The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fibre resources and availability and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles. Technological and economic practices in the production of textiles - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - thereby play a major role. Contributions to the volume investigate the beginnings of wool use in western Asia and southeastern Europe. Both wild as well as early domesticated sheep are characterized by a hairy rather than a woolly coat. This raises the question of when and where woolly sheep emerged. Wool as a fibre has played a major role both economically and socially in both western Asian and European societies, and it continues to do so up to the modern day. Despite the importance of wool as a fibre resource, contributors demonstrate clearly that its development and use can only be properly addressed in the context of a consideration of other fibers, both plant and animal. Only within a framework that takes into account historically and regionally variable strategies of procurement, processing, and the products of different types of fibers is it possible to gain real insights into the changing roles played by fibers and textiles in the lives of people in different places and times in the past. WOLFRAM SCHIER is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to that he held positions as Assistant Professor at Heidelberg University and as Professor at the universities of Bamberg and Würzburg. His research focuses on the Neolithic of south-eastern and central Europe, social structure and social change during the European Iron Age, and the diachronic and comparative archaeology of settlements and landscape. Currently, he is also researching the spread of prehistoric innovations (production of wool and copper), archaeo-astronomy, prehistoric transfer of knowledge and neolithisation. He is the author of numerous articles and co-edited several conference volumes such as Population Dynamics in Prehistory and Early History (2012, with Elke Kaiser and Joachim Burger), Farming in the forest – Ecology and economy of fire in prehistoric agriculture (2014, with Felix Bittmann, Renate Gerlach and Manfred Rösch) and The Neolithic and Eneolithic in Southeast Europe (2014, with Florin Draşovean). He is also editor-in-chief of Praehistorische Zeitschrift. SUSAN POLLOCK is professor at the Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to that she was Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY. She has longstanding research interests in the village and early state societies of Western Asia and has conducted field projects in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey as well as Turkmenistan. She researches commensality and food-related practices, processes of subjectivation, political economy, and feminist approaches to the past. She is the author of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden that Never Was, editor of Between Feasts and Daily Meals. Toward an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces, and co-editor (with Reinhard Bernbeck and Birgül Öğüt) of Looking Closely. Excavations at Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan, 2010-2014. COMPETITION THE THE COMPETITION OF FIBRES FIBRES OF EDITED BY WOLFRAM SCHIER & SUSAN POLLOCK EDITED BY WOLFRAM SCHIER & SUSAN POLLOCK EARLY TEXTILE PRODUCTION IN WESTERN ASIA, SOUTH-EAST AND CENTRAL EUROPE (10000―500 BC) ISBN 978-1-78925-429-7 www.oxbowbooks.com