I have been invited to give a one-hour lecture about archaeological textiles (soon, oh-so-soon), and I have all the freedom you can imagine in choosing the focus topic. Which is nice... but also not helping, as there are so many things that are important, or can be seen as important, or are so closely interconnected to each other that one could talk hours about them.

So the question I've been asking myself is: What is most important? What is the thing to tell people (students with no prior knowledge about archaeological textiles) about the world of textile archaeology? What does one really need to know, even if one knows nothing else at all about medieval or historic textiles?

If you had to pick one single thing as the most important message about textiles and textile production in history and archaeology - what would that be?

Your input would be very, very welcome while I go on to wrack my brains. (With coffee support. I think I need coffee now.)