If you're interested in horses, horse breeding, or ancient DNA studies, here's a paper posted on academia.edu about ancient horse DNA - discovering two now-extinct horse lineages, as well as proof that mules were already bred and used more than 2000 years ago. (Reading things on academia.edu is free, but you need to have a login.)

Medieval Clothing and Textiles, the annual journal, is out with vol. 15 and available directly via the publisher, Boydell & Brewer, or via the bookstore of your choice, priced at around 40 GBP.

Another interesting-sounding book, but, alas, for the typical prohibitive Brill price, is "Reassessing the Roles of Women as 'Makers' of Medieval Art and Architecture", edited by Therese Martin. There are snippets of the chapters available on the Brill page as previews, but even though the book is more than a thousand pages - for 254 €, I will certainly buy neither the ebook nor the hardcover.

Also behind a paywall, but also sounding interesting - especially if you are researching medieval food and cooking: Giles E.M. Gasper, Faith Wallis, Salsamenta pictavensium: Gastronomy and Medicine in Twelfth-Century England, The English Historical Review, Volume 131, Issue 553, 1 December 2016, Pages 1353–1385. This article is available via Oxford Academic (24-hr access costs 36 €), or you could try getting it via your library.

Finally, and for free for a change: A Faksimile and Transcript of "Nature Unbowelled", a 17th century book with recipes for loopbraided laces.

One of the things on my list of things I would like to do is make a short overview article about the sources for the different kinds of goods I carry - for myself, for the crafters who make these things for me, and of course for my customers. It's one of the things, however, that are usually a) not urgent, b) not crucial for being able to carry on, and c) taking a lot more time than expected or readily available.

From time to time, though, something comes up that prods me into looking for more info, and trying to collect that, and this has happened recently. The things under my scrutiny? Pins and needles. And oh, I can tell you... it's an abyss.

As is often the case, there is a little bit of literature that is easy to find, and that does give some information. For Germany, it's Stefan Krabath's work Die hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Buntmetallfunde nördlich der Alpen, and for Britain, Chris Caple has written a number of things about pins. In addition, some pins and needles are listed in the context of works about textiles or garments or textile/garment accessories.

Overall, though, this is a group of finds which is hard to find - and even if pins or needles are listed in some archaeological publication, there is often not much information about them. Ideally, I'd like to know the material (brass? bronze? copper? some other alloy?), the length, the thickness of the shaft, the date (which can be a real problem, as these things are typologically long-lived) and in addition, I'd like to have a drawing or at least a photograph. In many cases, there is none of this apart from the mention and a very rough date... which does not help me at all in looking for pieces to get someone to replicate.

Added difficulty: Germans like to use that "needle in a haystack" idiom, which means that it's a very good idea to put "-heuhaufen" in your searchwords (though that in turn might toss out valid results, the usual dilemma).

So I'm looking into articles and trying to get enough material together - to both write up a little info thing, and to decide on what I would like to have made (and then the next step is to find out if the metalworking people I've contacted can, and will, do it).

And this, of course, is where I segue into a bleg - if you have any nice documentation of pins (preferably high medieval, as the late stuff is way easier to get info about), please let me know - I might end up with replicas of these in my shop...

Here are a few things for the German readers among you - with one bonus English article, so I'll start with that one:

A woman from a medieval monastery close to Paderborn has been identified as a scribe through blue residue in the dental calculus between her teeth. The residue comes from lapis lazuli stones, which were used as a pigment in manuscript illumination. Here's the German-language article at Spiegel about this, and here is the full publication of the research in English.

And on to German-only: There is a special exhibition called "Verehrt, verwendet, vergessen" at the Alamannen-Museum Ellwangen, which is running until April 28. It is looking at the Alamannen in the context of politics and (contemporal) history - a very interesting topic. You can find more information about it here.

Also at the same museum: "Lebendige Geschichte", a two-day workshop for Living History people on February 16 and 17. This year, focus topic of the workshop will be immaterial cultural goods - such as music or belief systems. Another focus topic will be how to handle visitors with extreme right political views, and I think it is a very good idea to include this. If you are interested, you can find more information here - registration deadline is February 10.

Here's a short article about the earliest plant fibre technology: Splicing (not spinning). One of the many techniques that I still haven't found time to get into deeply. It's on my list, though. Very much.

If you're interested in embroideries, there's a new(ish) German book out: Christiane Elster: Die Textilen Geschenke Papst Bonifaz' VIII. (1294-1303) an die Kathedrale von Anagni. Päpstliche Paramente des späten Mittelalters als Medien der Repräsentation, Gaben und Erinnerungsträger. Petersberg : Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018. And here on Paroles d'Arts you can find a French review about the book, including some images so you can get an idea.

A very modern type of clothing - like out of a sci-fi book - is being developed: Clothing that extracts oxygen from water to let you breathe. It's not efficient enough yet to provide a human with the necessary oxygen, but I'm totally floored that this is possible at all!

