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Introduction:: Ancient tools and textiles – Thinking outside the box
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The article is focusing on the re-assessment of two linen 2/1 twill fragments from the early excavations of Hallstatt in Austria, which were for a long time assumed to date to the Bronze Age. The new 14C data presented here prove that the pieces are early modern, dating to about 1600 CE. Then new dating and reassessment of the possible find context of the two linen twills from Hallstatt presented here has important implications for textile research as – up to now – these textiles have been counted among the oldest of their kind. Comparable linen twill textiles (to the finds from the saltmine are common at the end of the Medieval and beginning of the Early Modern period in Central Europe, as demonstrated by the artefacts from Austria, e.g. from Lengberg castle, 15th century CE.
Correct identification of textile fibres is an important issue in archaeology because the use of different materials can yield crucial information about the society that produced the textiles. Textiles made of plant and animal fibres can normally be easily distinguished, but to distinguish between different types of plant fibres, in particular different types of bast fibres, is difficult. Some years back it was shown that the features fibre diameter, lumen diameter, dislocation (nodes), and cross markings cannot be used on their own to distinguish between the typical bast fibres used for textiles in ancient Europe: flax, hemp, and nettle. Particularly not when only a few fibres are available for an examination so that statistical analysis is not possible, as is often the case in archaeology. The last two characterization features typically used to distinguish between bast fibres are cross‐section shape and lumen shape. In this paper, we present a study of retted and unretted fibres (in the stem) of flax, nettle, and hemp, and show that also cross‐section shape and lumen shape cannot be used as distinguishing features on their own.
This contribution focuses on the application of traceological analysis on ceramic textile tools. Traceological analysis has been rarely applied to the study of these specific kinds of artefacts. For this reason a dedicated reference collection needs to be built for a proper understanding of the development of both technological and use traces, on apparently simple artefacts that, nevertheless, are related to very specific gestures highly constrained by cultural background. Our experimental framework is based on the textile tools made of ceramic coming from the cemeteries of Cerveteri, Vulci, Narce and Falerii (Central Italy). The traces analysis of archaeological and experimental ceramic textile tools allowed to define various steps of tools production including modelling and surface treatment techniques. Moreover, this investigation allowed to define the technological-related wear and distinguish them from use traces and post-depositional alterations.
The Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement - Volume 93 Issue 369 - Mark Knight, Rachel Ballantyne, Iona Robinson Zeki, David Gibson
The application of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in prehistoric mobility studies requires accurate strontium reference maps. These are often based from present-day surface waters. However, the use of agricultural lime in low to noncalcareous soils can substantially change the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr compositions of surface waters. Water unaffected by agriculture in western Denmark has an average 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of 0.7124 as compared to an average of 0.7097 in water from nearby farmland. The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio obtained from samples over 1.5 km along a stream, which originates in a forest and flows through lime-treated farmland, decreased from 0.7131 to 0.7099. Thus, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr-based mobility and provenance studies in regions with low to noncalcareous soils should be reassessed. For example, reinterpreting the iconic Bronze Age women at Egtved and Skrydstrup using values unaffected by agricultural lime indicates that it is most plausible that these individuals originated close to their burial sites and not far abroad as previously suggested.
There are various indications for textile production in the ancient city of Pompeii and its vicinity, but archaeological
research has been mainly focused on the features of the urban structures. In this regard, the textiles from Pompeii have only
received limited attention. The same applies to the elements of dress preserved as impressions on the plaster casts of human
bodies, so-called calchi. This apparent lack of attention is remarkable, because the textile evidence from the Vesuvian area can
be precisely dated, and because it provides the possibility of comparison between specimens of the same material in different
types of preservation. In order to fill this lacuna, the research project Textile Culture at Pompeii was initiated. The aim of this
multidisciplinary project is to provide new input to the ongoing debate on the significance of the textile economy in the Vesuvian
area in antiquity by considering textile culture as a whole. Archaeological investigations on contexts as well as archaeometric
analyses on textile micro-samples reveal new information about the ‘textile topography’ of Pompeii, the local and imported
goods as well as the standardised or high-quality textile products.
