It's amazing how a few days can lead to a huge heap of emails in the inbox, and some increase of length of the to-do-list - but it was wonderful to have these few days off over Easter and spend time with friends as well as outside for some hiking.

Not only emails have piled up, though - there are also a few interesting links that came in during the last few days!

First of all, and very exciting - you might know that the Incans used textiles to keep records: khipus, which are strings marked with knots. The exact method of how these strings were knotted, and how to decipher them, are yet unknown. There's a little hope that this might change, though. In an excavation about 100 km south of Lima, archaeologists have found several khipus in a storage house, in some cases buried under the produce they were possibly documenting. Research on these khipus and how to decipher them is now going on, and the storage khipus might be helpful in deciphering the non-mathematical content of this very special type of textile records.

Also textile-related, but modern: There's a crowdfunding project for a business going on to bring a twisting machine to the Hebrides, helping knitters turn wool singles (spun for tweed weaving) into plied knitting yarns. If you decide to support this and get a reward, you might consider upping your pledge to account for shipping, as my suspicion is that shipping costs and reward materials will cut considerably in what is left after the campaign.

Now it's nose back to the grindstone, the cat is back on the desk "helping" (take your paw off the touchpad, please, little cat), and purring contentedly. Hm. Maybe she'll do some of the email sorting for me?

 

As an archaeologist, I get itchy when I see any original finds on sale anywhere. Itchy, and sometimes also a little bit angry, and always a good bit sad. Removing finds, taking them out of the soil, destroys irrevocally some knowledge that we could have gained about an area, a find spot, a development. This can be true even if they were stray finds that turn up on top of a field that had been ploughed.

Selling original artefacts supports the market for original artefacts. It does not matter where they come from, and it does not matter whether they are expensive or cheap, stray finds or not - everyone that buys or sells artefacts strengthens the market, and the stronger the market is, the more attention it gets, the more treasure hunters will go and try to find (and sell) stuff.

This destroys archaeological sites. It can even destroy more - such as this Roman bridge in Bulgaria that collapsed due to treasure hunters trying to find a gold treasure supposedly buried at or near the bridge.

I am out of words about this. Our world is one Roman bridge poorer because some people know no boundaries in their greed for treasure. Sometimes, I have a hard time to believe in humanity.

My dear friend and colleague Karina Grömer has done it again - she has a new book out:


K. Grömer (with contributions by Regina Hofmann-de Keijzer and Helga Rösel-Mautendorfer) 2016: The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making – The development of craft traditions and clothing in Central Europe.

Veröffentlichungen der Prähistorischen Abteilung 5, Verlag des Naturhistorischen Museums Wien, Vienna 2016.

The book is a compendium about the latest research about archaeological textiles in Central Europe (533 pages, more than 240 colour figures). There's a preview of this book, and other work that Karina did, available via academia.edu.

Copies of the book can be ordered via email to verlag@nhm‐wien.ac.at from the Verlag Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Burgring 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
The price for the book is 35€ (including VAT) plus shipping. According to the info on their order form, shipping should be 4.40 € for Austria and Germany, 8.80 € for Europe and 15 € for the rest of the world, with different costs possible for larger orders.

My copy is already on the way here - and I'm looking forward to adding it to my collection!

There are two Calls for Papers open currently that have come to my attention (which usually happens through an email in my inbox). The first one is for Assemblage, Sheffield's peer-reviewed graduate journal of archaeology. Assemblage is currently seeking submissions for its 15th issue. Since 1996, assemblage has been run by postgraduate students at the University of Sheffield, and publishes articles and features on a wide array of topics related to the field of archaeology.

The publishers invite postgraduates and early career researchers to email articles between 3,000 and 5,000 words to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 1 April, 2016.

You can access previous issues and view submission guidelines at http://www.assemblage.group.shef.ac.uk/.

The second CfP is really exciting, at least to me - as it's for NESAT! The next conference now has not only a place (Liberec in the Czech Republic), but also a date (May 22-26). The CfP is also open and will remain so until May 31. The organisers encourage papers that present lesser-known or recently excavated textiles, techniques and iconography that will generate discussion and exchange of information among conference attendees. In addition, this conference will include a poster session. Posters can be focused on any topic related to
archaeological textiles, but should be primarily visual.

You can find the schedule for the conference preparation here on the NESAT website, and the first entry also links to the full call as a pdf file.

In the UK, the Environment Agency has used lidar, a modern laser-based surveying technique, to generate 3D maps. Altogether, the data collected covers about 72% of the land surface, and it amounts to about 11 TB. That is a huge amount of data.

While the Environment Agency used it to track coastlines and do planning of things like flood defenses, they've put it online last summer, so you can find it on their survey Open Data site now.

Of course, this is a wonderful tool for archaeologists as well, as the lidar scans can reveal buried structures. Among the archaeologists who have already used the scan data successfully is David Ratledge, who finally found the "missing" Roman road that connected Ribchester and Lancaster.

I always love it when new technology does wonderful stuff for archaeological research!

A dress find from Egypt, called the Tarkhan Dress and housed in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, has been radiocarbon-dated - and the result: it's the oldest garment we know of, about 5000 years old. This makes the piece the oldest piece of evidence for something that was tailored from woven fabric - and with a V-neck, decorative pleats in the yoke area and long sleeves, this is definitely and beautifully tailored.

The National Geographic has a short article about this garment, and there's also a more in-depth article about the dating in Antiquity.

This is a really exciting garment, and it does show again how old clothing is - and how important it was for mankind...

It's the start of February, and Doug has curated all the Blog Carnival entries for the Archaeology Grand Challenges. It's 60+ posts from all over the world, and from a lot of different perspectives - from sex and gender over personal identity challenges to funding, finances, and archaeology and games. If you like to read about archaeology, go check out these blogs - you might find something to put on your reading list!

If you're more interested in knitting, there's a project called "Centenary Stitches" focussing on the knitting done at home for WWI soldiers. The project has also resulted in an exhibition currently being shown at the National Archives in Kew, Surrey (ending March 19).