Dr. Ian Gilligan is Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology of the University of Sydney. He graduated in psychology (UNSW) and medicine (Sydney University) before studying prehistoric archaeology (Sydney University) and biological anthropology (PhD ANU). He specializes in the origin of clothing and the role of textiles in the transition to agriculture. He also has an interest in traditional clothing in Aboriginal Australia, particularly in Tasmania during the last ice age. In addition, he explores the wider psychological and philosophical aspects of wearing clothes. He’s also the author of the recent book Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory: Linking Evidence, Causes, and Effects (2018).

In this episode, we talk about the evolution of clothing and the adoption of agriculture in human societies. First, we talk about hypotheses as to how our naked skin might have evolved, and when in our evolutionary history we started wearing clothes and the environmental factors that favored its development. We also briefly refer to the limitations in terms of the information we can derive from studies on modern hunter-gatherers, if we’re trying to learn more about how our species evolved and how people behaved back in the Pleistocene. We go through the differences between simples and complex clothing (the latter includes textile clothing), and also between clothing based on animal skin and fur and clothing based on textiles. Then, we discuss the ways by which clothing might have played a causal role in the adoption of agriculture and making it the center of our economy, the problems that early agricultural societies went through, and also why we domesticated animals. We finish off by talking about the psychological and social aspects of clothing, including decoration.

Time Links:

00:56 The evolution of our naked skin

07:56 When did we start wearing clothes?

10:47 Artifacts archaeologists search for when studying clothing

15:09 The environmental factors that favor the development of clothing

17:22 Studying modern hunter-gatherers

24:52 We decorated our skin before we had clothing

28:37 Simple, complex and textile clothing

32:20 The differences between clothing based on animal skin and fur and clothing based on textiles

33:44 The relationship between clothing and agriculture

38:12 Agriculture before societies that put agriculture at the center of their food economy

42:37 The problems the agricultural societies have to deal with

48:20 The reasons why we domesticated

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