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New evidence for Neolithic textiles in the Orkney Islands - Ep 103
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Recently, new evidence for Neolithic fabric was found impressed on a sherd in the Orkney Islands. In an area where the environment is not conducive to preservation of textile, archaeologists must look for evidence in unconventional ways. Recently, a team from The University of the Highlands and the Islands in Scotland used Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to identify the impression of woven fabric on a sherd. Chris and Rachel discuss the fabric impression, how it could have been made, and what the broader implication are of this discovery.
Links
- “Rare evidence for Neolithic Textiles identified on Orkney”, Science Notes, Current Archaeology, July 17, 2020
- Textiles and Animal Skins from ScARF
- Flint Howe, Luce Sands
Contact
- Chris Webster
- [email protected]
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archaeology Show and Historical Yarns crossover episode. This is officially episode 103 of TAS. I'm Chris Webster. And I'm Rachel Rodin. On today's show, we talk about new evidence for Neolithic textiles found in Scotland. Let's dig a little deeper.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everybody. I am sitting here in a pretty echoey room. Hopefully we did a decent job of audio editing and we got rid of most of that echo, but I just want to call that out right away because I hate it. But there's nothing else I can do about it. So we are going to talk about Neolithic textiles. I've got Rachel, my wife and Nitter sitting across to me and also archeologist.
00:00:58
Speaker
So let's just jump right into this. First off, if you want to follow along, there's going to be some links in the show notes for this episode where you can look up the article and some other stuff that Rachel's put in there. So go ahead and click on that stuff now, if you have the ability and take a look at it as we're talking about this. So Rachel,
Focus on Neolithic Textiles
00:01:16
Speaker
what are we talking about?
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, so this article, it caught my attention over the summer, actually. It was in current archeology issue 365 and it is about rare evidence of Neolithic textiles that were found on Orkney Island at the Ness of Brodgar. I'm saying that all kinds of wrong. I know I am. But the Ness of Brodgar, that sounds like a warrior. Can you say it with like a Scottish Brogue? I can't, I'm not going to do that. Okay. Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
Anyway, they found Neolithic textile evidence there and it is very unusual to find evidence of textiles because it is the kind of thing that doesn't last in the archaeological record for reasons that I think we've spoken about before, the missing majority. Most things don't survive unless they're stone or some other material that doesn't break down and decompose.
00:02:10
Speaker
So the way that they found this textile is actually really interesting. It is an impression on a shard, which they excavated at this site. So it really captured my imagination because you sort of have to find evidence of these things wherever you can find them because there isn't going to be an actual piece of fabric that is somewhere around 4,000 years or more older. So that is the gist of it.
00:02:38
Speaker
So let's back up just a half step here. Cause we mentioned Scottish accents, assuming this is in Scotland. Can you tell where are the Orkney islands? Like they're in Scotland somewhere, right? I actually am not entirely sure. Most of the islands are along the like Western coast. Yeah. Cause there are some on the North.
00:02:59
Speaker
Yep. They're definitely in the north. They are part of islands for sure. So for my knitters out there, we're talking about the islands that are way far in the north and you've got like the Shetland islands and Fair Isle and those islands are up that direction. So they are way up there.
00:03:16
Speaker
So let's go back to the fabric then. So this was found impressed on, or I guess, impressioned into ceramics. Now we've worked in the Southeastern United States quite a bit and fabric impressed pottery is a way to basically put a design on pottery. Does the article mention whether or not they think this might've been an intentional design element for the pottery or just so happened some pottery fell onto some fabric and got burned into there or something like that?
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, there
Analyzing Fabric Impressions with RTI Technology
00:03:43
Speaker
is a little speculation on that. They don't know for sure how it got on there, but it's not decoration because it's a small, small piece and they didn't find it on any other pottery. So it seems to have happened by accident, or at least that's the assumption you can make if you don't find any other examples of it.
00:03:59
Speaker
And there's also an imprint of a cord, like a, like some kind of cord, right? And that is what actually grabbed the attention of the field workers in Orkney. They were grabbed by this impression of the cord, which in itself is rare, not, not.
00:04:17
Speaker
you know, crazy rare, but rare enough that it grabbed their attention. And then they started looking at it even closer and they were like, well, this area over here looked really textured. So, you know, they sent it off to the lab to do more analysis on. And that's where this really neat technology came into play that allowed them to see that there's actually a fabric weave there. And that technology is called reflectance transformation imaging RTI. And
00:04:45
Speaker
Basically what they do is they take a whole bunch of pictures with different light sources all around the object and then they can use computer software to put those images together and then look at almost a 3D model of it so they can see from all angles.