Keywords: Pompeii, Domus-textrinae, Instrumenta textilia, Textiles, Gold thread, Experimental archaeology, Archaeometry,
Calchi, 3D-scan
Recent research into plant bast fibre technology points to a Neolithic European tradition of working fibres into threads by splicing, rather than draft spinning. The major issue now is the ability of textile specialists and archaeobotanists to distinguish the technology of splicing from draft-spun fibres. This paper defines the major types of splicing and proposes an explicit method to observe, identify and interpret spliced thread technology. The identification of spliced yarns is evaluated through the examination of textiles from Europe, Egypt and the Near East. Through the application of this method, we propose that the switch from splicing to draft spinning plant fibres occurred much later than previously thought. The ramifications of this shift in plant processing have profound implications for understanding the chaîne opératoire of this ubiquitous and time-consuming technology, which will have to be factored into social and economic reconstructions of the past.
Archaeological textiles are relatively rare finds in Mediterranean Europe, but many fragments survive in a mineralised form. Recent analysis of Iron Age textiles from Italy and Greece indicates that, despite the use of similar textile technologies at this time, Italy shared the textile culture of Central Europe, while Greece largely followed the Near Eastern traditions of textile production. This research greatly expands our current understanding of the regional circulation of textile technological knowledge and the role of textiles in ancient societies.
Moseley’s (1975) Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis challenges, in one of humanity’s few pristine hearths of civilization, the axiom that agriculture is necessary for the rise of complex societies. We revisit that hypothesis by setting new findings from La Yerba II (7,571-6,674 Cal BP) and III (6,485-5,893 Cal BP), Río Ica estuary, alongside the wider archaeological record for the end of the Middle Preceramic Period on the Peruvian coast. The La Yerba record evinces increasing population, sedentism and ‘Broad Spectrum Revolution’ features, including early horticulture of Phaseolus and Canavalia beans. Yet unlike further north, these changes failed to presage the florescence of monumental civilization during the subsequent Late Preceramic Period. Instead, the south coast saw a profound ‘archaeological silence’. These contrasting trajectories had little to do with any relative differences in marine resources, but rather to restrictions on the terrestrial resources that determined a society’s capacity to intensify exploitation of those marine resources. We explain this apparent miscarriage of the MFAC hypothesis on the south coast of Peru by proposing more explicit links than hitherto, between the detailed technological aspects of marine exploitation using plant fibers to make fishing nets and the emergence of social complexity on the coast of Peru. Rather than because of any significant advantages in quality, it was the potential for increased quantities of production, inherent in the shift from gathered wild Asclepias bast fibers to cultivated cotton, that inadvertently precipitated revolutionary social change. Thereby refined, the MFAC hypothesis duly emerges more persuasive than ever.
Understanding the composition of an artefact has ramifications for advancing human history and behaviour knowledge, providing cultural information about trade, agricultural practices and adaptation to new environments. However, accurate plant identification from artefacts is problematic, since textile production, age, dirt and/or conservation treatments obscure morphological features, and specimen size and/or ethical considerations hamper modern analytical methods. This study tested the efficacy of polarized light microscopy (PLM) in the identification of New Zealand plant species commonly used in Māori textiles, and demonstrates that morphological and birefringent features observed using PLM have the potential to distinguish between- and within-plant genera.
We investigate the origin of archaeological wool textiles preserved by anoxic waterlogging from seven medieval archaeological deposits in north-western Europe (c. 700–1600 AD), using geospatial patterning in carbon (δ¹³C), nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) and non-exchangeable hydrogen (δ²H) composition of modern and ancient sheep proteins. δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ²H values from archaeological wool keratin (n = 83) and bone collagen (n = 59) from four sites were interpreted with reference to the composition of modern sheep wool from the same regions. The isotopic composition of wool and bone collagen samples clustered strongly by settlement; inter-regional relationships were largely parallel in modern and ancient samples, though landscape change was also significant. Degradation in archaeological wool samples, examined by elemental and amino acid composition, was greater in samples from Iceland (Reykholt) than in samples from north-east England (York, Newcastle) or northern Germany (Hessens). A nominal assignment approach was used to classify textiles into local/non-local at each site, based on maximal estimates of isotopic variability in modern sheep wool. Light element stable isotope analysis provided new insights into the origins of wool textiles, and demonstrates that isotopic provenancing of keratin preserved in anoxic waterlogged contexts is feasible. We also demonstrate the utility of δ²H analysis to understand the location of origin of archaeological protein samples.
