to the Neolithic and lasted in northern Europe into the Middle Ages; it survives in a few places.

![Weaving · Threads crossed into cloth](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.D1SerfzV_VWvtH.webp)

## Legend

1. Upper beam
2. Woven cloth
3. Heddle rod
4. Shed rod
5. Warp
6. Loom weights
7. Weft in the open shed

## What it is

Weaving makes cloth from two sets of threads crossed at right angles. The warp is stretched lengthwise on a frame, the loom. The weft goes across it. In the simplest structure, plain weave, it passes over one warp thread and under the next, and each new row does the opposite. Friction holds the crossings together, so the cloth needs no glue or knots and still drapes.

People twisted cords and plaited mats long before they wove. A loom keeps hundreds of threads at an even tension and lifts a whole set of them at once, so the weft crosses the whole width in one movement instead of being worked over and under each warp thread by hand.

The plate shows a warp-weighted loom, used in the Near East and Europe from the Neolithic, and in northern Europe until the Middle Ages: two posts lean against a wall, the warp hangs from a beam across their tops, and clay weights keep it taut.

## How it works

The weft passes through an opening in the warp, the shed, which two rods make on this loom. The shed rod (4) is fixed low across the posts, with every other warp thread in front of it and the rest behind. Because the posts lean, the front threads slope out over the rod while the back ones hang straight down, and a gap opens between the two layers by itself: the natural shed.

![A magnified square of plain weave: each weft passes over one warp thread and under the next, and the next row does the reverse](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.DrEKFRcQ_oTDr1.webp)
_Plain weave: from one row to the next, the weft swaps which warp threads it covers._

The heddle rod (3) sits higher up, in front of the warp. A loop of string, a heddle, runs from it to each back thread. When the weaver pulls the rod forward and rests it in forked brackets on the posts, the back threads come forward past the front ones and a second opening forms, the countershed. Passing the weft (7) through the shed, then back through the countershed, gives plain weave. More heddle rods, tied to other sets of threads, make twills and patterns.

Weaving starts at the top. The weaver lays each weft in a loose arc, so it does not pull the edges in, and beats it upwards against the cloth with the fingers, a comb or a flat wooden sword beater. Finished cloth (2) can be rolled onto the upper beam (1), so the loom can make a piece longer than its own height.

Each loom weight (6) carries a bundle of warp threads (5). In tests at the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen, wool yarn spun with a 4 g whorl needed about 13 g of tension per thread, and thicker yarn from an 8 g whorl about 19 g. The weights must hang side by side at one level, or they tangle and wear the threads.

## How to build

Most of the labour goes into the yarn: at six warp threads and ten weft threads per centimetre, a square metre of cloth takes at least 1.6 km of it, plus waste and the extra length the threads take as they bend over and under each other.

**Spin the yarn.** A drop spindle is a stick about 25 cm long with a weighted disc, the whorl, near one end. Set it turning, let the twist run into fibres drawn from a bundle of wool or flax, and wind the yarn on when the spindle nears the floor. Warp yarn must be strong, since it carries the weights.

**Make the frame.** Cut two straight posts about 2 m long, a round beam to sit in notches at their tops, a shed rod, a heddle rod and two forked brackets. Bore a few holes round one end of the beam: a peg pushed through one of them and lashed to a post stops it turning, and comes out when you roll up the cloth. Lean the posts against a solid wall at a gentle angle, wedge their feet and tie their tops to the wall or a roof beam, so the loom cannot come forward when you pull the heddle rod. Lash the shed rod and the brackets firmly to the posts.

**Make the weights.** Shape pierced rings or pyramids of clay, dry them right through, until they no longer feel cool to the touch, and have them fired in a kiln or bonfire by someone who knows how; stones with a natural hole avoid the firing. Keep them as equal as you can; a few hundred grams each is usual. The yarn decides how many threads each weight carries: at about 15 g a thread, a 300 g weight holds some twenty. Each row of weights should be about as wide as the warp.

**Set up the warp.** On a small band loom or with tablets, weave a narrow band as long as the cloth will be wide, carrying its weft out on one side in loops as long as the warp you need: these loops become the warp. Sew it to the upper beam and let the threads fall. Pass every other one behind the shed rod. Tie the front threads and the back threads to separate weights, in equal bundles, and hang the weights of each row side by side at one height. Then tie a heddle loop from the heddle rod to each back thread. For a piece longer than the loom, wind spare warp into a small bundle above each weight and let some out each time you roll up the cloth.

