Researchers find 3,500-year-old loom that reveals textile revolution

Summary

Alicante. Monday 23 March 2026 Approximately 3,500 years ago, in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo in present-day Villena, a fire razed dwellings and workshops to the ground. However, the same fire that destroyed part of the village also helped preserve an object that is incredibly hard to document in archaeology: a loom with a largely wooden structure. Recently published in the journal Antiquity, this finding by a team of researchers from several Spanish universities is one of only a few known cases in Mediterranean Europe in which both the set of loom weights and components made from wood and plant fibres have been preserved. The article is authored by University of Alicante (UA) researchers Gabriel García Atiénzar, Paula Martín de la Sierra Pareja, Virginia Barciela González and Mauro S. Hernández Pérez, Ricardo Basso Rial (University of Granada) and Yolanda Carrión Marco (Universitat de València). UA Professor of Prehistory Gabriel García Atiénzar explains that the fire generated a very specific archaeological context where “the collapse of the ceiling was crucial […] resulting in a sealed space in which the area was suddenly destroyed and immediately buried, enabling its preservation”. The loom components – including charred timbers, clay weights and esparto ropes – were trapped beneath the remains of the collapsed ceiling. The loom appeared during the excavation of a circulation area on the western slope of the settlement, where the researchers found a raised platform with a dense concentration of clay weights. According to University of Granada predoctoral researcher Ricardo Basso Rial, this evidence allowed the team to identify the device with a high degree of certainty, as “although the loom was recovered from a collapsed area and some pieces were missing, the compact set of 44 cylindrical weights with a central perforation, most of them about 200 grams in weight, is characteristic of a vertical warp-weighted loom”. Several pine timbers in a paral...