A unique set of circumstances has preserved a group of rare wooden artefacts deep within burial caves in the southern Levant. Identified as spindles and distaffs, they are fashioned from tamarisk wood and date to the Late Chalcolithic period. Analysis suggests that these implements were used to spin flax fibres, and they provide the earliest evidence for two distinct spinning techniques, drop spinning and supported spinning (with rolling on the thigh). One wooden spindle with the whorl still in place is the oldest such tool to survive intact in the Near East. The lead forming the whorl may have originated in Anatolia, and it is evidence, perhaps, of early long-distance trade.
Fibres used in the manufacture of archaeological textiles are full of information. Unfolded microscopically, analysis of such textiles and furs has become an important field of archaeological study. Fibre type and even fibre processing may become visible. Scanning electron microscopy has made analysis of metal-replaced and charred finds possible, something that was not determinable by light microscopy. Examination under the SEM has enabled a new world to become visible and is so presented in this book. A variety of archaeological examples and their modern day counterparts are assembled as well as a chapter devoted to the historical background of each fibre and its use in Europe.
A long-term systematic international excavation project has attested the existence of a wide range of past human activities in the emporion Pistiros. An assemblage of artefacts indicating the conduct of different economic activities on the site includes an interesting collection of loom-weights, spindle-whorls and tokens. The purpose of this paper is to look at archaeological material from social, cultural and economic perspectives to understood fully the everyday life of the inhabitants of this trading centre from the Classical to early Hellenistic period (second half of the fifth to second centuries B.C.). To achieve this goal spatial mapping techniques (GIS) were applied to analyse distribution patterns of objects associated with the textile industry within a domestic context.
Pottery use-alteration consists of three traces: residue, carbonization, and attrition. An analysis of these traces leads to stronger inferences about actual pottery function. Residue analysis relies on gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy and other available techniques and can inform on the former contents of the vessels. Patterns of external carbonization, or sooting, are created while a vessel is over a fire and depends upon the type of hearth and the methods of cooking. Internal carbonization is created when food inside the vessel is charred and can be used to infer the mode (wet or dry) of cooking as well as aspects about the cooking process. Attrition, either on the interior or exterior of the vessel, can be used to infer a variety of use activities. In this chapter, the various use-alteration traces are reviewed and methods for analysis are outlined.
Ancient human mobility at the individual level is conventionally studied by the diverse application of suitable techniques (e.g. aDNA, radiogenic strontium isotopes, as well as oxygen and lead isotopes) to either hard and/or soft tissues. However, the limited preservation of coexisting hard and soft human tissues hampers the possibilities of investigating high-resolution diachronic mobility periods in the life of a single individual. Here, we present the results of a multidisciplinary study of an exceptionally well preserved circa 3.400-year old Danish Bronze Age female find, known as the Egtved Girl. We applied biomolecular, biochemical and geochemical analyses to reconstruct her mobility and diet. We demonstrate that she originated from a place outside present day Denmark (the island of Bornholm excluded), and that she travelled back and forth over large distances during the final months of her life, while consuming a terrestrial diet with intervals of reduced protein intake. We also provide evidence that all her garments were made of non-locally produced wool. Our study advocates the huge potential of combining biomolecular and biogeochemical provenance tracer analyses to hard and soft tissues of a single ancient individual for the reconstruction of high-resolution human mobility.
A large systematic dye investigation of prehistoric Danish and Norwegian bog textiles was carried out using high performance liquid chromatography with photo diode array detection. After the selection of the most suitable protocol for dye extraction and HPLC analysis for this specific group of archaeological samples, the second part included the characterisation of the dyes detected in the whole series of the Early Iron Age textiles and the interpretation of the dyeing technology.
