Since the Dyeing Experiment at the Forum went so well, Heather Hopkins and I are considering to present it in Cardiff in January next year. Which means a trip to Cardiff - I've never been to Wales before, and being quite fond of Dr Who and Torchwood, this is even more of a reason to go there.

Today, though, the first (and actually most important) thing on my list is to wrap up the bookkeeping for the quarter and send off the VAT forms to the tax folks. Work I love... not, but sadly, it's necessary. (Good thing about it? Having to send off the forms forces me to keep the books up to date and well sorted.)

And while I'm sweating about little numbers black and red, you might enjoy this:

There is a digital charter archive sponsored by the DFG, online. I don't know how good the English translation of the page really is, but the charters are not English anyways... the database seems to be searchable, and they are working on expanding it with more items. Go see the "Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk" if that sounds interesting to you.

Since I was speaking of Cardiff: The call for papers for the Experimental Archaeology Conference is still running, so if you want to participate, you have until November. More info is on their blogsite (I'd say website, but it runs on blog software).

Going to Cardiff = travel. Travel = interesting topic. Archaeologik has posted a picture of a medieval arterial road without firm surface, and I think it looks spectacular.

And finally, making access to unavailable and out-of-stock books possible seems to slowly spread - which is a totally wonderful thing! The book that I last heard about is this one:

Cathy Raymond asked in a comment about my last Lengberg finds mention:

I blogged about that particular item awhile ago, pointing out its resemblance to the ancient Roman subligar which was worn by women, and an anonymous blogger commented that the Lengberg find had been identified as a man's garment. The blogger also claimed that a lot of 15th c German images show men wearing such garments.

The University of Innsbruck's web article on the finds agrees with my anonymous blogger--it identifies the item as a man's garment, and remarks, I believe, that it was found close to a wool fabric scrap believed to have come from a codpiece. Given that the Lengberg finds did not come from graves, I don't think that sort of association, in and of itself, is persuasive evidence. But there may be other evidence I don't know anything about that supports the identification of the garment as male.

Can you point me to any images confirming that men wore such garments? The English and French images with which I am familiar show men wearing briefs that look more like modern Fruit of the Loom briefs, but I'm not very familiar with 15th German miniatures or artwork.

These pictures are not very frequent, and most of the examples I have found are from crucifiction scenes where the two other guys are shown as well, or from similar martyr scenes. One example from a crucifiction scene, from end-of-15th-century Austria, is here in the IMAREAL. If you search for "Kreuzigung" with the timespan 1300-1600, there is at least one more example. When I'm specifically searching for those undies, I am thus looking for crucifiction scenes - though those only showing Christ will not suffice, since he's invariably shown with a cloth covering his nethers, no modern underwear.

Sometimes the corresponding undies are also shown in bed scenes or in "battle for the trousers" scenes. Those topics are usually searchable in most piccie databases, so I'd recommend them as search terms.

(Technically, you can also search for clothing - underwear or underpants on IMAREAL. However, the tagging is not always complete or correct, and that search will not necessarily find you all the instances. This is not intended to bash the IMAREAL tagging - I have a private, tagged, picture database and I do know how hard it is to do it consistently and correctly all the time.)

Oh, and regarding the male-or-female discussion: We have proof (picture proof) that these types of underpant were worn by men, but that does not exclude them being worn by women. We just have no picture (or other) proof for it yet. So personally, I would say that it's not very likely that a lot of women wore them, but that they might have been used by some, or in some circumstances as for controlling blood during menstruation, for example.

I hope that helps!

... so maybe you have the desire to look at pictures?

There is a large-ish list of picture databases and meta-search sites for pictures here on Wikiversity. The text is German (but the links are clickable from anywhere in the world, as usual), and lots of the databases are probably non-relevant regarding medieval textiles and costume, but have a look yourself. The last parcel is international sources, so at least they should also be available in English.

And if you find a real gem in there somewhere, please tell me!

This time courtesy of the Bodleian Library - it's in three categories, with two of them interesting and helpful for non-library users, since they are open access.

And the University of Notre Dame somewhere in the United States has a digital library of their pre-1600 manuscripts, searchable also by keywords - at least this is what the site promises, I had a timeout error when I tried my usual keyword.

And finally, a truly huge collection of links to museum databases and digital collections. It's 147 items long, not all of them medieval, but certainly with plenty of useful and interesting databases.

And now I finally have a few less tabs open in my browser!

First of all, one of those links I mentioned a good while ago: the Cambridge Digital Library. There's actually two sites, and older and a new one, listing some books that are digitised either partly or (in case of the newer site) cover-to-cover. The link goes to the old one (which has a link to the new one right on top).

Unfortunately, my standard tests of searchability (using the terms "spinning wheel", "spinning" and "spindle", sometimes also "wool" and "distaff") did not yield any results, and it does not seem as if there are keywords matched to the pages or illuminations. Still, it's old books with pics, online for free.

