If you have never heard about it, the Mühlberg-Ensemble is a complex of buildings in Kempten, southern Germany, where lots of organic material from c. 1470 to 1580 were found in the dead floors and other fillable parts of the building structures.

They were excavated several years back, and now vol. 3 of the publication of the finds is finally out! 

Rainer Atzbach / Ingolf Ericsson (eds), Die Ausgrabungen im Mühlberg-Ensemble (Kempten). Metall, Holz und Textil. Bamberger Schriften zur Archäologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit 3 =
Mühlbergforschungen Kempten (Allgäu) 3 (Bonn 2011).
362 S., zahlr. (tls farb.) Abb., 1 CD-ROM, 30 cm. (Bamberger Schriften z. Archäol. d. Mittelalters u. d. Neuzeit, 3/ Mühlbergforsch. Kempten, 3) Ln,
978-3-7749-3756-7, € 59,-

The volume contains the results of excavations in the basement plus the evaluation and publication of the metal and wooden finds. In addition, Antoinette Rast-Eicher and Klaus Tidow wrote about the textile finds from the buildings. You can find a table of contents and a German/English summary here (pdf file).


The book can be ordered from the publishing house or via your local bookshop. I already have a copy, but have not yet managed to take a good look into it - some report about it will follow as soon as I find the time.

Books are just like pictures. They are lovely to have, wonderful to peruse, and a pain to organise. And it's immensely helpful to organise them - having keywords and tags to search pictures, and having keywords and notes to check whether a book was helpful or not. Plus a bibliography programme can help with citations - and save a major pain when writing.

There are several programmes on the market, the two best-known of which are probably Zotero (a free plug-in for Firefox) and Endnote (a commercial stand-alone programme).

Just recently, I have re-assessed Zotero as a possible alternative to my usual bibliography programme (which is Endnote). There are pros and cons for each of these two programmes, but one of the best comparisons I have found yet is this one from profhacker. So, even though my version of Endnote is quite a few years old now already - from how everything in Endnote is integrated in my workflow, I'll stay with it.

If you do not have a bibliography programme yet or are not totally content with yours, though, you might want to check out Zotero. After all, it's free - so it can't hurt to try.

The flip-side of my book-ordering binges from a while ago is now coming to gently prod me into the buttocks.

One thing I really love about the library where I get my books is the possibility to do easy and free inter-library loans. Now, since my topics tend to be rather non-mainstream, and since I then need to get a lot of books that are not in the local library, that is a real blessing.

Unlike the copies in the local archives, though, ILL means you put in the order, hope there's not a pink slip of paper coming back (always a bad sign - since it means that your request went through the system, was denied and now you get that on pink paper) and wait for your book to arrive. And that, depending on where it comes from and whether it was checked out by someone else before, can take a goodly amount of time.

So they come in, singly or with one or maybe two companions, spread out over weeks. And everytime one comes in... I have to go get it. Which is the case for today, which slightly skewers my schedule of things I wanted to do today into tiny and very irregular bits... but at least I will probably be able to have a coffee with a friend while killing the schedule.

For those who have not found out about it yet, it is Open Access week this week!

Open Access is a model of publishing that aims to remove the paywall barrier to research knowledge - by granting open access to results. Now, if you've ever thought about getting an article via a portal such as ingentaconnect and were asked to pay, say, 45 USD for a 5-page paper where you don't even know if it will really hold that vital information, you will know about what "paywall barrier" means.

Open Access has its pros and cons, as every system has. But this week and for me, it has only pros - since the portal I just mentioned hosts journals by Maney Publishing house, and that house takes part in OA Week. You can find 22 archaeological journals on their page, and all the papers are free for you to read - no paying, no registration, no nothing - until November 4.

Also taking part, but only until October 30, is Internet Archaeology.

And finally, there's a long list of Open Access journals in archaeology on Doug's Archaeology blog.

And if this blog post is not going to steal at least half an hour from your life, I don't know what will...

First of all, a hopefully helpful link to a free-access bibliography of textiles. This bibliography is part of the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles [CSROT], a research project founded in 1986 in France. Its purpose is to contribute to the critical study of the history of textiles, especially by means of research concerning its bibliographic history. CSROT aims to establish a framework, a "map", of the literature of textile history and to compile a general bibliography reflecting this history, and to disseminate this information among specialized textile, and other, researchers and the broader public. Its second aim is to contribute to a more critical understanding of the history of textiles, and of early craft production in general, by situating them within the broad context of social, economic and cultural history, and the history of creativity.

Their database currently contains more than 9000 titles, all searchable by keywords as well. Here you find an introduction to the Bibliographica Textilia Historiae Database, together with a search link.

Speaking of books, there's a new one coming out: "Se vêtir à la cour en Europe (1400 - 1815)". It is on special offer sale for 18,40 € until December (it will cost 23 € after that), and as the title implies, it's in French. The title does not imply that most of the articles are focusing on early modern or modern clothes, though; there's only a small part actually about the late middle ages. You can find a description and table of contents here, as well as a link to where you can buy it.

And if all that has not held you from your work for long enough, here is a link to a brilliant article on how to procrastinate by getting things done. This is sort of what I tend to do, so I really enjoyed reading it - and yes, it is a helpful strategy.

If you've been more than marginally interested in the epidemic called "Black Death" that wrought havoc on the population in the Middle Ages, you may have caught that there was a (sometimes quite heated, I gather) dispute about whether it was the Plague as we know it today, or something entirely else, or a mutation of the Plague, or a combination, or whatever. And I confess I was leaning towards "something else", too, just like a lot of other scholars.

But now they did it. You know, those archaeologists and other scientists? These guys that poke around in old stuff, messing around with our nice familiar concepts of history, dragging home old bones and potsherds and lumps of clay and textile and rusty metals? They did it. They found the DNA of the Bringer of Black Death.

And it's Yersinia Pestis.

Their research is published in an open-access peer reviewed journal (oh, we so need more of those), and you can read the whole article for yourself. Good old Yersinia. Wreaking documented havoc on mankind since 541.

I've finished the current extra-urgent bit of work that was on my list yesterday night, and now I only have to wait for the piece to dry and bring it to the post office. And the rest of today? I'm taking it off. Yay.

But since I promised you more info from NESAT, I will at least tell you about the ATN meeting.
For those of you who have never heard of ATN, it is short for "Archaeological Textiles Newsletter". This has been an institution for quite a few years now, started way back on somebody's kitchen table and sent out as a biannual newsletter.

Nowadays, the ATN is put together, edited and sent out by a small group of people, and it used to be printed at the university press in Copenhagen. However, this printing possibility seems to have ended; the university wants to close its publishing department. And that in turn means the ATN has to make some changes for the future. It is planned to change it to an annual double volume instead of two volumes per year, and of course a new print shop has to be found. Plus a name change has been discussed - from "Archaeological Textiles Newsletter" to "Archaeological Textiles Review", since it seems that something called a newsletter is not worthy for external funding, while something called a review is.

These changes mean that the ATN (or ATR) will need a few more members to survive - so if you are not a subscriber yet, but interested in textile archaeology, please join the "Friends of ATN" (which is a subscription for one year, called membership because of some other bureaucratic issues) and help it survive! 
Anyone can join, you don't need to be affiliated with any university or research institute. And it is really worth it - there are always interesting articles in the newsletter, and the ATN regularly sees the first (or even the first and only) publication of a smaller textile find, or a preliminary results note about a work in progress. Subscribing is easily done via the secure webshop of ATN, and it's not expensive either - the one-year membership costs 20 Euro.


Oh, and of course you are welcome to spread the word...