Lise Bender Jørgensen

Out of the Norwegian glaciers: Lendbreen—a tunic from the early first millennium AD

As the temperature rises each year, the assemblages of prehistoric hunters emerge from the ice. Archaeologists in Norway are now conducting regular surveys in the mountains to record the new finds. A recent example presented here consists of a whole tunic, made of warm wool and woven in diamond twill. The owner, who lived in the late Iron Age (third–fourth centuries AD), was wearing well-worn outdoor clothing, originally of high quality.

Appearance in Bronze Age Scandinavia as Seen from the Nybøl burial

The objective of this article is to study cloth and appearance in the Bronze Age based on the evidence from a previously overlooked oak-log coffin find, the Nybol burial. The textiles have been investigated and our results compared with cloth from four well-known oak-log coffins: Muldbjerg, Trindhoj, and Borum Eshoj graves A and B. Our analysis demonstrates that this burial contained the coarsest cloth on record to date from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and that it included some cloth items that are not previously known from the above-mentioned graves. The items of clothing the different textiles may have derived from are discussed, as well as the appearance of the deceased in relation to Bronze Age society. We conclude that this burial contained a previously unknown costume type, but that it is a variation of the others rather than an entirely new category.

A Matter of material : Changes in textiles from Roman sites in Egypt’s Eastern Desert

De recentes trouvailles textiles provenant des carrieres, des postes fortifies et de ports du desert oriental d’Egypte offrent de riches possibilites d’enquete sur les evolutions chronologiques et de comparaisons d’un site a l’autre, pour le filage et le tissage. Sur les sites cotiers, les tissus de fibres vegetales sont plus courants que sur les sites de l’interieur, ou l’on prefere les produits en laine. Le fait est cense repondre aux conditions climatiques. L’abondance des soures textuelles permet de classer les groupes de population sur les divers sites et d’etudier les differences entre habillement civil et militaire. Les serges sont nettement plus frequents dans les positions militaires que dans les sites a predominance civile. On peut distinguer plusieurs types de serges, avec des changements au cours du temps. Les serges a reduction egale en chaine et trame sont presentes comme etant des restes de couvertures de laine, ou des manteaux de type sagum: des tissus de ce genre, provenant de sites des d...

Creativity in the Bronze Age: understanding innovation in pottery, textile and metalwork production

Creativity has been an integral part of human history, yet most studies focus on the modern era, leaving unresolved questions about the formative role that creativity as played in the past. This book explores the fundamental nature of creativity in a critical period of human history, the European Bronze Age. Considering developments in crafts that we take for granted today, such as pottery, textiles, and metalwork, the volume compares and contrasts developments in various media, from the construction of the materials themselves, through the production process, to the design and effects deployed in finished objects. It explores how creativity is closely related to changes in material culture, how it directs responses to the new and unfamiliar, and how it has resulted in changes to familiar things and practices. Written by an international team of scholars, the case studies in this volume consider wider issues and provide detailed insights into creative solutions found in specific objects.

Missing link: an early wool textile from Pustopolje in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract In 1990 the excavation of a group of tumuli in south-western Bosnia was published in the pages of Antiquity. The key discovery was the Bronze Age burial of an adult male (Pustopolje tumulus 16), wrapped in a large woollen textile. At the time, little attention was paid to the textile. New analyses of the fabric, however, have led to a reappraisal of this find. The textile is presented here fully for the first time, with details of the analyses that have been undertaken. These reveal that the Pustopolje textile has major significance for our understanding of the early development of weaving technology and clothing in the Bronze Age archaeological record, and in particular it underlines the presence of distinct and separate weaving traditions in Central Europe and Scandinavia.