00:05:03
Speaker
Right. And you're basically, you're almost just using, because they use different light sources, you're almost just using shadows in order to find microscopic features, you know, cause they, somebody probably saw this, I don't know if they saw it when they were cleaning the piece after they found it or if they found it in the field, but then it would have been like just looking at a piece of pirate and say, that doesn't quite look right. And then just kind of looking at it in different angles and things and saying, there's gotta be something here and then putting it into something like this and then finding a,
00:05:33
Speaker
definable pattern would have been a pretty cool deal. And I'm trying to think since it is such a light impression that does kind of remove the possibility or likelihood that it was fabric impressed on purpose. Right. And pottery is inherently clay. It's inherently wet. And even if you fire pottery,
00:05:49
Speaker
And depending on, I don't know what the quality of the shirt was, but you know, you're in a wet environment, just Scotland in general, I would assume is a wet environment. And if it's buried under the ground, then possibly the surface of the fired pottery would have been, I dunno, softened over time. And then if there was fabric laying on it, maybe that fabric before the fabric decomposed, that's how it got impressed onto there. I don't really know.
00:06:14
Speaker
From what they're saying, they do believe that the impression happened before the pot was fired, before it was hardened. Yeah. And they're
Materials and Techniques in Neolithic Weaving
00:06:24
Speaker
making an assumption here and I am not a huge fan of making assumptions and assigning reasons to things when you can't really have
00:06:36
Speaker
an idea but the assumption that they're making is that it's the fabric that the potter was wearing and it sort of dragged along the inside of the pot while he or she was making the pot and it left this impression.
00:06:52
Speaker
I'm, I don't hate that idea, but I think that there are other ways that it could have happened as well. And it is a strong enough impression that it does seem like it happened before the pot was fired. So it, it happened while it was still in a wet clay stage. I guess I can see that it's not like they're sitting.
00:07:12
Speaker
you know, ghost style, you know, with the pottery wheel in front of them. I don't know if this was made with like the clay cords that you can wrap around and then make a pot. Like the coil, the coil. That's right. Yeah. Or how this was made, but they were probably sitting down around a fire on the ground and had it sitting in their lap at some point as they're doing finishing touches on this pot. So I could see it sitting there, but then the question is why this one tiny small fragment? Why wouldn't that be a feature of like the base of any pot?
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's why it makes me think that the potter's clothing, it just can't be right because many of the shirts would show evidence of clothing if it was something that happened like that. So I feel like there must've been a piece of fabric that got near it before they fired it. And that caused the impression and it was just a weird one-off situation. But that's, I mean, I'm not an expert and the article does mention specifically that they think it's the potter's clothing. So, you know.
00:08:08
Speaker
But it's all conjecture. They got to say something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Could be a number of things. But so what else do you know about this? What about the fabric or, you know, the quality of it? Well, so again, it's an impression. So they can't really say much except that it looks to be a pretty fine weave.
00:08:23
Speaker
And of course, the finer the weave, the more complicated the process, the better material you need in order to do that. So they can't really draw too many conclusions other than the fact that it is a fine weave. And by fine weave, I mean the warp, which is the sort of parallel threads that you line up before you even start. Those are fairly close together. And then the actual weaving itself, which is where you go over and under those warp threads.
00:08:50
Speaker
is also close together. So the whole thing overall is quite fine. And then I did do a little bit more research just to kind of figure out like what the state of plants and animal fabric processing was at this time. And there is some evidence that Neolithic Scottish people processed black
00:09:11
Speaker
And you see carbonized flax seeds, and that's how you know that they were doing something with flax. Now we don't know what they were doing. They could have just been turning it into thread to sew animal skins together or fabric, depending on how far along they were in the fabric creation process. And then there's also the possibility that they were using flax to make linen because linen fabric comes from flax seeds.
00:09:36
Speaker
So there's not a whole lot of evidence again that whole missing majority thing comes into play. We just don't know exactly what their fabric processing was. And then my favorite part of all this, and this is for knitters specifically or wool knitters anyway.
00:09:52
Speaker
is if this fabric impression on this shirt is made of wool, then that means that they were hurting sheep way earlier than we ever thought they were. Now there's no evidence of that and there can't be evidence of it. We just can't know what type of fabric that it was. But if we ever do get evidence of the fact that sheep were being herded this early, then it very well could have been wool, which would be a very, very early example of wool fabric. So I think that's really cool too.
00:10:19
Speaker
That makes me think, obviously, if you're hurting sheep, you've domesticated sheep.
