For those of you in the London area and with no plans for tomorrow, you could go to the Art Worker's Guild and attend the MEDATS meeting about textiles on the move. (Sorry for the utterly short notice - I only found out about this yesterday at night.)

MEDATS is short for Medieval Dress And Textiles Society, and it's aiming to improve public knowledge of medieval textiles and clothing. The Society is open to everybody interested in the topic, regardless of the background, and the topic of their meeting tomorrow - On the Move - sounds really interesting. The meeting starts at 11 am and ends in the late afternoon; more info, including the programme, can be found here.

I'd love to be there, but I haven't mastered the art of being in two places at once yet...

We've been planning the next European Textile Forum for a while - in fact, starting to look for a good date usually takes place very shortly after a Forum has finished, and we have all recovered a little bit. Then come a few months of not much ETF-related work (apart from thinking about a focus topic), and then, suddenly, it occurs to me that it's high time to write and send out a Call for Papers.

This is accompanied by putting together and testing a registration form, which usually meant quite a bit of headache and cursing. This year, it was actually easier even though I had to do the form again from scratch, as the Forum webpage has migrated to Joomla!. I'm quite, quite happy about this change, as it means more possibilities and less html-writing work for me.

So - I've finished writing the CfP, the website is almost ready to go live with the registration, I'm only waiting for a last little bit of feedback so I can set things in motion tomorrow... and I'm already looking forward to a wonderful conference again!

Oh, and if you'd like to have more info about the Forum, here's a brand new review of last year's conference.

 

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.

Somehow I have accumulated a whole stack of things that wait to be shared, and since the holidays are very close now, I'd better start sharing them right away...

First of all, there are two calls for papers, both for sessions at the EAA, or more precisely the 22nd Annual Meeting of the EAA in Vilnius 2016 (31st August – 4th September).
All relevant information about the EAA conference, conditions, fees, accommodation etc., can be found on the conference web page, http://eaavilnius2016.lt/:1. Conference and membership fees and conditions: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/registration-fees-and-conditions/2. Accommodation: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/registration-fees-and-conditions/ and http://www.vilnius-tourism.lt/en/information/accommodation/3. Guidelines for speakers and poster presentations: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/general-info/guidelines/4. Deadlines: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/general-info/deadlines/
Untold Stories: Technology, Linearity and Complexity in Archaeological Thought.

The material record naturally lends itself to long-term perspectives. In few areas is this as apparent as the study of technology, which has historically been closely intertwined with the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. But has our focus on the long-term caused us to unwittingly shape a unilinear, technologically deterministic picture of the past? And is there something to be learnt from the parts of the story which have been pruned from this evolutionist model?

The papers presented in this session will explore examples of how our pattern-seeking approaches have excluded interesting aspects of the story of the relationship between humanity and technology, and the methods by which we can reinstate these. We argue in favour of complexity (but not as a rule); of the little details which can enrich or subvert archaeological grand narratives, while acknowledging that the latter are also an integral part of our discipline.

This session is intended to stimulate discussion of our current approaches to the archaeology of technology, and to consider ways in which they can be developed in order to inform broader theoretical and methodological developments.

The deadline for submissions is February 15. More info and abstract submission:  http://eaavilnius2016.lt/
And another session at the same conference:

TH1-13: ‘Tradition and innovation in textile technology in Bronze Age Europe and the Mediterranean’ has been provisionally accepted in the theme "Interpreting the Archaeological Record", and the call for proposals of papers and posters has now been opened.

Textile craft with its complex technology and socio-cultural significance has been a key craft in the societies of Bronze Age Europe and the Mediterranean. However complex and socially and economically important, textile technology has often been considered as being rather traditional and non-innovative throughout many centuries of the Bronze Age.
The present session aims to examine textile technology in search for its traditional and innovative elements, through investigating the evidence of archaeological textiles, textile tools and their diachronic changes, botanical and faunal environment, textual sources and imagery of textiles and cloths. The session will focus on the Bronze Age in Europe and the Mediterranean, although papers referring to transitional periods from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, and from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age will also be welcomed.
We particularly welcome all papers discussing various aspects of traditions and innovations traced in textile technology, especially these regarding raw materials and their processing, textile techniques, textile tools and equipment, organisation of textile production and dynamics of its specialisations, cross-cultural and cross-craft interactions, and changes of textile craft in relation to socio-cultural transformations of the past societies.

All paper and poster proposals should be submitted electronically at: https://www.eventure-online.com/eventure/welcome.form?type=abstract&congress=152_EAA&c=bd4350a3-56f9-46d1-8d66-514d76e0eb3c by 15 February 2016.
EXARC invites to a meeting called Goals and perspectives for experimental archaeology and archaeological open-air museums, Leiden (NL), taking place March 10 to 13, 2016. More about the meeting can be found here.

In addition, there's a PhD project in Glasgow, with a spot for a student. The research project will develop nanoparticles for the treatment of textiles found in the Mary Rose. More about this and contact for application can be found at the Glasgow Textile Conservation blog.
And that's all conference and job links I have for now...

Time for a few links for your reading delectation!

Maney's  Journal of the Month is Costume, the journal of the Costume Society. Which means they are offering 50 articles for free access until the end of this month. Most (if not all of them) are post-medieval and modern in focus.

Not enough reading? Not early enough? How about some Egyptian stuff? A 2010 conference at the Egypt centre had quite a few textile-related topics. The conference papers have now been published in book form, and there's also a streaming archive on this website so you can download the individual presentations in podcast form.

Not medieval enough? Go over to historyextra, where Gillian and I co-wrote an article about 7 weird and wonderful medieval facts in celebration of the Beast's publication.

There's a nice little video with Latin text from the Physiologus (with English subtitles) that will teach you totally true facts about hedgehogs. You can watch it at discarded images.

Another manuscript tells us that if you want to enchant your lover, you should feed him catnip. Nice, eh?

Speaking of manuscripts, there's a conference about 14th century manuscripts in London on December 1, and more places are available should you like to attend.

I'm back from a breathtakingly wonderful conference! It was lovely all around: the venue with the absolutely brilliant and incredibly helpful staff, the papers and, of course and most important of all, the people. The only more-exciting-than-necessary part of the journey was the journey itself, where I had regular adrenaline spikes due to delayed trains. (I arrived in time, and safely, on both legs of the journey even if it did include some running.)

Quite a few of the topics in the conference were things that I had heard of before and that I had a basic concept of, but the papers gave me a far deeper insight and in some cases real revelations. I have learned so much more on the possibilities of sprang alone that my mind still feels slightly boggled. I'm also feeling a very noticeable desire to run into the basement, put my sprang frame together again and finally delve a little deeper into the technique. The possibilities shown at the conference... let's just say my skills need to improve.

Sadly I couldn't stay in London for longer, and I did not get to see too much of the city (the walks that I did, most of my concentration was focused on something else, such as chatting, or looking for a specific place, or shop). I got to meet with some friends, though, who took the trouble of travelling into London just to hang out with me for a few hours. I also got the compulsory shopping done, among that consolation biscuits for the most patient husband of them all, and mustard powder, and clotted cream. Things you just can't get in Germany.