It has taken a good while, but it's finally all settled - the European Textile Forum 2019 has a venue, and it will take place November 4-10 as planned.

Our venue for this year is the Lauresham Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, connected to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lorsch Abbey and a spectacular place to be. I have a lot of personal fond memories of Lorsch, having been on archaeological digs there several times, working together with lovely colleagues, and having some memorable moments. Like the one where one of the students found some coins right after the assistant prof promised a money prize for finding a coin. Like the one where I was staring so hard at the greenish-pinkish bands in the sand there, to find the line between an old trench and natural undisturbed soil, that I stopped seeing in colour and had to stare at a white wall for a while. Like assisting the technician in taking site measurements; he was a very, very special character, so working with him was sometimes quite exhausting (but I got treated to an ice cream sundae in the evening, which did make up for that). Best of all is that I was part of the student group that excavated in the so-called "Südosttor" area... and what had been thought to maybe have been the south-east gate turned out to have been the loo.

So I'm very happy to return to Lorsch, especially since I have not been there for years, and the whole Lauresham Laboratory is also new to me.

For the Forum, we are graciously given use of the Visitor Information Centre with several rooms, plus use of the facilities in the open-air laboratory itself. This includes houses and workspaces modelled after archaeological finds and ideal-typical monastery plans and descriptions from Carolingian times. Most important for our purposes, there is a dye house on the grounds, as well as a weaving house with three warp-weighted looms installed there plus one mobile warp-weighted loom. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am at how this all worked out, and I am so much looking forward to our conference!

I have also been promised that our group will get a tour of both the Abbey grounds and the Laboratory, which will surely include a visit to the 8th/9th century Gate Hall, the most famous building in Lorsch, and truly, truly spectacular.

So now, finally, it's time to send out the Call for Papers. As every year, we will have a focus topic, and this time it's "Shared Warps, Shared Wefts". You can find the CfP on our website, or you can download the pdf version here.

Last details regarding the conference still need to be figured out, so registration is not open immediately, but will be possible from May 27 onward.

For now, please save the date if you're planning to come, and spread the word about this conference if you know people who might be interested!

The annual meeting of EXAR, or, with its full name, the European Association for the Advancement of Archaeology by Experiment, will be taking place in Vienna/Austria this year, from September 26 to 29. Presentations will be held on September 27 and 28, with the rest of the conference days reserved for get-together and excursions.

An EXAR conference in Vienna was the first EXAR conference I've attended, and it was utterly wonderful - so I deeply regret that I won't be able to go there this year, as I've already booked my booth spot for the Nadelkunst in Weikersheim, and that is on the very same weekend.

If you have no such date clash, however, this year's conference will be focusing on “Experimental Archaeology in Science and Teaching”, and it will be presented in cooperation with the Natural History Museum Vienna. (Which is, all by itself, a gorgeous place to visit.) The Call for Papers for the conference is now open, and they are looking for presentations or posters, addressing the following topics:

• methods of analysing finds and features which provide the basis for
  
  experiments
• experiments and their results/reconstructions based on or used for
  
  experiments
• science-based demonstrations and related museological teaching methods

Presentations are possible in either German or English, with the request to do the slides in the other language to make your presentation as widely accessible as possible to the audience (so German slides if you are talking in English, and vice versa). Presentation length should not be more than 20 minutes.

The Call for Papers will be open until June 15, 2019, and is possible via the website www.exar.org. Conference registration will be open until August 31, and conference fees for non-speakers are between 12,50 € and 40 €.

It's time again for some Calls for Papers! First a non-textile, but interesting-sounding one:

Trial By Fire Conference | 17-18 May 2019 | Institute of Archaeology UCL

A free interdisciplinary conference about the transformative power of fire

Whether your interest lies in archaeomaterials, burned bone, pyrotechnology, or accidental burning, fire always leaves its mark and a wealth of information behind.

This conference aims to explore these events by bringing together ideas from across archaeological and anthropological sub-disciplines. Abstracts will cover a range of topics and case studies, however the conference aims to answer the following questions:

Can fire be considered an artefact?
How have people engaged with fire over the course of history?
What can the aesthetics of a thermally altered object tell us about the burning event?
How has the study of fire evolved within the literature? How can fire be harnessed as an experimental tool moving forward?

You are invited to contribute your work towards the development of this interdisciplinary understanding of fire.

Abstracts are due by 31 January 2019. To submit, register, or for more information, visit trialbyfireteam.com

Fire is a fascinating thing, and I'm happy to see that a conference is dedicated to this topic. I hope it will be a flaming success!

The second CfP is for the Fibres in Early Textiles Conference:



There you go - maybe one of these is something for you?

On May 20-23, the first conference on Wild and Domesticated Mammal Hair will take place in Budapest, Hungary. There's no programme online yet, but you can register for the conference via a form on the website, and you can also book workshops in addition to the basic programme.

