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THE CLOTHED BODY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
17-19 January 2002

Diana Wardle
University of Birmingham

Bare Breasts and Codpieces

Although the varieties of costume worn in the Aegean Bronze Age are well known from wall paintings and other illustrations, nothing else survives to inform us about the kinds of fabric and techniques of manufacture employed. In these circumstances only experiment through reconstruction and 'use' can help us approach these questions. The opportunity to do this was provided some years ago through the 'Homer's Heroes' exhibition and the creation of two of the elaborate women's costumes seen in so many of the wall paintings of Knossos, Thera, Mycenae and Pylos. These resulted from careful research and were designed to be worn by living models as well as by exhibition dummies, thus enabling the natural hang of the material and its behaviour in motion to be explored and recorded. Although the results were very satisfactory, the experiments were inevitably controlled by the preconceptions of the creators.

An approach by a film company earlier this year with the request to borrow the costumes for reconstruction scenes offered a fresh opportunity for experiment and record, but this time without any control on my part. The costumes were worn in a variety of situations and action scenes as demanded by the producer which tested their wearability to the full and confirmed that they offered one (if not the only) probable solution to their nature. In addition the request for accurate reproductions of Minoan codpieces and Mycenaean kilts offered new challenges to ingenuity and realism in producing 'sportswear for the active'. Bull leaping Minoan style is unlikely to be covered by any University insurance policy and I was relieved to learn that the codpieces were worn by the modern bull leapers in the Camargue with loss of neither mobility nor manhood.