"Saffron Crocus and Yellow Garments in Aegean Wall-Painting"

The discovery of well-preserved frescoes at Akrotiri on Thera has vastly expanded our awareness of the importance of color in Aegean Bronze Age costumes (C. Doumas, The WallPaintings of Thera, 1992, for good illustrations). Yellow dye, derived from saffron crocus, is particularly important in women's clothing at different stages in life, and some of these garments are further embellished with embroidered or printed crocus blossoms. By contrast, only one representation survives of a man wearing a yellow kilt. This paper explores the significance of color in early Greek costume as a means of communicating inclusion/exclusion; among women, clothes dyed yellow or decorated with crocus may signal the owner's participation in special rites or membership within special groups. Furthermore, the creation of such specialized clothing represents a means of transmitting social and craft skills from one generation to the next. The use of colored clothing as a type of visual language is well attested in other cultures and time periods; such comparisons help elucidate the ways in which Aegean costumes may have functioned. The gendered nature of the color yellow survives the transition from Bronze to Iron Age. In later periods of Greek culture, yellow continues to be an appropirate female color (e.g., the krokotos worn by the girls who served Artemis at Brauron). For males, it carries negative connotations (Jason's cloak in Pindar; Darius' shoes in Aeschylus; garments of effeminate politicians in Aristophanes) or signals sexual "otherness" (Dionysos' saffron tunic in the Pompe of Ptolemy II).