Margarita Gleba

Nettle as a distinct Bronze Age textile plant

It is generally assumed that the production of plant fibre textiles in ancient Europe, especially woven textiles for clothing, was closely linked to the development of agriculture through the use of cultivated textile plants (flax, hemp). Here we present a new investigation of the 2800 year old Lusehøj Bronze Age Textile from Voldtofte, Denmark, which challenges this assumption. We show that the textile is made of imported nettle, most probably from the Kärnten-Steiermark region, an area which at the time had an otherwise established flax production. Our results thus suggest that the production of woven plant fibre textiles in Bronze Age Europe was based not only on cultivated textile plants but also on the targeted exploitation of wild plants. The Lusehøj find points to a hitherto unrecognized role of nettle as an important textile plant and suggests the need for a re-evaluation of textile production resource management in prehistoric Europe.

Old Textiles – New Possibilities

AbstractTextile research has become an important field of archaeology. Although the established analytical methods are often viewed as specialized, their integration with other interdisciplinary approaches allows us to deal with broader archaeological issues and provides the interpretational base for a much more comprehensive investigation of textiles in ancient times. Analyses of fibres, Together, these approaches can provide new knowledge about textile production and consumption and, thereby, about people and society in ancient times. dyes, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological remains, as well as palaeoenvironmental and geochemical investigations, provide information about available resources, while tool studies, experimental testing, and visual grouping are approaches that explore the technology and techniques.

Classical textile remains in the British Museum Collection

Cloth remains from 1st millennium BC Greece are relatively rare. The majority of the surviving fragments have been preserved in a mineralised state on metal objects. Re-examination of metal and other artefacts in museum collections is increasingly adding to the existing textile corpus. Recently, the remains of two new textile fragments were identified on finds presented to the British Museum by the British Salonica Force in 1919. The poster presents the textiles and discusses their significance within the larger corpus of extant classical Greek textiles.