00:10:23
Speaker
But I like to think of an undomesticated wild sheep. Like, what does that look like? That's actually really funny that you say that. Cause I was trying to figure that out too. I'm like, well, what does that look like? Can you even turn their wool into something? I don't know. And I did read, and I'll have to put the link in the show notes. I'll track it down. But I did read that the sheep before they really were, you know, herded and bred for their wool, they were more like deer. The pelts were more like deer pelts. So it's really short.
00:10:53
Speaker
and not exactly conducive to spinning. But yeah, I don't know how like, it's kind of crazy to even think how they got to the point where they figured out that they could breed certain sheep to get better wool. Maybe it was from different islands. And then when trade started happening between the islands and the mainland, they got better breeds for wool. But anyway, the natural sheep in that area were not exactly great for wool.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Crazy wild sheep running around. You know, also flax seeds, just as an aside, I've probably seen tens of thousands of flax seeds in my life. Like most people you see them in smoothies and you know, just like other stuff. I've never seen a flax tree. What the heck does a flax tree or Bush look like? You know, I literally have no ideas. I think it's fake news. They're just seeds. Yeah.
00:11:44
Speaker
Well, the, the even crazier thing to think about is how do you take a seed and turn it into thread? I mean, obviously it comes from the like fibrous part of the tree or Bush or whatever it is, but I'm going to have to confess my lack of knowledge as to how you make, make that kind of a experimental archeology or who's working on that.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. That would be cool. So what about other stuff that was found on this site that might lend some clues to what the function of the garment would have been or I don't know, something like that. What else did they find in association with all these things?
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah. So the site itself appears to be a large occupied town site. So there's all the evidence that you would expect to see. There's lots of stone walls and homes and buildings and things like that. So as far as that goes, it's just your typical like Neolithic town sites for Scotland.
00:12:42
Speaker
So it's not going to give us a real great picture other than the fact that there are a lot of people living here. So they would have had to do things like make clothing. So obviously they had some sort of techniques for this. They have found in Neolithic sites. I did not read about it specifically at this site, but they have found it other Neolithic sites.
00:13:00
Speaker
bone pins for fastening fabric clothes. Now this could be animal skins or it could be woven fabric. Again, we don't really know. We just know that they had bone pins for fastening. And then also belt sliders that again, we don't know what they were putting the belt sliders on, but that we do find evidence of them at Neolithic sites. So they were definitely clothing their body in something. Obviously they had to, it was very cold there, like really cold.
00:13:27
Speaker
So we don't know if they were weaving textiles at that time or just using skins. Is that what we're saying? Yeah, but this shirt and another shirt in particular, those are the briefly the only evidence of woven fabric in this area in this time period.
00:13:44
Speaker
But what other artifacts would be associated with weaving fabric, like making fabric or weaving, like making yarn, basically, you know, what, what else would be there that might survive the archaeological record that maybe people are looking for? Well, I mean, there's spindle whorls, which are used for spinning the thread or yarn that they use to then weave.
00:14:07
Speaker
the fabric. So that's a possibility, although I don't think that any have been found. And then the other possibility is just the tools of weaving itself, like looms and other stuff like that. But again, that was probably made of wood. And this is Neolithic, so we don't have any metal artifact that would have survived. So wood is, there's not been an example of a wood artifact that is clearly associated with weaving though.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. We just, we just don't have a whole lot of evidence for it. We, we know that they were covering themselves with something. It's just what exactly it was is not, it's just not really known. Yeah. It's Scotland. They were definitely covering themselves with something. Yeah. And they wouldn't have been there. Yeah, for sure. They had to have been. Yeah. That's kind of one cool side note about archeology too, is if you find evidence of
00:14:58
Speaker
just for lack of a better term, you know, man, homo sapien, even earlier than that, in some areas of Europe, they must have been wearing something like they just, you just can't survive if you don't have a full coat of hair covering your body and homo sapien hasn't been covered in hair in a long time. Right. So at least not most of us. And
00:15:18
Speaker
Some people are still covered in hair. You
Rarity and Preservation of Textiles
00:15:20
Speaker
can probably survive in Scotland. Not you. So I definitely need clothing. And but that's what you have to assume. And that's kind of a cool concept because the first idea of clothing is animal pelts because we see people wearing those today, obviously.
00:15:35
Speaker
And it would be easy. It's the least amount of processing work. Now there's no tanning going on. I looked into that because I was like, well, could they have been tanning it and turn it into leather? For sure, no. The earliest evidence of that is thousands of years after this time period. So definitely that wasn't happening.
