Philadelphia Area Seminars

I have been asked to let my readers know that Edward Maeder, former curator of the Department of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is going to be giving seminars in the Philadelphia, PA area between February 5 and 20, 2011. 

Mr. Maeder's present efforts appear to be largely artistic, not historical, and most of the seminars involve crafting items from found paper.  However, one of the seminars is a hat-making workshop (materials provided for the $48 cost of attendance)that might be of interest to some of the readers of this blog.  

You can see more information about the seminars here.

Finds from Anglo-Scandinavian York

I recently learned (again, from a mailing list) that the York Archaeological Trust in Great Britain has placed a number of its out-of-print books here for free download.

The availability of this new resource is interesting to me because the YAT has published numerous books of material culture finds on the Coppergate dig in York. The Coppergate dig is located in the heart of what had been the Danelaw, and the Coppergate finds give insight into Anglo-Scandinavian culture. [N.B.  Because these documents are book-length and demand for them has been brisk, it can be challenging getting one of the downloads to complete correctly.  Keep trying, and consider obtaining a software package that will accelerate the process.]

However, I have been able to download a copy of Finds from Anglo-Scandinavian York by Ailsa Mainman and Nicola Rogers. This volume includes an interesting variety of small finds, from jewelry to buckles to game pieces to nails to fragments from jars and other storage containers, and more.  Some of the more interesting tidbits of information I have gleaned from skimming through the manuscript include the following:

• A lot of portable sharpening stones, for sharpening needles and small blades (the book refers to them as "hones") were found.  Some of them were pierced on the end and could be hung, and at least one has a copper ring through the perforation, suggesting that it may have been worn as a pendant.  Most of them were made from schist.
• Amber (of a type that comes from the Baltic) beads and amber waste material were found, suggesting that Baltic amber was imported raw and worked into beads and other artifacts at the Coppergate site.
• 243 sewing needles were found in the Viking age stratum of the site.  89% of the needles were made of iron.  There were a very few needles made of bone or copper alloy. 
• A very small number of buckles and strap-ends were found.
• The few brooches that were found were made from an assortment of non-precious metals:  "Coppergate produced a total of nine disc brooches, of which one was made of copper alloy (10428), two of copper alloy and iron (10429–30),four of pewter (10600–3), and one of lead alloy with possible silvering on the front (10604). The ninth brooch was found during the watching brief at Coppergate (10629) and is made of lead alloy." (p. 2571).
• A substantial number of straight pins used in dress were recovered; they included some like the ring-headed pins found in the Viking age digs in Dublin, but included lighter pins with different ornamental details including polygons, trapezoids and spirals.  (See p. 2579 for illustrations).
• There were also finds of glass rings, which I can't find the reference for right now.

In short, this volume provides some interesting small details about ornament in Anglo-Scandinavian York.  More importantly, the fact that YAT has made this and other books free suggests that other out-of-print volumes may show up on the site in the future. There are two out of print YAT volumes by Penelope Walton Rogers (back when she was just Penelope Walton) that address textile finds in the Viking age stratum at Coppergate. Those are not available for free download now,  but I'm hoping that they will be soon.

Medieval Garments Reconstructed--Has Arrived!

A few weeks ago, using an Amazon gift card I received as a quid pro quo for taking a survey, I ordered a copy of the English language version of Medieval Garments Reconstructed, the new book by Else Østergård, Anna Norgard and Lilli Fransen describing the construction and replication of the more intact Herjolfsnæs finds.  

It arrived on Thursday, and I have been eagerly looking through it.  What I didn't realize when I ordered the book is that the authors not only recreated the cutting and stitching of the original garments, but they also spun the thread and wove the cloth to period specifications.  Each item reproduced is shown in a color photograph, along with a color photograph of the reproduction, and a scale-drawing of the pattern for the garment discovered by the researchers.  The authors indicate in a forward that the book was inspired by the fact that readers of Ms. Østergård's book, Woven Into The Earth, "desired additional pattern drawings, with instructions on how to produce a garment either as an exact reconstruction [i.e., as the authors did] or as an adapted reconstruction [i.e., from ready-made cloth but using the same pattern and types of stitches]."  (p. 9).

Other interesting surprises include:

• A photograph of buttons made for one of the garments from the same wadmal used to make the clothes.  They are described as nearly flat, and crafted so the top surface is smooth while the gathering needed to make the button shape is all concentrated on the bottom.  (p. 14)
• A color photograph of tablets for tablet weaving found at the site.  They are made from bone, and etched with simple designs.  (p. 13)
• An odd circlet, crafted from human hair using two twisted strands of hair.  (p. 11)
• A willow basket with a handle found on the site.  (p. 10)

Because my personal costume interests lie earlier in time than the medieval period, I do not expect to make any of the garments in the near future.  But later on, I may.  It is fascinating, and impressive to me, to have in one slender volume enough information to reproduce actual items of everyday medieval clothing.

