Kostyonki-Borshchyovo archaeological complex
The Kostyonki-Borshchyovo archaeological complex is an extended Upper Paleolithic site, covering 30 km2 in the area of Kostyonki and Borshchyovo on the western middle bank of the Don River in Khokholsky District, Voronezh Oblast, some 25 km south of the city of Voronezh. It is divided sites Kostenki-1–21 and Borshchevo-1–5, which are in turn divided into 10 stratigraphical layers, it is known for its high concentration of cultural remains of anatomically modern humans from the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era, before 40,000 years ago. Finds are on exhibit at the State Archaeological Museum-Reserve Kostyonki. Mammoth teeth were found at the site from an early time. Cornelis de Bruijn wrote in 1703: "In the locality in which we were, to our great surprise, we found many elephant teeth, of which I kept one myself, for the sake of curiosity, but I can not understand how these teeth could get here. True, the Emperor told us that Alexander the Great, passing this river, as some historians assure, reached the small town of Kostenka, about eight versts from here, that it could well be that at that time several elephants had fallen, the remains of which are still here today."The site is mentioned by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1768.
The settlement name Kostyonki itself is a derivation from кость "bone". Kostenki-1 was excavated by I. S. Polyakov in 1879. Further excavations during 1881–1915 were searches for stone tools. Systematic excavations were performed from the 1920s, most notably those led by P. P. Efimenko during 1923–1938. In the second half of the 20th century it was recognized that there were other sites in the neighbourhood, now labelled Kostenki-1 to Kostenki-21 and Borshchevo-1 to Borshchevo-5; the most famous of these are Kostenki-12 and Kostenki-14. Kostenki-1/2, Kostenki-1/3, Kostenki-6, Kostenki-11 and Kostenki 12/3 below the volcanic CI tephra layer are associated to the nontransitional local "Strelets culture", analogous to early Upper Paleolithic cultures from central and western Europe such as the Szeletian culture; this initial cultural development might be attributable to local Neanderthals. Ornaments predating the volcanic eruption, found at Kostenki 17/2, were perforated by a hand-operated rotary drill or drills.
Just above the ash layer sewing needles were found. Kostenki 1/1, Kostenki 4/2, Kostyonki 8/2 and Kostenki 21/3 belong to the eastern Gravettian. Kostenki 2, Kostenki 3, Kostenki 11-1a and Kostenki-19 belong to the Zamyatino culture. Kostenki 8/2 is eponymous of "Telman culture"; as of 2016, archaeological work is done at Kostenki-14, Kostenki-6, Kostenki-15, Kostenki-16, Kostenki-17 and Kostenki-21. In the period around 40-24 kya, a latitudinal clinal pattern of modern/Neanderthal traits was indicated in Europe; the Kostyonki sites are located at the more modern eastward end. The earliest directly dated human remains from this site are dated to 32,600 ± 1,100 14C years and consist of a tibia and a fibula, with traits classifying the bones as European early modern humans. In 2009, DNA was extracted from the remains of a male hunter-gatherer from Kostenki-12 who lived circa 30,000 BP and died aged 20–25, his maternal lineage was found to be mtDNA haplogroup U2. He was covered with red ochre. Kostenki 12 was found to belong to the patrilineal Y-DNA haplogroup C1*.
A male from Kostenki-14, who lived 35–40,000 BP, was found to belong to mtDNA haplogroup U2. His Y-DNA haplogroup was C1b*; the Kostenki-14 genome represents early evidence for the separation of Western Eurasian and East Asian lineages. It was found to have a close relationship to both "Mal'ta boy" of central Siberia and to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Europe and western Siberia, as well as with a basal population ancestral to Early European Farmers, but not to East Asians. A layer of Campanian volcanic ash from about 45,000 years ago has been found above some of the finds, showing that humans inhabited the site before this; the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption of the Phlegraean Fields volcano occurred about 39 kya. The explosion of 500 cubic kilometers ignimbrite was the largest in the last 200,000 years of European history. Pazynych, Wasyl. Could volcanic ash from the Apennines reach the Kostenki site
Woodblock printing
Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China during the 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced in the 15th century in India. Prior to the invention of woodblock printing and stamps were used for making impressions; the oldest of these seals came from Egypt. The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress onto clay tablets goes back to early Mesopotamian civilization before 3000 BC, where they are the most common works of art to survive, feature complex and beautiful images.