00:15:54
Speaker
Which was like, who was the first dude in a society to like pick up a bear skin and be like, look at me and put it on. And there the other, the others were like, you're crazy because you're wearing a dead animal. Yeah. Yeah. But he's like, look how warm I am. And then they just moved north.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it does allow you to expand your territory when you use cleverness than the unique human ability to adapt and make the surroundings work for you. So it really, really makes you think when that stuff kind of stuff first started to happen because Homo sapiens again, have been around 200,000 years, but it's not like somebody flipped a switch and said, boom, you're Homo sapiens switch means other
00:16:32
Speaker
pre homo sapien ancestors as that slow transition and evolution happened were losing hair, right? And I don't even know if Homo erectus was that hairy to be honest. So it could have been millions of years ago that we were losing hair. And these beings, I mean, I've been to Africa, it gets cold at night. It's the high desert. At least I was in East Africa where a lot of fossil remains have been found.
00:16:57
Speaker
And it gets super cold at night. I'm sleeping in a tent out there in October and it's just like chilly. And then in the daytime, it's 90 degrees, you know? So you have to have some sort of covering at night. You have to either be protected. You have to something. And somebody would have thought a long, long, long, long time ago to cover themselves in an animal skin, because I think you'd make the logical leap that while the animals live at night, that's probably warm. Yep. So.
00:17:24
Speaker
Let's preserve that. And so many other technologies would have been developed because of that, like weaving them together. So bone and, you know, needles and some sort of bread, whether it was tree pieces or what have you. So anyway, we got a lot more to talk about on this article, but let's take a break and come back and keep talking about Neolithic textiles back in a second.
00:17:47
Speaker
Welcome back to the archeology show, episode one of three and historical yarns crossover episode. So did you find when you were looking at this article, did you find any other evidence or anything else that mentioned any other similar thing being found in the past? Yeah. So I kind of went down a little bit of a rabbit hole there cause I was like, well, if they found one shirt that has a fabric impression on it, there must be others, right? And
00:18:12
Speaker
Honestly, there is only one other representation of this kind of fabric preservation in the archaeological record. And it's assured that was actually found like in the 1950s, I think. And then they didn't even really catalog it as something that had a fabric impression on it until somebody went back and looked at it in the sixties. And it was at a site called Flintow.
00:18:38
Speaker
And it's generally called the Glenloose shirt. That's sort of how it's known because until this newest one that they're talking about in the article, this was the only example of it. And it's actually quite a bit different from the one that they've reported on just this past summer. The Glenloose shirt is different because it's a much coarser weave.
00:18:59
Speaker
which is interesting because you would expect that early textile would be much forter weaves because things getting finer and finer represents refinement of the technology and that's why the fabric gets thinner and finer and better.
00:19:15
Speaker
Whereas this is quite coarse. You can see, we'll have to put a photo in the show notes, but you can actually see the like bumps of the warp in the West and it's very close together. And yeah, it's just, it's very, very different from what was found this summer. So, but there's just those two examples and that's it. And we have one very coarse woven fabric and another very fine woven fabric. And, and that is it. So I'm wondering about that.
00:19:47
Speaker
bias put on the thought that a fabric would go from coarser as we develop that sort of technology to finer and finer and finer until you get to like silk and things like that. Although silk is not really a good example because that's just basically stuff from warm butts. So sure. Yes, that's all it is. So
00:20:09
Speaker
I'm wondering about that because isn't there a different sort of utilitarian features for different types of fabrics? Because, I mean, I'm wearing several types of fabrics on me right now of different coarseness and I guess fineness and different techniques. And I would imagine like, I could have a burlap sack of coffee delivered today and people are making burlap sacks. And those are very coarse, very utilitarian and they're made that way because they're strong.
00:20:34
Speaker
Can we assume that when somebody developed weaving that they would have had those types of things? And maybe the course stuff just lasted longer and made an impression on whatever it was because it didn't degrade fast.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is entirely possible and you can kind of, so people who work with fabric from a sewing standpoint or also from a knitting or making standpoint, you can think of it as sort of like a home deck or outdoor fabric versus your clothing textiles, right? So this super course weave, if I had to guess, was probably something that wasn't intended to put on your body unless that was all they had. It was maybe for,
00:21:15
Speaker
a mat, you know, like a woven mat that you would set on a table or on the ground for sitting on or something like that. And then this finer weave stuff was what you would actually put on your body. And
Weaving's Historical Context and Implications
00:21:28
Speaker
part of that is that the coarser stuff tends to be denser, thicker. It just doesn't have as much drape to it. And it's just harder to like wrap it around your body when you're talking about a really stiff, dense fabric.
