Agata Ulanowska is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aegean Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw. Her research interests focus on the Bronze Age Aegean, textile production and technology, experimental and experience archaeology and Aegean seals and sealing practices. She holds a PhD in Aegean archaeology from the University of Warsaw. Since 2013, she has continued a pioneering project, in which the process of gaining hands-on experience in textile techniques from the Aegean Bronze Age is documented, assessed and monitored. The collected records make it possible to compare the work and experience of modern actors, e.g. students, in an objective manner, and to draw conclusions about tacit dimensions of textile work, such as kinaesthetics, efficiency, experienced level of difficulty, or level of attention required at consecutive operational sequences of textile making.

In 2015-2017 she was awarded with FUGA post-doctoral grant of the National Science Centre for the project “Textile production in Bronze Age Greece – comparative studies of the Aegean weaving techniques”. In 2018 she was awarded another grant of the National Science Centre in Poland, to lead a 3-years project “Textiles and Seals. Relations between textile production and seals and sealing practices in Bronze Age Greece”.

Important publications:

Textile technology and Minoan glyptic. Representations of loom weights on Middle Minoan prismatic seals, in: K. Żebrowska, A. Ulanowska, K. Lewartowski (eds.), Sympozjum Egejskie. Papers in Aegean Archaeology, vol. I, Warsaw 2017, 57-66.

Ulanowska, A., Towards methodological principles for experience textile archaeology. Experimental approach to the Aegean Bronze Age textile techniques in the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Prilozi Instituta za arheologiju u Zagrebu 33 (2016), 317-339.

Ulanowska, A., The economics of weaving – aspects of labour in the Bronze Age Aegean, in: K. Droß-Krüpe (ed.), Textile Trade and Distribution in Antiquity. Textilhandel und -distribution in der Antike, Philippika 73, Wiesbaden 2014, 151-159.