A few much larger brick stamps for marking clay bricks survive from Akkad from around 2270 BC. There are Roman lead pipe inscriptions of some length that were stamped, amulet MS 5236 may be a unique surviving gold foil sheet stamped with an amulet text in the 6th century BC; however none of these used ink, necessary for printing, but stamped marks into soft materials. In both China and Egypt, the use of small stamps for seals preceded the use of larger blocks. In Europe and India, the printing of cloth preceded the printing of paper or papyrus; the process is the same—in Europe special presentation impressions of prints were printed on silk until at least the 17th century. The wood block is prepared as a relief pattern, which means the areas to show'white' are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in'black' at the original surface level; the block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is necessary only to ink the block and bring it into firm and contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print.
The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography, though the term is used in English. For colour printing, multiple blocks are used, each for one colour, although overprinting two colours may produce further colours on the print. Multiple colours can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the woodblocks. There are three methods of printing to consider: Stamping Used for many fabrics, most early European woodcuts; these items were printed by putting paper or fabric on a table or a flat surface with the block on top, pressing, or hammering, the back of the block. Rubbing Apparently the most common for Far Eastern printing. Used for European woodcuts and block-books in the 15th century, widely for cloth; the block is placed face side up on a table, with the fabric on top. The back of the paper or fabric is rubbed with a "hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton".
Printing in a press "Presses" only seem to have been used in Asia in recent times. Simple weighted presses may have been used in Europe. Printing-presses were used. A deceased Abbess of Mechelen in Flanders in 1465 had "unum instrumentum ad imprintendum scripturas et ymagines... cum 14 aliis lapideis printis", too early to be a Gutenberg-type printing press in that location. In addition, jia xie is a method for dyeing textiles using wood blocks invented in the 5th-6th centuries in China. An upper and a lower block is made, with carved out compartments opening to the back, fitted with plugs; the cloth folded a number of times, is inserted and clamped between the two blocks. By unplugging the different compartments and filling them with dyes of different colours, a multi-coloured pattern can be printed over quite a large area of folded cloth; the method is not printing however, as the pattern is not caused by pressure against the block. The earliest woodblock printing known is in colour—Chinese silk from the Han dynasty printed in three colours.
On paper, European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as chiaroscuro woodcuts. Colour is common in Asian woodblock printing on paper; the earliest dated book printed in more than 2 colours is Chengshi moyuan, a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606 and the technique reached its height in books on art published in the first half of the 17th century. Notable examples are the Hu Zhengyan's Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio of 1633, the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual published in 1679 and 1701. In Japan, a multi-colour technique called nishiki-e spread more and was used for prints from the 1760s on. Japanese woodcut became a major artistic form, although at the time it was accorded a much lower status than painting. In both Europe and Japan, book illustrations were printed in black ink only, colour reserved for individual artistic prints. In China, the reverse was true, colour printing was used in books on art and erotica.
The earliest woodblock printed fragments to survive are from Ch
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons; the best-known silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity. The shimmering appearance of silk is due to the triangular prism-like structure of the silk fibre, which allows silk cloth to refract incoming light at different angles, thus producing different colors. Silk is produced by several insects. There has been some research into other types of silk. Silk is produced by the larvae of insects undergoing complete metamorphosis, but some insects, such as webspinners and raspy crickets, produce silk throughout their lives. Silk production occurs in Hymenoptera, mayflies, leafhoppers, lacewings, fleas and midges. Other types of arthropods produce most notably various arachnids, such as spiders; the word silk comes from Old English: sioloc, from Ancient Greek: σηρικός, translit.
Sērikós, "silken" from an Asian source — compare Mandarin sī "silk", Manchurian sirghe, Mongolian sirkek. Several kinds of wild silk, which are produced by caterpillars other than the mulberry silkworm, have been known and used in China, South Asia, Europe since ancient times. However, the scale of production was always far smaller than for cultivated silks. There are several reasons for this: first, they differ from the domesticated varieties in colour and texture and are therefore less uniform. Thus, the only way to obtain silk suitable for spinning into textiles in areas where commercial silks are not cultivated was by tedious and labor-intensive carding. Commercial silks originate from reared silkworm pupae, which are bred to produce a white-colored silk thread with no mineral on the surface; the pupae are killed by either dipping them in boiling water before the adult moths emerge or by piercing them with a needle. These factors all contribute to the ability of the whole cocoon to be unravelled as one continuous thread, permitting a much stronger cloth to be woven from the silk.