More old books, online for free (provided they are already public domain) can be found in the HathiTrust Library. There is the possibility to create a login and put together a collection of items, or browse others' collections. That includes 18th century cookbooks, for those of you who favour an old-fashioned roast.

And speaking of books... have you ever wondered why some folks offer out-of-print (or even still in print) books on amazon for really, really ridiculously high prices? It seems that pricing algorithms are to blame. Those companies don't even set the prices themselves, they are having a programme do that, which can lead to interesting results - as described here.

That was not so miscellaneous, right? I can change that.

Here. Gratuitous cat pic.

First of all a link to an archaeological find (h/t to Cathy, who blogged this first ): Unique find at Viking Burial Place (with textiles).

Then there's an ebook library with lots of free ebooks, including some about archaeology. As with one of the library links I posted before, there's unfortunately no proper "about" info - the site footer is written in something that looks like kyrillic script to me. Use with your own conscience and smarts intact, and please consider buying a version of a book through your book dealer of preference in case you really like one of the books.

And finally, a link to one of the databases that I wrote about a few days ago: the Contini-Volterra Photographic Archive, with images from the 12th to 20th century. They have a searchable database with descriptions, though "spindle" and "spinning" are not in there, and all pics I have seen in my glance at it were black and white. Still, lots of pictures and searchable by, for example, saints' names.

There is a bunch of emails with interesting content in my inbox, and it's time for me to finally post all that stuff here.

First of all, the knitted 16th century cap collection of the Museum of London is now online. The
73 caps, coifs, cap fragments, linings and earpieces have been newly photographed, with captions containing contextual and technical information. All the pieces will have their full captions in the next two weeks.

The caps and their parts are of a large group of material excavated from sites around London by
workmen in the early 20th century. They represent an insight into everyday urban clothing and a high level of technical skill in their knitted, fulled and napped construction. Caps of this style are in collections across Europe and North America and are the focus of a lot of research interest, so we are pleased to make a large group available to the wider research community.

To browse the caps, go to the Collections Online site and enter ‘cap’ in the Keyword field with the date range 1500-1600 in the search fields.

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If you are in the mood for a conference in the winter, here's a call for papers: ‘Crafting-in-the-World: the temporal and spatial dynamics of craft and its practitioners’. It is a proposed session for the 34th Annual Meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group, which will be held at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, from the 17th-19th of December 2012. You can view the conference website at: http://www.liv.ac.uk/sace/livetag/index.htm and get more info there. 

Crafting-in-the-World: the temporal and spatial dynamics of craft and its practitioners.
Whilst the last two decades have witnessed a prolific interest in craft studies, which have increasingly acknowledged the sociality of craft, the role of choice, and the importance of the body in the development and transmission of craft traditions, there remains an uncomfortable dichotomy between the temporal and spatial understandings of craft practice. The abundance of existing research has traditionally focused on either describing production processes or attempted to theorise how the finished products of craft acquire meaning. The separation of object from process has resulted in the products of craft looming un-tethered to practice, devoid of spatial and temporal understandings of craft practice.
In addition and despite claims to the contrary to this, there has been little coherent collaboration between academic specialisms, which has only served to heighten the fragmented nature of craft study and impeded our understanding of the subject as a whole. In an attempt to address these issues this session will encourage multidisciplinary engagement with the topic of craft, focusing on the temporal and spatial embeddedness of craft activities; what we term Crafting-in-the-World.
We are seeking contributions that will discuss the acts and arenas of production and the reunification of products with their formative processes to embrace a holistic approach to the study of innovation, production, and consumption. To complement this we invite papers that examine the intrinsic relationship between practice and space, exploring the ways in which practice is manifested in the landscape through time, looking at both the physical remains of production and the expression of crafting traditions. Contributions addressing experimental work are particularly welcome.

Papers for the session could address the following themes:
•       Reconciling continuity and change: redundancy, innovation and change (every innovation involves loss and gain); re-contextualisation of innovations; why some things change and others don’t (i.e., there is no such thing as progress).
•       Spatial articulation of craft: technological ‘features’ as architecture; space shaping practices and practices shaping space; compartmentalization of space and time geographies.
•       Tangled web of technological practice: communities of practice; Complementing, referencing, incorporating aspects of other crafts; mobile crafts (i.e., itinerant crafts people).
 
If you wish to submit to the session, please email Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein. by the 27th of June with the following:
 •       Paper title (maximum of 20 words)
 •       Paper abstract (150 words max)
 •       Your name, affiliation and contact details.

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There's a  new magazine (or e-zine) out called Kritische Archäologie (Critical Archaeology), and it seems to be at least partly in English. The whole first issue can be seen on their website.

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And finally, there's another online database of stuff: OPAL, Lower Saxonia's portal of artefacts. I have not (yet) found much textile stuff there, but it's worth a browse nevertheless.

That's it for today - hopefully you have found something that interests you!