00:21:42
Speaker
Whereas something that is lighter weight, now it's not as warm as something that's thicker and coarser. However, you can, you can do layer after layer after layer, still get that drape and ease of movement that you need in clothing and it's still warm. So yeah, so that's, that's all just speculation, obviously, because we don't really know, but there is some evidence that they potentially had some kind of.
00:22:09
Speaker
mat that they would have set the pots on while they were making them to assist in spinning the pot while they're smoothing the walls and the actual process of making it. Now, that's not really fabric. That's where you get these board impressions that show up on the shards every once in a while. Those are from these corded mats that they're making, but that's a half step away from fabric as we know it for wearing on your body.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess this is where the concept of landscape archeology can come in and help eliminate some things because in archeology, when we're trying to figure out, Oh, what was this used for? What was that used for? What's going on here? A lot of times, I mean, we can come up with all kinds of guesses, but landing on the right thing is really hard.
00:22:57
Speaker
But it's easier to eliminate the things that you know are wrong, right? Because there are a million things with which something could have been used for, done, created, you know, whatever the case may be, but only one or two of them is right. So if we can eliminate 900,995 of them, then we can really focus on the last few things. So thinking about this.
00:23:19
Speaker
It's like, well, let's look at core samples and other other fields and find out, well, what kind of materials did they even have available to them at this time period? So what could have been made if there's no evidence that they domesticated sheep, if there's no evidence that, you know,
00:23:35
Speaker
XYZ, this happened, or they had these kinds of trees. All they have are flax seeds. Well, what can you make from flax seeds? You know, that kind of stuff. What are other people making from those sorts of things? If there's no evidence that they did some of that, but that they did some of this, then you've just eliminated a huge section of possibilities. And then looking at even trees and other animals and what else was found on these typical neolithic sites.
00:23:59
Speaker
What kind of bones are there? Bones survive the archaeological record in a really good way. I mean, not in like super, I guess it depends on the moist environment, too. Right. If it's not wet enough, it's going to degrade. Right. But if it's too dry, it's also going to degrade, but kind of just has to be just right. So I guess that's one of the cool things just for people listening to this is this is how archaeologists end up doing stuff. We don't often know the answer, but we often know what's not the answer.
00:24:26
Speaker
And then we can start developing hypotheses for other sites and saying, well, since we know this about this area, this is kind of what we're looking for here. And we can maybe direct our efforts towards those areas.
00:24:40
Speaker
And I think that is what makes these two shirts, the old one and the newer one that they just found so exciting because archaeologists in the past have made some assumptions knowing what the environment is like. One of them is that they had to have covered themselves with something because it was too cold to survive their temperatures without covering their bodies with something.
00:24:59
Speaker
And then there is evidence of that because they found things like bone borers, needles, flint knives, things like that, which were primarily used for processing animal skins and turning that into something that they could wear on their bodies.
00:25:14
Speaker
But those tools could also be used for woven textile, but we just, until these sherds were found, we just had no evidence for woven textile. Well, now we have evidence for woven textile, a very small amount of evidence. So maybe it wasn't a widespread technique or technology. Maybe it was not done a lot.
00:25:34
Speaker
It could be too resource intense. Maybe they couldn't process enough flax to make the thread that they needed to weave into a garment. It's entirely possible it was something that only the super wealthy heads of a clan or a town would have, I don't know, but we do have the evidence for it. So now we have to just sort of search the archaeological record for more evidence so that we can get a clearer picture of what they were making and how they're making it. All we know right now is that they were doing it.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess my caution on that is I always make the assumption when I find something that I have found an example of a very common item because so few things survive the archeological record and it would be like.
00:26:17
Speaker
The example of, I mean, pretty much anywhere in this world, you can find a plastic shopping bag hung on a tree. I mean, we've been out in the middle of the desert in Nevada and you see like a plastic shopping bag. It's just like, yeah, balloons. This plastic shopping bag is just sitting there, but you're probably not going to find like a Gucci handbag sitting in a bush, right? There's way fewer of those.
00:26:38
Speaker
So when you're looking at this textile impression on a shirt, if it's not found everywhere, then it was a rare thing, right? And that's what they didn't say. It's a rare find. And if that's the case, I automatically assume two things, not being an archeologist that works in that area or even with textiles or pottery, but I have to assume two things. Either a was done intentionally and that was, that was kind of a one-off, right? If you've only found a two, two examples of these ever,
00:27:06
Speaker
Then either we're looking in the wrong spot or it was intentional and you got lucky and you found this thing. And then if it was intentional, then what the heck were they using it for? You know, why was that? Because if it was an accidental thing, if they were setting a pot on a piece of clothing or robed across, I mean, why would that happen all the time?
