Bronze Age! Yes, that's a bit before my usual time span, but I'm getting more and more fascinated by these very early textiles. First of all, I wonder how much of a difference the fibre makes - would you be able to tell, from the touch of the finished cloth, whether the fibre has 15 micron 0r 22, or 30?

I'm also fascinated by an oddness in the weaving technique. The surviving blankets were huge - the one from Egtved was 190 by 258 cm. That is a width that would be hard to handle for a single weaver. Add to that the fact that there are weft crossings in the fabric - there's just one weft per shed, but it's not the same one all the way through. Weft A comes from the left, weft B from the right, and at some point roughly in the middle, both go to the surface of the fabric and cross each other. Then weft A continues its journey to the right in the next shed, while weft b goes to the left, and they turn normally at the selvedge. This sometimes occurs with three weft threads instead of two.

Thanks to the wonderful image database of the Danish National Museum, you can have a look at this weft crossing thing in the Trindhoj blanket here. There's some crossings in the area left of the hole - you can download the image and then go hunting for these oddities with your image viewer of choice.

My suspicion is that two (or even three) weavers worked together on these superwide fabrics, and the crossings are where the spools or sticks or whatever they used changed hands from one weaver to the other.

This is really fascinating, and I'd love to try this out. The only tiny issue is that this requires a superwide loom (with the corresponding large number of weights, and large amounts of yarn), and some other people willing to have a go at weaving... Though a bit of testing might be possible with a loom and fabric with less width, to get an idea of the method, at least.

 

If you're interested in learning more about purple mollusc dye but missed the webinar a while ago - the recording of the session is available in the video archive of the American School of Classical Studies, and you can find it here.

There's a lot more things in the archive as well, sorted by category, so if you're into Classical studies, it's probably worth a look and a browse.

In not-so-classical news, I've been very busy sending out distaffs and spindles in preparation for the next online classes, and I'm already looking forward to the next one. If you'd like to join in for the English language one on June 30, there's still a few days left to book: I've set the deadline to June 10 to make sure that the parcel with the kit will definitely arrive in time within Europe. So don't miss it!

We're having wonderful, sunny, early spring-like weather here; so nice and sunny that it's possible to open up windows during the day and enjoy fresh, if still cool, air a lot.

Non-weather-wise, it doesn't look quite as good: numbers of new infections are already on the rise again, which probably is due to the new virus variants getting more and more widespread. The really obnoxious thing about all this is that as of today, some more things are opening again. Hairdressers, for instance, but also garden shops and garden markets. Schools have returned to some state of openness all over the country (though of course every single one of our 16 federal states has its own rules, and its own schedule). There are debates about opening up more, and quickly - and I am quite concerned that we'll be up in the 300 incidence area soon if that is really done. (We might get there even if it's not done. I don't trust the current curve.)

Meanwhile, there's weird distrust towards the AstraZeneca vaccine. Which is... argh. Even if it is a bit less efficient than the mRNA types, it's still offering solid protection. However, since about no single place has its logistics properly managed, there's hundreds of thousands of doses sitting in fridges instead of getting jabbed into arms. Can I repeat? Argh. Especially since there's enough people who would be happy to get dosed with AZ straight away. My arm would be offered in a jiffy, too!

I really don't get why the stuff is not getting offered to people further down the priority line instead of sitting there. Really, if time is of the essence when vaccinating, if someone refuses, they can wait for however long it takes for them to get whatever they want to have as vaccine, but there should be enough people registered already that those doses can get out. May I repeat? Aargh.

Enough with the ranting for now, though - let me offer you some links, because what is better to take one's head off of current stupidities than old strings and old shit, right?

So here's a thousands-of-years-old ball of string.

Here's an article about dirt in medieval cities.

Or maybe take a look at the documents offered by the Shoe Museum in Lausanne, which include information about the footwear of Queen Aregonde.

This seems to be the week of happy discoveries: The Bryggen Papers are available for free, online, as pdf files. These volumes include (you may have guessed that from my enthusiasm) the one about textile equipment and its working environment!

There's a bunch of other interesting topics as well, such as children's games, fishing tackle, ropes and cordage, and locks and keys. Go have a look at the Bryggen Papers Archives!

If you're reading Middle High German texts, there's occasionally the mention of peacock feathers in clothing - quite often it's a "peacock hat", but sometimes there's also a reference to other garments in a kind of peacock-y style.

Nobody really knows what this kind of fabric was (or if there's several variations)... but I have now actually stumbled across a real piece of extant fabric that includes peacock feathers!

It was found in a relic case in St. Rumbold Cathedral, Mechelen, Belgium. The fabric has been radiocarbon dated to the 13th century, and it is a red cut velvet (silk pile on linen ground weave); applied across it, in a kind of cross-hatch pattern, are peacock feathers and gold threads (gilt silver around a silk core). Unfortunately the text doesn't say how exactly they were attached - but I'm utterly thrilled anyways.

It has been published in an article aptly named "A Box Full of Surprises" (available on academia.edu).

This is... way cool!

If you're looking for something to look forward to this Friday, I might have a helpful hint for you:

Alexandra Makin (who does the Cuthbert Embroidery project, in which me and Margit have been involved regarding the embroidery threads) and Ronja Lau (who is working about band-woven finds, and who I've had the chance of meeting during a Forum) will be the guests on EXARC's Finally Friday this week.

The title of their discussion is "Sew much to do, sew little time", and I'm sure it will be a very interesting one! If you'd like to tune in, check out the EXARC link. The event starts on August 7, at 17:00 Amsterdam time; it will be streamed via Discord, so you will need to have a discord login (free) and register yourself on the EXARC server; the link is on their Finally Friday page.

In the meantime, you can check out Alex' website to read a bit about Ronja's research (who has recently been interviewed there) and the Cuthbert Maniple project. I hope you have fun!

Too many tabs open in my browser - you know what that means: Link Post!

I don't know if you know about the more-or-less satirical party "Die Partei" in Germany, but they actually have two people in the EU parliament. Both of them are sort of doing the job of a medieval fool, trying to point out the absurdities and stupidities that nobody else mentions or dares to mention. With varying effect - but who knows, maybe it will change something over time. At least it's a way of keeping updated on things that are happening in the parliament, and on getting a few insights of how stuff works there (or doesn't work).

One of them, Nico Semsrott, now has started a youtube series he calls the "Nico Semsrott Show", explaining stuff. Here's the first episode, in English (to reach more people) with German captions available:


This article about a special blue dye is already a bit older itself, but I found it still interesting - it was used to dye the tassels on prayer shawls, and provided by a species of Murex molluscs.

The melting glaciers in Norway reveal archaeological finds - which is a wonderful source for archaeology, but still feels like a bad thing overall to me. Climate change will kick us all in the ass before long.

Finally, here's a concert titled "The Wool Merchant and The Harp" in the Leeds programme, featuring Leah Stuttard playing the harp.