Wild silks tend to be more difficult to dye than silk from the cultivated silkworm. A technique known as demineralizing allows the mineral layer around the cocoon of wild silk moths to be removed, leaving only variability in color as a barrier to creating a commercial silk industry based on wild silks in the parts of the world where wild silk moths thrive, such as in Africa and South America. Silk was first developed in ancient China; the earliest example of silk has been found in tombs at the neolithic site Jiahu in Henan, dates back 8,500 years. Silk fabric from 3630 BC was used as wrapping for the body of a child from a Yangshao culture site in Qingtaicun at Xingyang, Henan. Legend gives credit for developing silk to Leizu. Silks were reserved for the Emperors of China for their own use and gifts to others, but spread through Chinese culture and trade both geographically and and to many regions of Asia; because of its texture and lustre, silk became a popular luxury fabric in the many areas accessible to Chinese merchants.
Silk was in great demand, became a staple of pre-industrial international trade. In July 2007, archaeologists discovered intricately woven and dyed silk textiles in a tomb in Jiangxi province, dated to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty 2,500 years ago. Although historians have suspected a long history of a formative textile industry in ancient China, this find of silk textiles employing "complicated techniques" of weaving and dyeing provides direct evidence for silks dating before the Mawangdui-discovery and other silks dating to the Han Dynasty. Silk is described in a chapter of the Fan Shengzhi shu from the Western Han. There is a surviving calendar for silk production in an Eastern Han document; the two other known works on silk from the Han period are lost. The first evidence of the long distance silk trade is the finding of silk in the hair of an Egyptian mummy of the 21st dynasty, c.1070 BC. The silk trade reached as far as the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and North Africa; this trade was so extensive that the major set of trade routes between Europe and Asia came to be known as the Silk Road.
The Emperors of China strove to keep knowledge of sericulture secret to maintain the Chinese monopoly. Nonetheless sericulture reached Korea with technological aid from China around 200 BC, the ancient Kingdom of Khotan by AD 50, India by AD 140. In the ancient era, silk from China was the most lucrative and sought-after luxury item traded across the Eurasian continent, many civilizations, such as the ancient Persians, benefited economically from trade. Chinese silk making process Silk has a long history in India, it is known as Resham in eastern and north India, Pattu in southern parts of India. Recent archaeological discoveries in Harappa and Chanhu-daro suggest that sericulture, employing wild silk threads from native silkworm species, existed in South Asia during the time of the Indus Valley Civilization dating between 2450 BC and 2000 BC, while "hard and fast evidence" for silk production in China dates back to around 2570 BC. Shelagh Vainker, a s
Textile
A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibers. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, cotton, hemp, or other materials to produce long strands. Textiles are formed by weaving, crocheting, knotting or tatting, felting, or braiding; the related words "fabric" and "cloth" and "material" are used in textile assembly trades as synonyms for textile. However, there are subtle differences in these terms in specialized usage. A textile is any material made of interlacing fibres, including carpeting and geotextiles. A fabric is a material made through weaving, spreading, crocheting, or bonding that may be used in production of further goods. Cloth may be used synonymously with fabric but is a piece of fabric, processed; the word'textile' is from Latin, from the adjective textilis, meaning'woven', from textus, the past participle of the verb texere,'to weave'. The word'fabric' derives from Latin, most from the Middle French fabrique, or'building, thing made', earlier as the Latin fabrica'workshop.
The word'cloth' derives from the Old English clað, meaning a cloth, woven or felted material to wrap around one, from Proto-Germanic kalithaz. The first clothes, worn at least 70,000 years ago and much earlier, were made of animal skins and helped protect early humans from the ice ages. At some point people learned to weave plant fibers into textiles; the discovery of dyed flax fibres in a cave in the Republic of Georgia dated to 34,000 BCE suggests textile-like materials were made in prehistoric times. The production of textiles is a craft whose speed and scale of production has been altered beyond recognition by industrialization and the introduction of modern manufacturing techniques. However, for the main types of textiles, plain weave, twill, or satin weave, there is little difference between the ancient and modern methods. Textiles have an assortment of uses, the most common of which are for clothing and for containers such as bags and baskets. In the household they are used in carpeting, upholstered furnishings, window shades, coverings for tables and other flat surfaces, in art.