00:27:22
Speaker
Well, yeah, that that's what I wonder too. That's why there's this, there's this skeptical voice in the back of my mind that like, what else could have made these impressions that look so fabric, you know? Like, is there anything out there that's natural that could make an impression like this?
00:27:38
Speaker
It just looks like fabric. Yeah. I mean, maybe I don't, I don't know. I would have to dive into the natural like flora and fauna of the area itself to figure out if it's possible that it's natural. I would assume the experts who study this stuff would be able to determine that, but sometimes people's scientific excitement get them
00:27:58
Speaker
carry them away. Well, our brains are natural pattern recognition machines. And so we will look for patterns. But the problem is those patterns exemplify our natural biases towards our own environment, right? We don't know what it was like to live 5,000 years ago in Scotland. I mean, I'm sure there was a lot of scotch. They were laying around. I don't know what was happening. Bagpipes in the distance. I don't know what's happening. Oh boy. But I mean, I'd go back and live that life if that was a thing, but I don't think it was that easy.
00:28:27
Speaker
So we put those biases on, we see a shape, we see a design and we immediately say fabric, right? I mean, you're right. Maybe that wasn't fabric. Maybe it was something else. Who knows? So, well, anyway, let's take one more break and then we'll come back and talk about where does somebody go from here? Where do you go from here? If you want to find more stuff like this, what are some of the clues that have been put together? Cause that's what archeology is. It's clues, putting together a puzzle that you'll never finish.
00:28:56
Speaker
back in a minute. Welcome back to episode 103 of the archaeology show and historical yarns crossover episode. So we have been talking about this evidence of Neolithic textile. And I feel a little bit bipolar right now because I'm pretty sure that I walked into this episode saying, Oh my God, this is so exciting. We just found evidence of textiles, the oldest evidence ever, blah, blah, blah. And then we ended the last segment by saying, well, maybe it's not even a fabric.
00:29:26
Speaker
I know. So I don't even really know how I feel about it at this point, but either way, science and archeology, you just have to keep pushing forward because like you said, it's a puzzle that you're never going to finish and you have to keep putting the pieces in, but you also have to be willing to shift your view as more evidence and new evidence comes to light. So that's kind of where I'm at as we, as we kind of discuss our conclusions about this article.
00:29:51
Speaker
Well, and like we said, if we want to find more stuff around like this, we just have to look at the evidence. So based on that, my other question would be what do trade networks look like in that area? Let's make the assumption they didn't waive this because no other evidence was found that they did. Right. And this was a rare thing. We don't have any other textiles because like you said in the beginning, the stuff just doesn't survive the archeological record, but let's first make the assumption that they didn't make this.
00:30:16
Speaker
So it could be something else or it could have been traded. Yeah. I see where you're going with that. Yeah. So yeah. Traded from somewhere that was further along in the fabric. I don't know. Technology process. Yeah. And I know I'm blindsiding you with this and we haven't done the research or know the answer. So I'm just kind of throwing this out there, but who do we know conclusively was weaving textiles at 5,000 years ago and did they even make it to the British Isles or what became the British dial?
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that is a good question. I would have to do more research, but surely some of the civilizations that were further along would have it. I just would wonder about it showing up in the Orkney islands because they're so remote, hard to get to. And why would any traders make that trek all the way up to Northern Scotland like that? I'm just not totally sure, but it is definitely something to consider, right? You have to consider every option.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, one thing that we found in episode 99 with Dr. Greg Griffin, when we talked about deal use and in ancient times, he worked up in the scallop area. Okay. And one thing that I believe we talked about, you know what, I'm trying to remember it was either that episode or the one after that talking about the box grove horse, butchery side with Dr. Matt Pope episode 100 in one of those two, because they both.
00:31:35
Speaker
work in the UK, what's now the UK, right? And, but one thing that was brought up is in this time period and definitely at 5,000 years ago, you could walk to the British Isles from France.