**Weave.** Pass the weft through the natural shed, just under the edge of the cloth, and beat it up. Bring the heddle rod forward into the brackets, pass the weft back, beat again and return the rod. To finish, weave a closing band or knot the warp ends into a fringe.

> **Safety.** A loaded loom is top-heavy: tie it to a sound wall, block its feet and keep children off it. A falling weight can break a toe, so wear closed shoes. Damp clay can burst in the fire: fire only weights that are fully dry, outdoors or in a ventilated kiln, and stand well back.

## History and evolution

![Archaeological finds: ring-shaped and pyramid-shaped clay loom weights, spindle whorls of stone and clay, a wooden drop spindle with yarn, a bone needle](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.DGZUmn9G_3o0oW.webp)
_Cloth seldom survives, but its tools do: loom weights and spindle whorls are common finds on ancient sites._

Weaving may be older than farming. At Pavlov and Dolní Věstonice in Moravia, fired clay lumps more than 26,000 years old carry some eighty prints that Olga Soffer and James Adovasio read as plant-fibre cords, twined fabrics and plain weaves. They are impressions, not cloth, and nobody knows whether a loom made them.

The oldest woven cloth to survive in the Near East and Europe comes from Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, from about 6700–6500 BCE: plain weave, preserved because it was charred. Long taken for linen, several of its samples proved in 2021, under the microscope, to be oak bast, the inner bark of the tree; others were too charred to tell. The date given for weaving in this catalogue follows this cloth: the Moravian prints are older but uncertain.

![A backstrap loom: a narrow warp stretched between a post and a leather strap, with a heddle stick, a shed stick and a flat beater](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.C1Rk0qNc_Z248kLD.webp)
_On a backstrap loom the weaver leans back to tighten the warp and forward to slacken it._

Clay loom weights, which outlast the wood, show the warp-weighted loom spreading through Neolithic Europe. In the Americas, weavers used the backstrap loom, stretched between a tree or post and a strap round the weaver's waist. The upright loom with two beams, pictured in Egyptian tombs, probably reached Europe from Egypt.

From about the eleventh or twelfth century the horizontal treadle loom, which opens the shed with the feet, gradually replaced the warp-weighted loom in Europe, later in the Nordic countries. The older loom is still worked at Fitjar in western Norway, and at Manndalen in the north, where Sami weavers revived it after 1945 for heavy wool blankets.

## Key figures

- Oldest textile impressions: Pavlov and Dolní Věstonice (Moravia), more than 26,000 years ago
- Oldest preserved woven cloth: Çatalhöyük (Anatolia), about 6700–6500 BCE, in plain weave
- Warp tension: About 13–19 g per wool thread in tests at the Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen
- Loom weights: 245 to 870 g in a set of seven found at Voss, Norway
- Still in use: Warp-weighted looms at Fitjar and Manndalen, Norway

## Requires

- [Rope & Cordage](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/rope/): Twisted fibres that hold the world (50,000 years ago)

## Leads to

- [Hot-Air Balloon](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/hot-air-balloon/): Rising on warm air (1783)
- [Sail](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/sail/): Catching the wind to move a boat (c. 3,200 BCE)
- [Sewing Machine](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/sewing-machine/): A thousand stitches a minute (1830)

## Sources

- [Experimental Archaeology, Part 3: Loom weights (technical report, 2007)](https://ctr.hum.ku.dk/research-programmes-and-projects/previous-programmes-and-projects/tools/technical_report_3__experimental_archaeology.pdf), Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen
- [Oppstadvev](https://snl.no/oppstadvev), Store norske leksikon
- [Çatalhöyük – The oldest textiles at the TRC](https://www.trc-leiden.nl/trc/index.php/en/blog/1794-catalhoeyuek-the-oldest-textile-at-the-trc), Textile Research Centre, Leiden
- [Upper Palaeolithic fibre technology: interlaced woven finds from Pavlov I, Czech Republic, c. 26,000 years ago](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/upper-palaeolithic-fibre-technology-interlaced-woven-finds-from-pavlov-i-czech-republic-c-26000-years-ago/CD78BC4A39E2DD6958ACA29BA1BA30DA), Antiquity (Adovasio, Soffer and Klíma, 1996)
- [Ice Age clothing said to be more advanced than previously thought](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/02/000203074853.htm), ScienceDaily / University of Illinois
- [Backstrap looms](https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/collections-and-research/ethnology/mayan-textiles/weaving-technology/backstrap-looms), Sam Noble Museum, University of Oklahoma
- [Understanding the Archaeological Record: Reconstructing a Warp-Weighted Loom](https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10351), EXARC Journal

Fact-checked on 2026-10-13.

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