Review of Łukasz Antosik, Wczesnośredniowieczne włókiennictwo na Śląsku (XI–XIII wiek) / Early Medieval Textile Production in Silesia (10th–13th century). Łódź 2025, pp. 315, published by Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

The textile production, and in particular drapery, was already highly developed in late medieval Silesia when the intensive urbanisation and colonisation of Silesia and the cultural breakthrough took place in the early 13th century and became, to a large extent, the driving force behind the civilisational and economic growth of the Silesian towns established at that time. This was particularly manifested through the development of market squares, which were the economic heart of every town and where the stalls of Silesian clothiers occupied a central place usually in the form of cloth halls built at great expense from stone and brick, which were the foundations of later market square blocks.1 For this reason, for years there have been calls for synthetic research into early medieval textile production in Silesia to identify the roots of the high level of craftsmanship that developed in this province.