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Collection
Certain materials have always been precious such as gold for its lustre, incorruptibility, and ease to work but some ancient cultures often gave a very high value to more unusual materials. The Romans loved Tyrian purple dye, the Incas prized fine textiles above all, and for the Chinese jade was extra special and even had associations of immortality. This collection looks at some of those precious materials, why they were revered by the ancients and what their craftspeople did with them.
Such was the value given to fine textiles that the Incas often required its production as tribute or tax from conquered peoples. To this end, specific quantities of wool or cotton were given to subject weavers each year so that they might produce a calculated quantity of textiles.
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About the Author
![Mark Cartwright]()
Mark is a full-time writer, researcher, historian, and editor. Special interests include art, architecture, and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share. He holds an MA in Political Philosophy and is the WHE Publishing Director.
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License & Copyright
Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 13 November 2018. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