If I find any other surprising facts as I continue to read the book, I will of course blog about them.

EDIT: I have finished my first read of the book. It turns out that the authors did not use period techniques in the sewing of the garments. The cloth (a 2/2 twill in white and brown, used for all the reconstructions regardless of color of the original) was woven on a modern horizontal loom, and the reconstructions were stitched with a modern lockstitch sewing machine. Finishing was a combination of modern and period techniques, as follows:

The necklines and some of the sleeve hems are finished with a matching cotton bias binding, sewn on first by machine and afterwards blind-stitched by hand. The bottom hems of the garments have been blind-stitched by hand. There is therefore no visible stitch on the right side of the garment.  (p. 42)

I assume the authors were precluded from making their reproductions entirely with period techniques by time considerations. Nothing, of course, need stop the reader from using period techniques throughout.

Indirect Evidence of Clothing

One of the reasons that I have become increasingly interested in archaeology is the amount of information it can provide to us about clothing during time periods where other information is virtually non-existent.  However, other disciplines can also assist the clothing historian when even archaeology fails.

Such as genetics.

I learned from David Beard's Archaeology in Europe blog that biologists have recently established that humans started to wear clothes on a regular basis about 170,000 years ago. They did so with the help of lice. How's that?

Beard's blog pointed to this article from Medical News Today, which described a University of Florida study of lice DNA. It appears that human body lice are extremely well-adapted, not just to living on humans, but to living on humans who are wearing clothing. By tracing when the DNA of body lice began to diverge from the DNA of head lice, researchers could tell when clothing had become well enough established that a different variety of lice had evolved to live in the conditions it created. Apparently clothing started to be worn on a regular basis when humans moved out of Africa and started crafting and wearing garments to survive in colder climates.

I really liked this article because it confirms what I have come to believe over the past 20 years, namely, that we will only be able to piece together a complete history of costume by using information gleaned from multiple disciplines. Archaeology is important, but the lice study shows that the sciences can provide necessary information too.

Interesting Underwear

Katrin Kania blogged Thursday about some fascinating archaeological finds at a site in Austria.  During renovations of a historic castle, substantial number of different artifacts, ranging in estimated date from the 12th through 18th centuries, were found in the fillings of one of the spandrels of the building's vaulted ceiling.

Scan of photo by Beatrix Nutz

The finds include, not merely textiles, but actual garments, some nearly intact.  The most interesting garment, to me, is a woman's undergarment, dated to approximately the 15th century.  This article by Beatrix Nutz includes a picture of the undergarment and discusses it and some of the other finds; I have made a scan of a black-and-white printout of just the image of the undergarment, which appears beside this paragraph.

A subligar I made for myself

Why am I so certain that the picture shows a woman's garment?  Because the garment is nearly identical to a woman's garment, known from archaeological finds  as well as artwork, called a subligar.  A subligar is a bikini-style underpant that ties on the sides, and they are known to have been worn by women in ancient Rome.  Beside this paragraph is a picture of a subligar I made for myself from white linen.  I think the resemblance is interesting.

Ms. Nutz's article is in German, which I don't read, but Google Translate allowed me to pick out some interesting details about this undergarment from the article.  The undergarment found in the castle, like mine, is made from linen, but with "three layers" instead of one.  It was dated to sometime after 1440, based upon the age of the castle and the other findings, and confirmed by carbon-14 dating. 

Why do I find this garment so fascinating?  Because it suggests that perhaps the Roman style of underwear--consisting of a subligar for the lower body and a mammillare, or supporting band, for the breasts--not only became used in Northern Europe, but may have continued in use throughout the Middle Ages.  Who knows?  Perhaps Viking women used similar underwear.  As I have mentioned previously in this blog, at least one Birka find includes a small scrap of plain linen beneath what appears to be a pleated linen shift. Perhaps that plain scrap was part of a breastband.

For now, I can only hope that some future find turns up a subligar in a Viking context.

First Post of the New Year

Happy New Year! I tried to post this last night, but was having problems with Blogger for some reason. 

I hope to start writing some serious posts about Viking costume shortly, but tonight I just want to pass along two interesting links by Heather Rose Jones. 

One is to her Surviving Garments Database, a searchable database of information about surviving garments from surviving garments from Europe and the Mediterranean area dating from the earliest times until approximately 1500 C.E. As you'll see from the page, Ms. Jones is also interested in obtaining information to add to the database, so bear that in mind if you decide to check it out.

The other link is to a set of notes and rough sketches Ms. Jones made while viewing an exhibition of textile finds from the Tarim Basin called "Secrets of the Silk Road" at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California. The notes and sketches, though rough, are quite informative, though they make me wish for photographs of the finds!

Hopefully, I will get to write some more interesting posts this weekend.