In the workplace they are used in scientific processes such as filtering. Miscellaneous uses include flags, tents, handkerchiefs, cleaning rags, transportation devices such as balloons, kites and parachutes. Textiles are used in many traditional crafts such as sewing and embroidery. Textiles for industrial purposes, chosen for characteristics other than their appearance, are referred to as technical textiles. Technical textiles include textile structures for automotive applications, medical textiles, agrotextiles, protective clothing. In all these applications stringent performance requirements must be met. Woven of threads coated with zinc oxide nanowires, laboratory fabric has been shown capable of "self-powering nanosystems" using vibrations created by everyday actions like wind or body movements. Textiles are made from many materials, with four main sources: animal, plant and synthetic; the first three are natural. In the 20th century, they were supplemented by artificial fibres made from petroleum.
Textiles are made in various strengths and degrees of durability, from the finest microfibre made of strands thinner than one denier to the sturdiest canvas. Textile manufacturing terminology has a wealth of descriptive terms, from light gauze-like gossamer to heavy grosgrain cloth and beyond. Animal textiles are made from hair, skin or silk. Wool refers to the hair of the domestic sheep or goat, distinguished from other types of animal hair in that the individual strands are coated with scales and crimped, the wool as a whole is coated with a wax mixture known as lanolin, waterproof and dirtproof. Woollen refers to a bulkier yarn produced from carded, non-parallel fibre, while worsted refers to a finer yarn spun from longer fibres which have been combed to be parallel. Wool is used for warm clothing. Cashmere, the hair of the Indian cashmere goat, mohair, the hair of the North African angora goat, are types of wool known for their softness. Other animal textiles which are made from hair or fur are alpaca wool, vicuña wool, llama wool, camel hair used in the production of coats, ponchos and other warm coverings.
Angora refers to the long, soft hair of the angora rabbit. Qiviut is the fine inner wool of the muskox. Wadmal is a coarse cloth made of wool, produced in Scandinavia 1000~1500 CE. Sea silk is an fine and valuable fabric, made from the silky filaments or byssus secreted by a gland in the foot of pen shells. Silk is an animal textile made from the fibres of the cocoon of the Chinese silkworm, spun into a smooth fabric prized for its softness. There are two main ty
Papyrus
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper, used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book. Papyrus is first known to have been used in Egypt, as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta, it was used throughout the Mediterranean region and in the Kingdom of Kush. Apart from a writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in the construction of other artifacts, such as reed boats, rope and baskets. Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE; the earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents date from c. 2560–2550 BCE. The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza.
In the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, prepared from animal skins. Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from. Early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, in the Græco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the papyrus scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking and a long roll, or scroll, was required to create large-volume texts. Papyrus had the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce, but it was fragile and susceptible to both moisture and excessive dryness. Unless the papyrus was of perfect quality, the writing surface was irregular, the range of media that could be used was limited. Papyrus was replaced in Europe by the cheaper, locally produced products parchment and vellum, of higher durability in moist climates, though Henri Pirenne's connection of its disappearance with the Muslim conquest of Egypt is contested.
Its last appearance in the Merovingian chancery is with a document of 692, though it was known in Gaul until the middle of the following century. The latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree, under Pope Victor II, 1087 for an Arabic document, its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by the Islamic world who learned of it from the Chinese. By the 12th century and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire, but papyrus was still an option. Papyrus was made in several prices. Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus which were sold in the Roman market of the day; these were graded by quality based on how fine, firm and smooth the writing surface was. Grades ranged from the superfine Augustan, produced in sheets of 13 digits wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping.
Until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known, that museums displayed them as curiosities. They did not contain literary works; the first modern discovery of papyri rolls was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until the only papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. Scholarly investigations began with the Dutch historian Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens, he wrote about the content of the Leyden papyrus, published in 1830. The first publication has been credited to the British scholar Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, who published for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, one of the Papyri Graecae Magicae V, translated into English with commentary in 1853; the English word "papyrus" derives, from Greek πάπυρος, a loanword of unknown origin. Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος; the Greek writer Theophrastus, who flourished during the 4th century BCE, uses papyros when referring to the plant used as a foodstuff and byblos for the same plant when used for nonfood products, such as cordage, basketry, or writing surfaces.