Natural organic dyes were found from the three main categories of natural dyes, hence throwing new light on the use of biological dye sources in Early Iron Age Scandinavia. The results clearly indicate that most Scandinavian peat bog textiles originally were dyed and that already during the 1st millennium BC, the populations in Scandinavia were familiar with dyeing technology.
Strontium isotopes are used in archaeology to reconstruct human and animal migration routes. We present results of a pilot study applying strontium isotope analyses to modern sheep hair as a basis for its potential use as a provenance tracer for ancient woollen textiles. Our hydrofluoric acid-based, lipid soluble analytical protocol, also tested on a number of ancient textile fibres, allows for contamination-free, low blank strontium isotope analysis of minimal amounts of archaeological material. 87Sr/86Sr ratios of decontaminated sheep hair agree well with the compositions of biologically available (soluble) strontium fractions from the respective feeding ground soils, a translatable requirement for any potentially successful provenance tracing applied to wool textiles.
Woven textiles from Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia are among the earliest-known examples of weaving in the Near East and Europe. Studies of material excavated in the 1960s identified the fibres as flax. New scanning electron microscope analysis, however, shows these fibres—and others from more recent excavations at the site—to be made from locally sourced oak bast. This result is consistent with the near absence of flax seeds at Çatalhöyük, and suggests there was no need for the importation of fibres from elsewhere; it also questions the date at which domesticated flax was first used for fibres. These findings shed new light on early textile production in the Neolithic, suggesting that tree bast played a more significant role than previously recognised.
The abundant, yet largely ignored evidence from imprints of textiles, threads and cords that are preserved on the undersides of lumps of clay stamped by seals, provides unique information about the qualities of actual fabrics, as well as various uses of textiles in everyday life and administrative practices. The assemblage of silicone and plasticine casts of the undersides of the clay sealings from Phaistos in Crete that is kept in the Archive of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, University of Heidelberg constitutes an excellent collection for such studies. The textile imprints on the CMS casts are currently being analysed as part of the research project ‘Textiles and Seals. Relations between Textile Production and Seals and Sealing Practices in Bronze Age Greece’. This contribution briefly discusses the nature and qualities of textile imprints on clay, while the impressions of threads, cords, leather thongs, textiles and mats, wickerwork or basketry from Middle Bronze Age Phaistos in Crete, are the case study for specific considerations on the qualities of textile products used in the site-specific sealing and storage practices.
Although textile craft is a socially complex and economically significant phenomenon, little is known about textile techniques in the Bronze Age of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, including Estonia. No textile or cloth remains dated to the Bronze Age, i.e. between 1800 and 500 BC in the Estonian context, have been found so far. Only indirect evidence such as possible textile tools and impressions on pottery can be used in the study of textile-making. The aim of the present study is to review the available evidence regarding Bronze Age pottery with patterns commonly described as made with textiles, and to systematise it. As a result, it is suggested that the evidence based on these impressions is even more limited than thought so far. Few finds clearly indicate the use of textiles. Regular patterns consisting of variously-shaped concavities on the vessels’ walls may have been made also with other items, for example by rolling fir cones over the surface of a freshly-modelled pot.
The aim of this dissertation is to put textile and fiber analysis into the mainstream of archaeological materials analysis. This study illustrates the broad array of findings which can be derived from precise identification of fibers from well-provenienced archaeological textiles. ^ The material here studied is a corpus of textile fragments from Shahr-i Sokhta, an important site in eastern Iran which was occupied from the end of the fourth to the beginning of the second millennium BC. This group of textile fragments constitutes one of the most important in the world, as they chronicle the early development of the woolly fleece of sheep.