The MEDATS is also organising a conference, and their CfP is open for a few more days:



I'm tempted, but I think I won't manage to squeeze in a paper proposal between now and the deadline...

And just in case you are going to a conference and are asked to chair a session - here are some thoughts from the Researchwhisperer blog on how to do so successfully.

I've received a CfP for a conference part that sounds a lot like the European Textile Forum, only on the other side of the Pond - and if it were not so far away and only for three day, I'd be very, very tempted.

You might be closer to the action, though, so here's the CfP for you - and as always with these things, do spread the word to anyone you think might be interested. Conference news, as a rule, reaches way too few people, and everyone passing on infoto others helps make the conference a better one!

Call for Participants for the sessions
"From Fiber to Decorated Textiles in the Early North Atlantic: Making, Methods, and Meanings,”
part of IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada. April 11-13, 2019
CFP: Textiles are a ubiquitous part of life, essentially so in eras when they had to be produced by hand. In early medieval Europe the making and use of textiles also had symbolic, metaphorical, and even allegorical meanings, in additional to the functional. We wish to spend time exploring the connections between the act of making and understanding how something is being made as well as connections among disciplines, approaches, and interpretations.
We are envisioning a series of linked sessions in which participants first learn generally about the textile-making process in the Early North Atlantic, before choosing one skill to learn more deeply, which they will then proceed to practice for the remainder of the sessions. During this final part, scholars will also present their research findings and interpretations, most likely in a modified roundtable format, culminating in a final large discussion that brings together the insights of making through practice and how this might influence interpretation.
We invite proposals of two kinds. First we seek those versed in the making of early medieval textiles and the teaching of those skills. We are specifically interested in scholars accomplished in one of the following: nalbinding, lucet braiding, tablet weaving, inkle weaving, sprang, upright loom weaving, and other fabric and fiber arts. The organizers will be instructing in the use of the hand spindle and loop stitch embroidery. We also welcome other textile skills that were employed in the early North Atlantic world. The session organizers hope to be able to provide basic materials such as yarn, needles, fabric, and thread, and may be able to help provide larger specialty equipment.
The second kind of proposal we invite is from interpreters of early medieval textiles in the North Atlantic and the methods of making them. We hope to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers, teachers, curators, and artists working in this area to spark a dialogue about how one can practically and metaphorically come to understand any of the following:
● textile and textile tool remains
● literary and artistic depictions of textile-making processes
● how gender, region, religion, or economics were part of meaning making in textiles and the how the making process was experienced by medieval people or how these categories of analysis impact our contemporary understanding
● the role of trade and/or migration in disseminating or adapting textile making processes, decoration, and raw and finished materials
● how access to resources impacted the making of textiles
● methods of decorating textiles (embroidery, braid, trim, and so forth)
If one is both a maker and an interpreter, one may submit a joint proposal.
Questions may be addressed to Karen Agee (karen.agee(at)uni.edu), Erika Lindgren (lindgrenedu(at)gmail.com), or Alexandra Makin (alexandrammakin(at)gmail.com). Please submit a 250 words proposal/abstract to Karen Agee (karen.agee(at)uni.edu) by July 15, 2018. Please use Textiles IONA in the subject line.
The full website with all the CFPs and conference information can be found here: https://www.sfu.ca/english/iona.html.

Call for Papers: European Textile Forum 2018 - Aspects of Weaving and Braiding.

The European Textile Forum 2018 will take place from November 5 to November 11, at the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology in Mayen, Germany. The Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology is the experimental archaeology research center of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM).

Our focus topic this year will be "Aspects of Weaving and Braiding - tools, techniques, processes, finishes".

Woven cloth is the basis for most clothes and furnishings, and woven fabrics come in an incredible amount of variations. From the simplest plain weave done on a few sticks with strings to the most complex patterned fabrics with several warps and wefts done on an elaborate loom, weaving itself and the tools and processes used is also a wide and complex topic. Braiding, just like weaving, can take on different forms and range from very simple over-one-under-one structures to complex patterned and multi-person braids; braiding tools can be just the hands or massive braiding stands. On some occasions, weaving and braiding can even be combined, such as in tablet weaves when tablets swap places, or in twined weaves.

For this year's Forum, we invite you to join us and discuss weaving, braiding, and their many aspects. Whether you would like to talk about different loom types and their usage, how complex patterns were derived, passed on, and woven or braided in historical times, how different materials will influence a weave, how to reconstruct possible braiding techniques for a given piece, or the difficulties of replicating a given fabric - all aspects and angles are welcome.

We invite you to submit your proposal for a lecture or presentation (about 20-50 minutes), followed by a discussion and, if possible, also followed by a practical session regarding the textile techniques or problems presented in the lectures. This combination of theoretical background and practice has proven very fruitful in the previous years and might include practical instructions in pattern drafting, exploration of "primitive" weaving tools, or tests for finishing fabrics. The practical part can be in form of a workshop, a demonstration, or something like a "hands-on round table". If you have a question that might be solved by several pairs of hands and several minds working on it together, this is the perfect venue for it.