The more specific term βίβλος biblos, which finds its way into English in such words as'bibliography','bibliophile', and'bible', refers to the inner bark of the papyrus plant. Papyrus is the etymon of'paper', a similar substance. In the Egyptian language, papyrus was called wadj, djet; the word for the material papyrus is used to designate documents written on sheets of it rolled up into scrolls. The plural for such documents is papyri. Historical papyri are given identifying names — the name of the discoverer, first owner or institution where they are kept—and numbered, such as "Papyrus Harris I". An abbreviated form is used, such as "pHarris I"; these documents provide important information on ancient writings. When, in the 18th century, a library of ancient papyri was found in Herculaneum, ripples of expectation spread among the learned men of the time. However, since these papyri were badly charred, their unscrolling and deciphe
Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük was a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from 7500 BC to 5700 BC, flourished around 7000 BC. In July 2012, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.Çatalhöyük is located overlooking the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya in Turkey 140 km from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan. The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 m above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. There is a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east; the prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between the two mounds, the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favorable for early agriculture; the site was first excavated by James Mellaart in 1958. He led a team which further excavated there for four seasons between 1961 and 1965; these excavations revealed this section of Anatolia as a centre of advanced culture in the Neolithic period.
Excavation revealed 18 successive layers of buildings signifying various stages of the settlement and eras of history. The bottom layer of buildings can be dated as early as 7100 BC while the top layer is of 5600 BC. Mellaart was banned from Turkey for his involvement in the Dorak affair in which he published drawings of important Bronze Age artifacts that went missing. After this scandal, the site lay idle until 1993, when investigations began under the leadership of Ian Hodder at the University of Cambridge; these investigations are among the most ambitious excavation projects in progress according to archaeologist Colin Renfrew, among others. In addition to extensive use of archaeological science and artistic interpretations of the symbolism of the wall paintings have been employed. Hodder, a former student of Mellaart, chose the site as the first "real world" test of his then-controversial theory of post-processual archaeology; the site has always had a strong research emphasis upon engagement with digital methodologies, driven by the project's experimental and reflexive methodological framework.
Sponsors and collaborators of the current dig include Yapi Kredi, University of York, Selçuk University, British Institute at Ankara, Cardiff University, Stanford University, Turkish Cultural Foundation, University at Buffalo. Çatalhöyük was composed of domestic buildings, with no obvious public buildings. While some of the larger ones have rather ornate murals, the purpose of some rooms remains unclear; the population of the eastern mound has been estimated to be, at maximum, 10,000 people, but the population varied over the community’s history. An average population of between 5,000 and 7,000 is a reasonable estimate; the sites were set up as large numbers of buildings clustered together. Households looked to their neighbors for help and possible marriage for their children; the inhabitants lived in mudbrick houses. No footpaths or streets were used between the dwellings, which were clustered in a honeycomb-like maze. Most were accessed by holes in the ceiling and doors on the side of the houses, with doors reached by ladders and stairs.
The rooftops were streets. The ceiling openings served as the only source of ventilation, allowing smoke from the houses' open hearths and ovens to escape. Houses had plaster interiors characterized by steep stairs; these were on the south wall of the room, as were cooking hearths and ovens. The main rooms contained raised platforms that may have been used for a range of domestic activities. Typical houses contained two rooms for everyday activity, such as crafting. All interior walls and platforms were plastered to a smooth finish. Ancillary rooms were used as storage, were accessed through low openings from main rooms. All rooms were kept scrupulously clean. Archaeologists identified little rubbish in the buildings, finding middens outside the ruins, with sewage and food waste, as well as significant amounts of wood ash. In good weather, many daily activities may have taken place on the rooftops, which may have formed a plaza. In periods, large communal ovens appear to have been built on these rooftops.
