Cottoning on to cotton (Gossypium spp.) in Arabia and Africa during antiquity

Abstract

The occurrences of cotton in texts and in the archaeological record (seeds, fibres and textiles) demonstrate the emergence of cotton production centres in north-eastern Africa and western Arabia during the 1 st -4 th centuries AD, which is concurrent with an increase of cotton trade. These finds could correspond to any of the two Old World domestic cotton species: Gossypium arboreum L., probably domesticated in the Indus valley and traded since the 3 rd millennium BC, or Gossypium herbaceum L., an African species about which very little is known, beside its presence in Nubia during Antiquity. Our paper reviews the archaeobotanical, textile and textual data from north-eastern Africa and western Arabia, with specific attention to several sites located in Central Sudan (Muweis), Lower Nubia (Qasr Ibrim), western Egypt (Kellis, Amheida) and north-western Arabia (Madâ‘in Sâlih/Hegra). The intention of this review is to a) document how cotton production was integrated into agrarian and trade economies and b) examine current hypotheses regarding the diachronic distribution of the two species. The results highlight the importance of cotton in different agrosystems from the 1 st -2 nd centuries AD. In Central Sudan, Nubia and Dakhleh oasis, cotton cultivation appeared together with other new tropical/sub-tropical crops, such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum subsp. glaucum). This was not the case in north-western Arabia. It seems that cotton production occurred at first as small-scale experiments before scaling up during the 3 rd century AD, in conjunction with the spread of the water-wheel in the Nile valley. Cotton in Nubia, and possibly in other neighbouring areas, probably belonged to the African species G. herbaceum, which was in all likelihood domesticated in southern regions, perhaps Ethiopia. We suggest that the increase of exchanges across the Indian Ocean during Antiquity created a favourable context for the emergence of cotton production and its relative expansion before the Islamic period.