North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles and Early Textiles Study Group Conferences
May 2008 & December 2008

In 2008 I attended both the North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles and the Early Textiles Study Group conferences, the first in May in Copenhagen and the second in London in December. The titles are descriptive: NESAT has no particular date range, although clearly influenced by survival of textiles in archaeological contexts, while ETSG has a cut-off date of 1600. Thus the range covered is immense, and the papers at NESAT varied from technical consideration of the effect of dye on the preservation of textiles (madder acts as a preservative) to the dress styles of the Lewis chess pieces and a number of papers on making replicas to investigate the process and the artefact.

My paper on the knitted fabric scraps from Lindisfarne was the only one specifically about knitting, although Klaus Tidow mentioned knitted scraps among 2,700 textile finds from Heidelberg from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Several of the speakers working on analysis or replication had come to the same conclusion as I that non-literate workers do not memorise patterns exactly, but work from an algorithm, an unarticulated set of assumptions that do not amount to ‘rules’, to produce generally similar versions

One of the chief functions of academic conferences is networking, and I was able to discuss a previous publication with Hanna Zimmerman (Zimmerman, Hanna, 2003, ‘Children’s Clothes from the Sixteenth Century’, in Archaeological Textiles Newsletter 36, 2-8, includes knitted sock and baby’s jacket) and compare notes with Maj Ringgaard about stockings and silk scraps. Maj gave a poster at In the Loop and she and I have shared information to compile a catalogue of ‘purl patterned vests’, the silk garments like Charles I’s in the Museum of London. There is a forthcoming publication from NESAT X, details of which can be found on the web site of the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen.

The Early Textiles Study Group biannual conferences over twenty years have been witness to archaeological discoveries and the results of painstaking research. Knitting is marginal, partly because the early evidence is so scanty; there is much more to find and it is important to maintain awareness. Papers from this conference are not published en bloc, although in the past one special edition of Textile History was produced and some have appeared in Archaeological Textiles Newsletter. For those wishing to keep up to date the journals mentioned are the best points of contact.

Ruth Gilbert.

Back to Archive News & Events.