Another Plug for ATN

A couple of months ago, on her blog, Katrin Kania posted on her blog about the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, or ATN.  She urged readers who were interested in seeing ATN continue to sign up for at least a year's membership because ATN needs a "few" more members to be eligible for external funding.

I have read a couple of prior issues of ATN, and knew how useful and interesting its articles could be to the researcher interested in early period costume.  So as soon as I was able to pay the 20 Euro membership fee, I bought an annual membership at ATN's website.

Part of the quid pro quo for my membership, namely, the current issue of ATN, arrived on Saturday. I was extremely impressed.  It contains a significant number of fascinating articles, such as:  

• An article about a 13th century female grave of the "Golden Horde" period with enough finds to permit a reconstruction of her entire burial outfit--including the underwear.  It includes color photographs of some of the silk brocades that comprise her costume;
• An article about a recreation of the costume of a female depicted in a statute found in Spain and dated to the 3rd century BCE that strongly resembles the Lonne Hede costume;
• An article about the author's research in Armenia to reconstruct early loom set ups, including the upright loom believed to have been used to weave the Huldremose peplos.

In addition, the books reviewed in this issue include three volumes in which I am fairly strongly interested.  

I brought the issue with me despite my busy vacation plans because I am eager to find out more about all of these topics. If I have time, I'll write about them while I'm away.   In the meantime, if you haven't yet bought a membership to ATN, reconsider--especially if early period costume fascinates you.  I think you'll find that it's worth the price.

EDITED to correct some misapprehensions in the article descriptions above.

SECOND EDIT:  At present, only back issues 46-51 (the new issue I discuss above is issue no. 52) can be purchased as back issues (at a price of 10 Euros each).  In Issue No. 52, it says that ATN is planning to make earlier back issues available.  That's wonderful, because many of the back issues have fascinating articles also.  There is a list of contents for all the back issues here (click the link "Issues").