If you've done research about early medieval embroidery, you've probably come across the Maaseik embroideries - silk and goldwork, preserved in Maaseik, and there's pictures of them online at kikirpa.be.

Brand new, though, is this: Alexandra Makin has made a presentation about these pieces, and the results of an examination that she did. Watch it right here:

Time for a link post again!

Viking age embroidery, of the spectacular type.

Archaeology in GB is threatened through a new regulation.

Energy efficiency in old buildings can be a problem - for example the old windows don't hold in the heat, or up to modern standards. There's been a project in Germany to test solutions for this, with good success. That is very nice! (Here's an article in German about it.)

Bronze Age fabrics in Denmark were, to a rather large percentage, made from imported wool. How can one tell? By strontium isotope analysis. The future helping to understand the past! You can read more about this here.

In Germany, the pandemic has led to a lot more bikes being sold than before - especially e-bikes. Here's a little article about the beginnings of the bike (in German or English).

Reconstructions of textile finds are always including a bit of interpretation - the more fragmented the finds, the more interpretation is necessary. That is just normal, but something that is not always mentioned straight out in exhibitions.

So I'm always quite delighted when this is made clear - as is the case in this article about "Fashioning the Viking Age", which shows dress reconstructions based on two spectacular finds. There's also an instagram account with a lot more pretty pictures. Absolutely worth a look!

I'm back with my Bronze Age Fibre problem. Well, it's not just my problem... it's a pretty common one if you look at reproducing fabrics from that time. Let's take a look...

Modern Merino wool, which is seen as rather fine stuff, has - if of the fine kind - fibre thicknesses of around 20 micron. Sometimes you get extrafine, which is at about 17 micron.

Bronze age fibres were, mostly, around 17 micron. There's fluctuations, of course, but that's the main component of the textiles - really, really fine fibres. Then there's some few extra coarse ones thrown in, with 45-150 micron thickness. A diagram of fibre thicknesses counted was published in Skals, I., & Mannering, U. (2014). Investigating Wool Fibres from Danish Prehistoric Textiles. Archaeological Textiles Review, 56, 24-34, and thanks to the generousness of ATR, you can download the whole issue with the article included here. To save you the search, the histogram is on p 26, and it looks like this:



Getting this mix of fibres is difficult these days. I have gotten some superduperfine special wool now, with (according to my supplier) around 15 micron of fibre thickness. You can see it to the very left in this picture; next to it is a sample of my beloved Eider wool, and on the right Valais Blacknose wool.



Even though it's just a macro photograph, I think the difference is quite clear. The difference when you touch it is very clear as well - the superduperfine wool feels like silk, and it's supershiny (which is partly due to some post-shearing treatment), while the Eider and Valais are just normal shiny.

I've also compared it to the Manx Louaghtan, which is an old breed, and to another wool sample that I got for these comparison reasons:



Again the superfine is on the left, followed by my South American test candidate, then the Manx (which appears more saturated brown than in real life) and, for comparison, the Eider wool again. Both candidates are definitely finer than the Eider wool (which should have around 30-33 micron), but considerably coarser than the superduper benchmark.

And here you are. The Bronze Age Fibre Problem, in pictures. The superduperfine wool lacks the coarse fibres strewn in, and has been seriously processed to make it silky, smooth, and shiny. It also is very, very white, and BA fibres are mostly quite heavily pigmented. The two coloured wools have a mix of coarse and fine, but way too many coarse fibres strewn in to match the BA originals. They are, however, nicely pigmented.

So, like with many reconstruction projects, there's the choice between compromises. Use the very fine fibre although it has been heavily processed, dye it, and accept the fact that it lacks the coarse hairs? Try to blend some extra coarse fibres in (it would still need to be dyed)? Or use a wool that is naturally pigmented and not supertreated, but has too coarse fibres, or too many coarse fibres for the amount of fine ones?

Or... would someone please invent a time machine and fetch a handful of Bronze Age sheep? Pretty please?