Midden excavations at Ø172 (Tatsipataa), on the eastern shore of the Igaliku fjord in southwestern Greenland, produced a significant textile collection consisting of 98 fragments. This collection is important as it stems from a well-contextualized and well-stratified sequence, allowing significant insights into the evolution and nature of cloth production in Greenland. Analysis of this collection showed that while the earliest fragments mirror Icelandic counterparts of comparable ages, the Ø172 collection changes considerably by the 14th century. From this point onward, Greenlandic women wove a weft-dominant cloth unique to Greenland. This cloth type has previously been noted in other, later, Greenlandic collections, but the Tatsipataa collection provides new evidence for the date of its first production. The sudden appearance of this distinctive weft-dominant Greenlandic homespun in the mid-14th century suggests that its production was a domestic adaptation to the initial climatic fluctuations of the Little Ice Age. Overall, the Tatsipataa collection suggests that Greenlandic textile production did not follow the evolutionary trajectory of Icelandic textiles, which became a form of currency from the early to the later Middle Ages. Instead, Greenlandic textiles appear to have been consistently produced for household consumption, without the intense standardization for trade observed in medieval Icelandic collections.
Up to 2006 1031 Neolithic and Bronze Age textile and basketry fragments had been documented from the water-logged layers of 30 lakeside settlements. Most of the finds came from layers dating from the Neolithic period, starting with the Egolzwil Culture (c. 4300–4000 BC) and ending with the Corded Ware Culture (c. 2750–2400 BC). Not many objects, only 36 in total, dated from the Late Bronze Age. The Early Bronze Age has so far yielded only one artefact, leaving a large gap between the most recent Neolithic and the Late Bronze Age finds.
Ancient textiles in archaeological excavations are preserved only under unusual circumstances, and it is for this reason that the discoveries at Çatal Hüyük in 1961, and repeated in following seasons, of woven and twined materials possess an excitement out of all proportion to their visual appearance. Until these were found, the earliest woven fabrics known were from the Fayûm in Egypt which are usually dated to the fifth millennium B.C. The finds in Level VI of Çatal Hüyük push the history of the textile arts back to the beginning of the sixth millennium.
For textiles to survive in a more or less natural state requires either extremely arid conditions as in Egypt or Peru, or permafrost as in the Norse burials in Greenland, and in the tombs of the Scythian and Hunnish princes in Siberia. The presence of certain chemicals may act as a preservative: tannin in the Bronze Age burials in Denmark or metallic salts impregnating the fibres of the silks found in the patina of Chinese bronzes of the early dynasties. At Çatal Hüyük, a simpler agent is responsible for the survival of the fragments that have been found. In the fire that apparently destroyed the buildings of Level VI in which they were found, they were subject to intense heat. Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the space in which they were confined under the low clay platforms, the fabrics were not consumed, but only thoroughly carbonized. This made them chemically inert, and no longer subject to the growth of the destructive moulds that under normal conditions lead to the total decay of most animal and vegetal matter.
The first diachronic investigation of wool fibre from Italian pre-Roman archeological contexts was carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A total of 22 archaeological wool samples from 10 Italian and one Austrian site dating from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman period were analysed. The results demonstrate the processing of wool and development of sheep fleece from primitive wool with very fine underwool and very coarse kemps to the disappearance of kemp and coarser but more uniform fleece. By the end of the Iron Age several fleece qualities coexisted in Italy, possibly indicating the presence of different breeds. Classification of the wool qualities based on existing systems was problematic leading to a conclusion that a more nuanced approach to the classification of archaeological material is needed.
Identifying animals to species from relict proteins is a powerful new archaeological tool. Here the authors apply the method to answer questions relating to the Salish of west coast North America. Did they weave their blankets out of dog hair? The proteomic analysis shows that they did, interweaving it with goat, and that the woolly dog was increasingly superseded by sheep in the later nineteenth century.