00:31:47
Speaker
Oh, true. So it's not like seafaring was even a necessary skill, which opens it up to a lot more possibilities. That is a very good point. I don't know what, if the islands were the islands at that time, or if there was a connection to the mainland, they're entirely, it's entirely possible that there was, I don't know. So what does it look like between the Orkney islands and the mainland? How deep is that? How stretched out is that? So yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
Anyway,
Re-examining Old Collections with New Technology
00:32:10
Speaker
so that's the kind of things we got to think about is what was, what was going on at the time elsewhere in the world? And then could we match up this style? If it even is enough of a piece to call it a style, could we match that up to something that was found, you know, in Northern France at the time, or even Southern UK or something like that? You know, where else could this have come from? And you know, the thing we might be answering is that's just one more thing we're going to say no to.
00:32:35
Speaker
Maybe, yeah, maybe one more thing. We check off the list and says, this is not a possibility, but it has to be looked at. Yeah. That kind of sends my mind spiraling as to how you would go about doing something like that. And really the best way, which is hard is to just get more examples of this kind of fabric in the archeological record. And I think that the way to do that could, like that actually could be a thing because they use this RTI.
00:33:03
Speaker
technique to find this fabric impression on the shirt. Now, finding Neolithic shirts in Scotland is not uncommon. Many, many sites have shirts on them. And if they were excavated long ago, then they wouldn't have had this technique performed on them. So this could be a good grad school project for somebody.
00:33:22
Speaker
And along those lines, that brings up something that happens all the time in archeology where you're working on a grad school project and you're looking at an old collection. That was my grad school project. I did not excavate anything. I worked on a site that was excavated in 1976. I think, I think it was 76 because I was one years old and the person who did the excavation, it was a big reservoir project and there just wasn't time to write all these up.
00:33:48
Speaker
And so she took all the notes, meticulous field notes, and put everything in 40 plus boxes in the Georgia site files. And that's where I found this collection and then wrote it up. But the thought that people go in and review older collections and then find stuff, they either find something that was miscatalogged or they use a new technology on something old. So the fact that they had to use this RTI technology to find that impression
00:34:13
Speaker
they wouldn't have just done that to all the shirts. I would assume that'd be expensive. So somebody noticed something on this shirt that gave them pause. And they're like, we need to look at this further. And then they brought out their little 10 X in the field and they're like, Oh my God, there's something here. So then they wrote a grant and got this RTI thing probably.
00:34:32
Speaker
But did they do that to every shirt? Of course not. Right. And how many other shirts that have been found on sites that weren't looked at that closely, or maybe were found at the beginning or end of the day in a, you know, end of season, beginning of season timeframe when the light wasn't so good. There just wasn't the right time of day. I mean, how many other examples of this do we already have sitting in museums and boxes?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's entirely possible and not only in museums and boxes, but in, you know, Joe Shepherd Herder's family home, because, you know, people find this kind of stuff on their land all the time and they just have boxes of it. At least they do in the U.S. I would assume it's the same situation in the U.K. You find something, you throw it in a box and then it's your
00:35:12
Speaker
you know, box of pretties for when people come over. I don't know if they feel that way. It'd be interesting to see how farmers in the UK feel because in the United States on private land, it's yours. It doesn't matter where it was found or how it was found. If it's on private land, you own it in the UK. It's owned by the crown, even if it's on your property. So if you dig up some sort of, you know, neolithic treasure, it's not yours. But that being said,
00:35:40
Speaker
You know, farmers are farmers and who wants a pot, like a piece of a pot or, you know, like that's not something that the crown is going to beat down their door to take. I don't know if they need money. Maybe, maybe. Well, but anyway, that that's another thing that is intriguing to me. Not that I'm going back to grad school anytime soon, but it would be really cool to reexamine collections of shirts or anything else that would have
00:36:06
Speaker
impressions
Exploring the History of Knitting
00:36:07
Speaker
of fabric on them. I'm not really sure what else would have a fabric impression that would survive being buried for thousands of years, but so as your husband.
00:36:17
Speaker
If you did ever decide to go back to grad school and study something like this, I'd have a lot of questions for you because this dramatically impacts my life. So if you were going to do that, my biggest question for you would be what's your biggest unanswered question in early textiles, right? What is to you? I mean, maybe this question's already been answered and you just haven't done the research. Who knows? But what to you is the biggest thing you personally want to know and would study if you could.
00:36:45
Speaker
Well, it actually probably wouldn't be woven textile because I think that we do have a pretty good timeline of the technology where it developed how it developed. This Orkney stuff is a little bit weird because it's so old. So this is where the timeline starts to fall apart, which is what makes it more important.
