There's a conference about early archaeological textiles this weekend, hosted by the Institute for Christian Archaeology of the Uni Bonn - the timespan goes from Neolithic to Early Medieval textile finds, with a wide range of topics and geographical areas.

If that sounds interesting to you, you can find more information, including the programme, on the Institute's website. Because of the pandemic, the conference is mostly online - which means you can join in and attend via Zoom. If you wish to do so, email Petra Linscheid (her email address is on the conference programme pdf).

 

Things here are busy, busy, busy - but in a good way. There's sending out of goods ordered through the online shop, I've just sent back the corrected final proof for a paper (about spinning), and I've also sent out the results of a museum/writing project that I did together with Helga Rösel-Mautendorfer, my wonderful colleague from Austria. It's information about Iron age clothing, and how to make it, intended for use by schools to make these kinds of garments for the children.

There's also, to my great delight, more European Textile Forum planning going on. It does look like numbers are falling about everywhere, and that we can go ahead with our Forum plans. So there will be a newsletter as soon as I can manage, and a website update, and much more planning in the background.

Having the Forum to look forward makes the loss of the real-life NESAT a bit more bearable for me... a week or so ago, an email came announcing that NESAT would be online only. Finland is apparently quite restrictive regarding people coming into the country, and the organisers of the conference didn't want to risk issues with participants not being allowed in, or having to quarantine. So it will be a virtual conference only.

I'm really sad about this, though I can understand the reason behind it, and wouldn't want to be caught myself in quarantine in Finland instead of actually attending the conference. Hopefully there will be another chance to visit Finland at some point in the future, and there will surely be a next NESAT which, unless a new pandemic strikes, should be a proper real-flesh-and-blood one!

Even more online conferences: The Medieval and Early Modern Studies Festival will take place on June 17 to June 19. It's theoretically in Kent, but with the pandemic, this too has gone online.

There's a lot of interesting papers and two workshops, and participation is free - you can see the programme and register on their website.

 

There's an online conference to celebrate the anniversary of the CTR, the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen. This was the place where my first NESAT took place, and I have very fond memories of the conference, the centre, and all the lovely people I met there and the wonderful times we had.

Now the CTR is celebrating their 15th anniversary, and what could be better for that than a conference? You can learn more about the online event, taking place June 14-17, on this website - and you can also register there.

Speaking of both online conferences and NESAT: Sadly, there's still too much insecurity about how things will look in August, so the NESAT which was postponed to this year from the last will, in the end, only take place online. I can see the sense in this, but I'm still really, really sad about it. I had been looking forward so hard to the trip and the stay in Finland and meeting all my colleagues again after four years. Sigh.

If you would like to register for the online edition of NESAT, you can do so on their website.

Back in March, the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Centre hosted an online conference about Jewish Craftspeople in the Middle Ages - and I only learned about it while it was already running, and then had a little timezone conversion issue, so I ended up not catching most of what I would have liked to see (for instance the paper including silk dyers on the second day).

To my great delight, though, that can be remedied. The conference papers were recorded, and they are now online on the Centre's Youtube channel for everyone to see. There's three videos, one for each of the days of the conference.

Enjoy!

There's a webinar on tonight about Murex Purple dye in the Bronze Age Aegean, by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. The webinar is via Zoom, it's free to attend (you just need to register), and it starts at 6:00 pm German time.

Read more about the webinar, and register here.

In other news: I'm busy as a bee on amphetamines here, and the weather is finally stable enough for me to fire my spindle whorls! Unfortunately, there's already a few dead ones. The salamanders must have been hungry...

More about the firing, and pictures, are to come. Tomorrow, probably.

The Early Textiles Study Group has opened their Call for Papers for the next conference, which is planned for Manchester on September 9-11. In case in-person is not possible, it will be held virtually.

The title is ‘Legacy: textile studies, the past informing the present’. The ETSG is thus looking for papers that explore any aspect of the legacies of the study of early textiles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneers in the study and reconstruction of early textiles,
• Collections, their histories and their futures,
• Fresh insights gained by applying new methodologies to old collections and archives.

The CfP is open until June 1st.



Definitely virtually, and taking place this Saturday, is the next EXARC textile chat. As usual, you can find it on their Discord server, and it will start at 15:00 CET. This month, the topic is embroidery.