Textiles

Review of the Research

Research conducted over the past century has conclusively demonstrated that textiles played an important role in Mesoamerica, particularly from the Classic period (AD 250-900) through contemporary cultures.

The renowned weaver Peter Collingwood briefly mentioned such belts in his book The Techniques of Tablet Weaving (Collingwood, 1982, pp.219-220). Not long before he died in 2008, he contributed a couple of pages on these belts to the book Minority Textile Techniques: Costumes from South-West China (Collingwood, 2007, pp.28-29). 

Introduction

There is rare but clear evidence that at least some early medieval Slavic communities used pieces of textile during the exchange of goods. The written sources (transcription of the notes of Ibrahim Ibn Yaʻqūb and a short notice made by Helmold of Bosau nearly two hundred years later) entitle us to believe that it was some kind of currency and not a local predominant commodity.

Review of the Research

Research over the past century has demonstrated woven textiles played an important role in Mesoamerica from the Classic period (AD 250-900) through contemporary cultures.

Introduction

Spindle-whorls are tools used for transforming the mass of fibres into yarn. These tools can be made of a large variety of materials as ceramic, bone, wood, or glass. They can vary largely in shapes (conical, biconical, lenticular, etc…), size, and weight according to archaeological contexts and chronological period of human history.

The experimental work directly related to the archaeological evidence turned out to be essential to the investigation, but much of it was too technical for the original publication. Experimental archaeology is its proper context, and I presented the posters this article is based on at the EXARC conference in Leiden in April 2017 (Kruseman, 2017a) and at the KEME symposium in Copenhagen in August 2017 (Kruseman 2017b). Thank you to the organizers and participants!

My work has been inspired by some of the most remarkable textile finds - those in the Pazyryk kurgans (burial mounds) - specifically the felt shabraks (horse blankets). The detailed, intricate designs of these items are achieved by appliquéing felt on felt (sometimes leather is used) in a manner that adds both decoration and strength (See Figure 1) and is still used among the steppe-land nomads (Barber 1991, 220).