The textiles examined were from building-level VI provisionally dated as c. 6000 B.C. They were black, stiff and brittle, apparently owing to carbonization, and comprised some found in 1962 and others found in 1963. No attempt will be made to describe the structure of the cloth except to say that no weave was evident in the 1962 specimens; one series of yarns lay parallel, with no other yarns woven through them. In places other parallel yarns were fused at an angle across (but not interwoven with) the first ones. It was as if either the warp or weft had decayed, but there were no waves in the remaining yarns to indicate where the decayed yarns had been. This was probably the material described by Helbaek as resembling fishnet without knots. The yarns were less than 0·5 mm. in width, yet despite this fineness most were clearly two-ply. The specimens found in 1963 comprised one that had apparently been like the above but had broken into many short, straight pieces of yarn. There were also two pieces of cloth clearly woven, in apparently plain weave, from even finer yarns that nevertheless appeared to be two-ply. One piece of cloth had a selvedge.
In 2009, a spinning experiment was undertaken with the aim of evaluating the possible influences of spindle, fibre and spinner on the resulting yarn when spinning with a bottom-whorl drop-spindle as commonly used in Middle European regions. Fourteen spinners participated, spinning two wool types on five different spindle types, resulting in a total of 140 spun samples. The yarns spun during the experiment were analysed using traditional quality assessment methods for the textile industry (measuring length and mass, and using visual survey cards), traditional hand-spinners’ methods (wraps of yarn over a given length of a dowel) as well as an image analysis programme to evaluate yarn diameter and yarn evenness, two properties that are difficult to measure using the classic methods. The results show that the dominant factor influencing the yarn was the individual spinner; neither whorl mass, nor whorl moment of inertia, nor fibre did influence the spun yarn significantly.
Plant fibres have been used since ancient times in numerous applications ranging from nets and basketry to textiles for clothing. A proper identification of plant fibre remains in archaeological excavations provides important information about resource exploitation and agriculture. In order to identify plant fibres, a series of fibre features—cross-section diameter, lumen diameter, dislocations (nodes), cross markings, cross-section shape and lumen shape—have been defined and characteristic traits of these features for different fibre types established. How suitable these traits really are for fibre identification has been a matter of debate. To resolve this issue, we have performed a systematic investigation of typical textile bast fibres: flax, nettle and hemp. We have investigated cross-section diameter, lumen diameter, dislocations (nodes) and cross markings using standard compound, white light transmission microscopy. Our investigations show that all the traits that are considered characteristic for one type of plant fibre can also, on occasion, be found in other types. This demonstrates that an investigation of the traits listed above is not sufficient to ensure a correct identification of the plant fibre material; in particular, when only a small amount of material is available. This is often the case in archaeological excavations.
The chemical and p ysical structures of archaeological mineralized plant fibers are studied using energy x-ray dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and FTIR microspectrometry, and compared with two contemporary bast fibers. The outer surfaces of the fibers and the inner surfaces of the lumens are heavily en crusted with copper. Fresh-fractured cross sections of the mineralized fibers display small bead-like copper inclusions embedded within the fiber structure. In comparison with modern bast fibers, the mineralized fibers display an absence of hemicellulosic absorption bands (1740 cm-1), greater intensity, and sharper and well-defined indi vidual absorption bands in the 1200-1500 cm-1 region rather than a broad overlap of absorption found in the modern fibers. The mineralized fibers also display a lower crystallinity ratio ( 1372/2900 cm-1) than those of their counterparts.
Copper mineralized plant fibre cordage (c. 1500) found at an archaeological site was used to study fibre microstructural degradation in response to a specific burial environment and the preservation of textiles through mineralization. The process of cellulose fibre mineralization was simulated in the laboratory in an effort to prepare mineralized plant fibres under known conditions. A model for dyeing cellulosic fibres was adopted to explain the process of fibre mineralization.The characteristics of the microstructures of archaeological and laboratory mineralized fibres were examined and compared with those of modern Indian hemp fibres using scanning electron microspectroscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD).SEM and EDS results reveal some similarities between the archaeological and the laboratory mineralized fibres. Infilling and replacement with copper minerals resulting from the corrosion of associated metals was found on both fibre outer and inner (lumen) surfaces.Possible types of fibre degradation were inferred from the observed physical and chemical microstructures of the mineralized fibres. The simulation of fibre mineralization in the laboratory sheds some light on the study of mechanisms of fibre mineralization in the preservation of archaeological textiles through the replacement with inorganic minerals.