Visions of Dress: Recreating Bronze Age Clothing from the Danubian Region

Abstract This article highlights and discusses the challenges of recreating the clothing of a wealthy Bronze Age woman from Winklarn in Austria. She was buried with jewelry and dress fittings that appear almost theatrical, such as a wide belt of bronze, extremely long pins, and a collar consisting of fourteen spiked bronze pendants. A series of different sources underpin suggestions of what her dress might have looked like: placement patterns of jewelry in Bronze Age graves from Central Europe; Bronze Age iconography; textures of Bronze Age textiles, including a group of completely preserved garments from Denmark; and tailoring principles. Each of these sources has its own rules and pitfalls. Do the remnants of clothing we find in the graves represent garments worn in daily life, or garbs for burial? To what degree do stylized human images in Bronze Age art depict the shapes and decoration of “real” clothing? How can we use complete outfits of clothing found in oak-log coffin graves in Denmark, far away from Central Europe? A series of experiments has been carried out in order to investigate how the lady of Winklarn may have been dressed. The appearance of the resulting outfits is discussed, focusing on perception, visual appearance, and the interplay between clothing, dress accessories, textures, decoration, colors, and glittering bronzes.

The question of prehistoric silks in Europe

Textiles and clothing are among the most visible aspects of human social and symbolic behaviour and yet they have left all too few traces in the archaeological record and it is easy to overlook their importance. Luxury textiles such as silk can additionally provide evidence of long-distance contact, notably between Europe and China during the Han dynasty and the Roman empire. But can these connections be projected back in time to the prehistoric period? The late Irene Good proposed a number of identifications of silk in Iron Age Europe and was instrumental in bringing the issue to wider attention. Closer examination reported here, however, calls those identifications into question. Instead, the case is put that none of the claimed Iron Age silks can be confirmed, and that early traffic in silk textiles to Europe before the Roman period cannot be substantiated.

Early neolithic skeletons from Bolkilde bog, Denmark

In 1946 two skeletons were found during peat-digging in Bolkilde bog in the north of the Danish island of Als. They have now been dated to the middle of the fourth millennium BC and are interpreted as ritual offerings of a fertility cult which went through from the early Neolithic to the time of Frej and Freja. All three authors are in the University of Copenhagen: Pia Bennike is a research fellow in the Anthropological Laboratory, Klaus Ebbesen a senior lecturer, and Lise Bender Jorgensen Carlsberg research fellow, in the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology.

Fibres for Bronze Age Textiles

Bronze Age weavers used a range of diff erent fi bres: fl ax, nettle, hemp, and a variety of basts that had been used for millennia (RastEicher 2005 ). Sheep’s wool, however, was a novelty and the introduction of wool as an important raw material for textiles caused changes in the way textiles were produced and used. It also caused changes in animal husbandry, land use, social structures, and in the mindset of people but most of all, the sheep themselves, and in particular their wool, were changed. Early domesticated sheep were kept for their meat and possibly skin, but they did not have wool in our sense of the word. Like other mammals they had a coat of hair that included soft downy underwool that grew when winter was approaching and was moulted in early summer. What the early domesticated sheep did have was a potential; their fuzzy underwool had the genetic capacity to develop into wool.

Innovations in European Bronze Age textiles

Zusammenfassung Während der Bronzezeit kam es in Europas nach dem Aufkommen von Wolle als neuem Rohstoff zu einer Reihe von Innovationen im Bereich der Textilien. Neue Analysen und die Nutzung der SEMMikroskopie erbrachten eine Vielzahl von Informationen zur Verwendung von Pflanzenfasern und Wolle, insbesondere zur Frage, wie und in welchem Umfang Wolle vor dem Spinnen sortiert und verarbeitet wurde. Als weitere Neuerungen anzuführen sind die Dekoration von Textilien durch Stickereien und die Köperbindung. Auch die Werkzeuge zur Textilbearbeitung veränderten sich, um Wolle verarbeiten zu können. Der Beitrag stellt Nachweise für die Faserverarbeitung vor und beschreibt, wie das Aufkommen der Wolle weitere Innovationen in der Textilherstellung nach sich zog.