If you have trouble bringing tools or materials for your presentation, please get in touch, and we will try our best to make things possible. We have working spaces both outside (weather permitting), in the lecture hall and in the workshops, so if you are planning on bringing larger tools, we will find space to work with them.

As always, while papers or posters about our focus topic are especially welcome, if you have another topic outside this focus that you would like to present, please do submit your proposal. The same applies if you would like to offer a poster presentation or a workshop/demonstration only.

We also have the opportunity to use the laboratory facilities for archaeological experiments. If you have an experiment you would like to run, please let us know about this. The LEA facilities, the duration of the conference and the expertise and support of the other conference participants have proven to be a wonderful basis for experiments.

For any questions, feel free to contact us directly via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

With this Call for Papers, registration for the Textile Forum 2018 is now also open. Please be advised that there are very limited accommodation possibilities at the site. Due to the space available at the Experimental Archaeology Lab, we can accommodate about a dozen to fourteen participants on site only, and the conference will accommodate only a few more participants than that altogether. Due to these restrictions, we may have to consider registrations with a presentation before those without.

The RGZM is graciously supporting the European Textile Forum by granting us use of the simple, mixed on-site dorms. If you prefer a room in a hotel or pension, you can of course book your own accommodation in Mayen; some more information can be found on the Travel and Accommodation page.
Full board consists of breakfast, lunch and dinner; water to drink as well as tea and coffee will be available at all times. All meals will be served in the Laboratory. The conference fee, including full board and the option to sleep in the on-site dorm, is 325 Euro per person.

You can register for the Forum with or without a poster or paper presentation, using this registration form. Please submit your current area of research or interest as well as the title and abstract of your presentation, if applicable. If you would like to give a paper longer than 50 minutes, please let us know about that and we will try to make it possible. The Call for Papers is open until July 20.

Please feel free to pass this CfP on to others who you think might be interested!

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled blog with a double Call for Papers - here you go:

Lessons Learned: Textile Conservation - Then and Now
12^th North American Textile Conservation Conference, Ottawa, Canada, September 23 - 29, 2019

The twelfth biennial North American Textile Conservation Conference (NATCC) will be held in Ottawa, Canada, and will focus on the theme of “Lessons Learned – Textile Conservation – Then and Now.” The choice of the topic was inspired by NATCC’s return to the City of Ottawa, venue of our first conference in 1997. Analytical studies, conservation protocols, treatments, exhibition displays, and materials and techniques have evolved during the past 20+ years, often dramatically. We propose to revisit conservation procedures, best practices, collaborations, and other preservation guidelines carried out during the 1980s through the present.

Presentations may include, but are not limited to, evolving conservation protocols and best practices, including those for treatment, storage, travel and display; methodologies for technical analyses, scientific and historical research, collaborations among different stakeholders, and other topics as they relate to the field of textile conservation of tangible and intangible culture. Both successful and unsuccessful “lessons learned” are welcome. Specific cases where past treatments, methodologies, and/or collaborations are contrasted and reassessed according to contemporary needs and approaches, are especially welcome. Conservators, curators, conservation scientists, art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, collection managers, designers, preparators and others are invited to submit proposals for presentations. Collaborations among professions are encouraged. Projects already presented or published will not be considered and proposed projects must be complete by the end of 2018.

Abstracts must be submitted by May 11, 2018. Abstracts will be peer reviewed by the NATCC board. Authors of selected papers and posters will be notified by August 3, 2018. Presentations will be 20 minutes long; there will be time for questions.

Please visit the website for the full information on submission and any updates at http://natcconference.com .

If you're based in Europe, this one might be more accessible for you:

16. annual meeting of European association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment in Unteruhldingen/Germany, 27. September - 30. September 2018
This year's meeting of the European Association for the advancement of archaeology
by experiment takes place in Unteruhldingen/Germany in the Lake dwelling museum
and the World Heritage room. In the European year of cultural heritage 2018, we would
like to devote ourselves especially to the practice of experimental archaeology and
school as well as the mediation to young audiences. For this conference we ask for
presentations. Lectures on the latest methods of investigation of finds and findings,
possibilities of analysis and reconstruction as well as reports of scientific
demonstrations and associated museological methods of mediation are again in focus.

End date for submission of papers: 15 May 2018
The conference will take place from September 27 to September 30. 2018, lectures on
September 28 and 29, 2018
Conference languages are German and English.
Registration is possible via www.exar.org.

I don't know how much English will be actually spoken at the conference, as it's been years since I was last able to attend (the date somehow always clashed with some other event that I already had confirmed). It used to be rather German-heavy, language-wise, but things may have changed.