Treasures from the Sea. Sea Silk and Shellfish Purple Dye in Antiquity.

In 2012 the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research (CTR) at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen proposed to organise an international conference dedicated to two “Treasures from the Sea”, shellfish purple dye and sea silk, within a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship held by Hedvig Landenius Enegren at CTR. At the time, Francesco Meo from the University of Salento, was a Visiting Scholar at CTR and suggested that this conference be held in Lecce, located in Apulia, the heel of Italy. Lecce, besides being centrally placed in the Mediterranean, is close to Taranto, which in antiquity was famous for its purple-dye production. Moreover, sea silk was worked, up until the 1950s, at Lecce in the orphanage of Santa Filomena,1 now a building incorporated in the University of Salento. This made the beautiful city of Lecce the natural choice for the conference to take place. The scope of the conference was to merge theoretical and historical viewpoints of these two “treasures from the sea” with practical demonstrations in order to gain knowledge in how these marine resources are actually worked from scratch, their chaine opératoire, so to speak. This volume of the conference proceedings is composed of two sections. The first is dedicated to sea silk and the second to shellfish purple dye.