Now for a bit of archaeology - a game board on stone that might be a clue to the spot where a monastery once existed.

Some more archaeology shows that cheese-making is a very old thing, and cheeses may have been connected to social status - and may have been a step in promoting the freaky gene that lets European adults produce lactase.

And some conservation issues, though rather modern ones: Plastics have become a part of our history, and they start degrading in bulk now, so conservators are struggling to keep that part of human cultural history intact.

 

One of the recurring questions about my spindle sticks, especially from modern spinners, is "Why don't they have a hook?" followed by "why don't they have a notch?" and "how do you fix the yarn without hook or notch?"

Finds of medieval spindle sticks are not too common (wood has that tendency to rot, and can be burned, and a spindle stick is not very spectacular so you'd want to carefully preserve it somewhere like you would a wooden altar, for instance) and they are published here and there, so putting together a good collection takes some rootling around. Even with surviving sticks, they are not always complete (the tips are often broken off), and then they may not be published in detail, with a drawing of the tips.

However... it does seem that the plain, un-notched and un-hooked spindle was very, very common, and I personally usually spin with the plain tips and am very comfortable with them.

There are instances of notched spindles in the medieval finds, though, and since I've been asked time and again about notches, I have finally looked through my sources, sharpened my little knife, practised some more... and am now offering optional notch cuts with my spindle sticks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="900"] Notches! From left to right: plain un-notched tip, horizontal notch, diagonal notch for z-spun yarn, diagonal notch for s-spun yarn.


They are available both in horizontal, where they will very securely keep a half-hitch for either spinning direction, and in diagonal, where they will either keep a half-hitch, or, if the thread is thin enough and you wind it around the spindle in the right way, hold the thread all by themselves. I've tested the diagonal notches, and they usually need a bit of getting used to, but then they work fine. They accommodate a thin thread, and the notch sort of latches onto the thread to hold it securely enough for spinning. It's not as secure as the hitch, though, so the probability of the spindle slipping out and falling down is a bit higher throughout.

When it works, though... it's really, really fun!

It's time to throw some unsorted links at you again. Most of the stuff is in German - sorry for those of you who don't read it, but they are just too interesting to pass them up.

Anke Domaske is making fibres from milk that is leftover and spoiled - a brilliant example of upcycling, to put it that way. The fibres are versatile, and are getting used in a variety of ways already. (Article in German.)

Archäologentage 2018 are taking place April 12-15, and the topic is Migration. More information can be found here (info material in German and French).

Christa Schwab has tried to find out a good mixture for making a vegetarian sausage after a medieval recipe. You can read more about what she did, and how it worked, over at her blog (in German, but with pictures).

More food-related stuff - remains of Iron-Age feasting, or at least eating, have been found at the Cairns broch, Orkney, Scotland.

Not recent, but still interesting: an article about traditional Icelandic embroidery, via Medievalists.net.

It looks like there might be a cure for the Varroa mite problem that is threatening the European Honey Bees - I do hope that this will be a full success. (Article is in German.)

Sometimes, your colleagues have surprising hobbies - one of my archaeology colleagues, for instance, writes music and sings. In this case, an eulogy on a house from 1534 that was recently demolished. It's in English, too.

Also in English: Some new research on one of the tablet-woven bands from Hallstatt (Halltex 152) by Maikki Karisto, together with Mervi Pasanen and Karina Grömer. Mervi's blogpost includes the new pattern draft.

Textilis has a study of knitting sheaths from North Yorkshire.

And that's it for today - finally a few less tabs open in the brower!

If you're interested in old textiles, you might have caught the thing with the Viking tablet-woven band that, according to Annika Larsson, spells "Allah".

The Guardian and Heritage Daily, among other places, covered this "staggering" find. Then up sprang the debate on whether it really was possible that the band has Arabic script on it, and spells "Allah" - one prominent voice against it was Stephennie Mulder, an associate professor for Medieval Islamic Art and Architecture. She did it on Twitter (of all places!), in a brilliant string of tweets you can see here. (Go look at that link for pictures of medieval tablet weaves with stunning patterns!)

Apart from the Square Kufic style being significantly younger than the textile and other script issues that are covered in that tweet string, Carolyn Priest-Dorman also has a few things to say about the pattern. Especially that the square-ish things at the side, shown in the images in the articles, are... not actually in the band itself.

The Guardian's article has since been updated to include the academic debate.

The Atlantic also covers this discussion, as does The Independent.

I'm not sure what brought Mrs Larsson to go forth and invent extra bits for a band just to read something Arabic into it, but I'm not happy about it.

I'm much happier about the fact that there were quick and well-founded counter-arguments for it. It's a beautiful band, it is a stunning piece of work, and it does deserve proper study, but it's not a prop for inventing an alternate history, thankyouverymuch.