Over time, houses were renewed by partial demolition and rebuilding on a foundation of rubble, how the mound was built up. As many as eighteen levels of settlement have been uncovered; as a part of ritual life, the people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the village. Human remains have been found in pits beneath the floors and beneath hearths, the platforms within the main rooms, under beds. Bodies were flexed before burial and were placed in baskets or wound and wrapped in reed mats. Disarticulated bones in some graves suggest that bodies may have been exposed in the open air for a time before the bones were gathered and buried. In some cases, graves were disturbed, the individual’s head removed from the skeleton; these heads may have been used in rituals. In a woman's grave spinning whorls were in a man's grave, stone axes; some skulls were plastered and painted with ochre to recreate faces, a custom more characteristic of Neolithic sites in Syria and at Neolithic Jericho than at sites closer by.
Vivid murals and figurines are found on interior and exterior walls. Distinctive clay figurines of wome
Knitting
Knitting is a method by which yarn is manipulated to create a textile or fabric used in many types of garments. Knitting creates multiple loops of yarn, called stitches, in a line or tube. Knitting has multiple active stitches on the needle at one time. Knitted fabric consists of a number of consecutive rows of intermeshing of loops; as each row progresses, a newly created loop is pulled through one or more loops from the prior row, placed on the gaining needle, the loops from the prior row are pulled off the other needle. Knitting may be done by using a machine. Different types of yarns, needle sizes, stitch types may be used to achieve knitted fabrics with different properties. Like weaving, knitting is a technique for producing a two-dimensional fabric made from a one-dimensional yarn or thread. In weaving, threads are always straight, running parallel either crosswise. By contrast, the yarn in knitted fabrics follows a meandering path, forming symmetric loops symmetrically above and below the mean path of the yarn.
These meandering loops can be stretched in different directions giving knit fabrics much more elasticity than woven fabrics. Depending on the yarn and knitting pattern, knitted garments can stretch as much as 500%. For this reason, knitting was developed for garments that must be elastic or stretch in response to the wearer's motions, such as socks and hosiery. For comparison, woven garments stretch along one or other of a related pair of directions that lie diagonally between the warp and the weft, while contracting in the other direction of the pair, are not elastic, unless they are woven from stretchable material such as spandex. Knitted garments are more form-fitting than woven garments, since their elasticity allows them to contour to the body's outline more closely. Extra curvature can be introduced into knitted garments without seams, as in the heel of a sock. Thread used in weaving is much finer than the yarn used in knitting, which can give the knitted fabric more bulk and less drape than a woven fabric.
If they are not secured, the loops of a knitted course will come undone. To secure a stitch, at least one new loop is passed through it. Although the new stitch is itself unsecured, it secures the stitch suspended from it. A sequence of stitches in which each stitch is suspended from the next is called a wale. To secure the initial stitches of a knitted fabric, a method for casting on is used. During knitting, the active stitches are secured mechanically, either from individual hooks or from a knitting needle or frame in hand-knitting. There are two major varieties of knitting: weft knitting and warp knitting. In the more common weft knitting, the wales are perpendicular to the course of the yarn. In warp knitting, the wales and courses run parallel. In weft knitting, the entire fabric may be produced from a single yarn, by adding stitches to each wale in turn, moving across the fabric as in a raster scan. By contrast, in warp knitting, one yarn is required for every wale. Since a typical piece of knitted fabric may have hundreds of wales, warp knitting is done by machine, whereas weft knitting is done by both hand and machine.
Warp-knitted fabrics such as tricot and milanese are resistant to runs, are used in lingerie. Weft-knit fabrics may be knit with multiple yarns to produce interesting color patterns; the two most common approaches are intarsia and stranded colorwork. In intarsia, the yarns are used in well-segregated regions. In the more complex stranded approach, two or more yarns alternate within one row and all the yarns must be carried along the row, as seen in Fair Isle sweaters. Double knitting can produce two separate knitted fabrics simultaneously. However, the two fabrics are integrated into one, giving it great warmth and excellent drape. In securing the previous stitch in a wale, the next stitch can pass through the previous loop from either below or above. If the former, the stitch is denoted as a ` plain stitch; the two stitches are related in that a knit stitch seen from one side of the fabric appears as a purl stitch on the other side. The two types of stitches have a different visual effect. Patterns and pictures can be created in knitted fabrics by using knit and purl stitches as "pixels".
Individual stitches, or rows of stitches, may be made taller by drawing more yarn into the new loop, the basis for uneven knitting: a row of tall stitches may alternate with one or more rows of short st