00:37:03
Speaker
But I think for me, it actually goes back to knitting. That is my true, one true love and passion. And there's just huge holes and gaps in the history of knitting. We know it goes way back into, you know, Egyptian times because we have examples of knitted socks from that time period, but we don't really know what happened in between, what different regions we're doing, what different cultures we're doing. So I think I would like to dial into one of those areas and help flesh out the timeline because
00:37:33
Speaker
A lot of people don't study that. And knitting just to people like me that are ignorant of this fact, knitting predates woven technology. No, no, no. Woven way predates knitting. How is that possible? It seems like every time I've seen like just looking at a loom like terrifies me and
00:37:49
Speaker
But when I watch you knit nearly every day, it's like a couple of needles in some yarn. Now I understand it takes some technology to make the yarn, but not a lot. I mean, we've seen that happening at like festivals and stuff where somebody's using one of those drop spindle things. Well, the yarn you use for weaving is the same yarn. It gets finer and finer, of course, and thinner and thinner. But weaving is so much crazier. Yeah. Like it just requires many more things, it seems.
00:38:15
Speaker
Well, you're thinking of like my big floor loom, right? There's much simpler looms that are basically just a frame with strands run across it. And then you weave over under and I'm sure there's ways to weave fabric that don't even require a loom too. You just have to support the threads and then weave them together. I mean, it's still called a loom, but it's like a frame loom that's very simple. That still seems way more high tech than just knitting though.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really know why it wasn't invented sooner. That's really a good question. Yet another thing that needs to be answered. Because that's one of those things like language and fire and other stuff that wasn't invented one time. Not even
Concluding Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:39:01
Speaker
like the bow and arrow was invented one time. You know, these things, the bow and arrow really gets me because like a spear, sure. Guys will throw stuff at stuff and that's how the spear was invented.
00:39:13
Speaker
And then some guy was like, I want to throw stuff further away at stuff. And then the bow was invented, but right. And the outlet, all things like that. But like weaving to me, it's such a non-intuitive sort of thing. It's like, how did this get invented independently across the world many times?
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, it is a really interesting question because of course it was happening around the world. Yeah. So, cause all the different, I mean, fabric, there was fabric here in the new world. So it had to have been invented separately from the rest of the world. And yeah, you just see it develop everywhere. And mostly it's woven the, the knitted stuff comes into play later and it seems to come from a desire to, and you know what, this could be part of it is that knitting allows.
00:39:54
Speaker
The fabric to conform to your body because you can knit it smaller than the thing that you want to put it on and then it stretches to conform to the body like for socks, for example, you want socks to be smaller than your foot so that they stretch and then perfectly fit tightly to your foot the earlier fabrics.
00:40:11
Speaker
And in a time period where religion and such did not support tight fitting anything, didn't want to see any part of anybody's body ever. So woven fabric was fine for that. But as we progressed through the ages, we wanted tighter fitting clothing in some areas of the body until we hit, you know, the eighties where it was the entire body was, you know, that's what they did. That's what knitting, that's, that's the hole that knitting filled in the fabric world.
00:40:40
Speaker
Well, have we weaved this into a tale of archaeology enough for this episode?
00:40:47
Speaker
I think so. I'm still not quite sure what happened. I mean, I went into this discussion, just a person who liked archeology and liked knitting. And now I'm apparently going to grad school to like, to help fill the holes in the archeological record knitting. So, you know, if we got to live in the Scottish Highlands for a couple of years, I'm not going to say no to that. Yeah, that wouldn't be too sad. Yeah. You could go to St. Andrews or something. Oh, that would be so nice. Yep. Anyway,
00:41:16
Speaker
All right. Well, on that note, I think we'll call this episode. So check out the show notes. Like I said, arc pod net.com forward slash archeology forward slash one zero three. And also check out the historical yarns podcast. You can find it by just going to arc pod net.com and then click on the historical yarns image on the main page there. I believe if you type in the search, you can also find historical yarns.
00:41:40
Speaker
episodes. So we'll have more stuff like that coming out. Hopefully historical yarns will have another season combining history of knitting an actual knitting a podcast. I don't think exist elsewhere on the planet. I think it's probably kind of a one off. Yeah. Yeah. Got plans for a future season. Things got a little thrown off track by COVID and such, but we'll get back to it.
00:42:02
Speaker
Okay. Well, thanks for that. And then again, if you have any other ideas on stuff that we could talk about related to this or questions that you've got, maybe we can do some research, find some articles, bring some guests on and talk about those topics. So send us your questions. That would be amazing. Yeah. All right. We'll see you guys next time.
00:42:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. You can also find us on the Lyceum app, a podcast app just for educational podcasts. Music for this show is called I Wish You Would Look from the Band's Sea Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:42:52
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.