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Alex Makin and Early Medieval Embroidery
33 Plays25 days ago
Sarah Kernan talks to Alexandra Makin, a textile archaeologist specializing in early medieval embroidery. She is a professional embroiderer, trained at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace and also holds a PhD in Anglo-Saxon Studies. Alex is a Third Century Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her publications include Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic: Analysis, Interpretation, Re-creation (2024) and The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: The Sacred and Secular Power of Embroidery (2019). In addition, Alex also runs a YouTube channel, Early Medieval Embroidery. Follow Alex on Instagram for updates.
Show notes, links, and transcript available on The Recipes Project.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Season 2
00:00:08
Speaker
This is Around the Table, a podcast from the Recipes Project. I'm your host, Sarah Kernan. Together, we will learn about exciting scholars, professionals, projects, resources, and collections focused on historical recipes.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to Season 2, Dedicated to Making. In each episode this season, we will feature interviews with guests who describe what making means to them.
00:00:38
Speaker
For some, it is recreating a historic recipe as closely as possible. For others, it is creating something new in a modern setting. However imperfect the process or the outcome, making historical recipes offers a powerful methodology for connecting with and understanding the past in a direct and tangible way.
Meet Dr. Alex Makin: Textile Archaeologist
00:01:01
Speaker
Today, have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Alex Makin, a textile archeologist specializing in early medieval embroidery. She is a professional embroiderer trained at the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace, and also holds a PhD in Anglo-Saxon studies.
00:01:19
Speaker
Alex is a third century fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, leading the project Entangled Textiles, Senses, Connections, Power in the Early Medieval North Atlantic, 450 to 1100 CE.
00:01:33
Speaker
She has also published widely, including several articles and chapters a 2024 co-edited collected volume titled Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic Analysis, Interpretation, Recreation, as well as a 2019 monograph, The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World, The Sacred and Secular Power of Embroidery.
00:01:54
Speaker
She regularly lectures and runs workshops for academic and public audiences. In addition, Alex also runs a YouTube channel, Early Medieval Embroidery, where she posts videos about different aspects of early medieval embroidery and her research.
00:02:10
Speaker
I am thrilled to speak to Alex today about her multitude of experiences studying and recreating early medieval embroidery.
Journey to Medieval Embroidery
00:02:17
Speaker
Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, well, thank you for asking me.
00:02:22
Speaker
Your work requires such an interesting combination of skills. You are both a professional embroiderer and a textile archaeologist with a PhD. Could you tell us about your journey into medieval textile studies and what first inspired your fascination with embroidery from this period?
00:02:41
Speaker
Yes, it's quite a long-winded story. I'll try and keep it short for everybody. Over in England, um which is where I'm based, um I know the school system is different to in America.
00:02:53
Speaker
When I was at school a long time ago, ah you could either leave at 18 and go to college or you could stay on at school and do A-levels. I mean, sorry, leave at 16 and go to college or stay on at school and do A-levels, which is what I did.
00:03:06
Speaker
And then after I completed my A-levels, I went down to, as you mentioned, the Royal School of Needlework and I did their completed the three year apprenticeship um in embroidery.
00:03:20
Speaker
And I mean, I enjoyed it, but it was really intensive, much more intensive than people realise, I think. And when I left, I was thinking, that's it. I never want to hold a needle, look at an embroidery ever again. That's it. I've moved on.
00:03:34
Speaker
So i went to university and I did an undergraduate degree in archaeology, which is my second love. And I was based in and Newcastle upon Tyne, which is in the northeast of England.
00:03:45
Speaker
And my brother, who's at a bit younger than me, was doing his degree in history um a Durham Cathedral, which is literally just down the road. um And I had a car, so we used to meet up and go out, and and mainly to historical places.
00:03:58
Speaker
um And one day we went to Durham Cathedral and there's a tomb there, a shrine from the early medieval period, which holds still the remains of St Cuthbert, um a very famous saint over here.
00:04:12
Speaker
And when that tomb was reopened in the, I think it was 1827, they discovered amongst lots of beautiful, beautiful objects, these amazing silk textiles and these fabulous embroideries, a stole and and a manopole. A manopole is a narrow length of textile embroidery that a priest or a bishop would drape over one of his wrists during particular um services.
00:04:39
Speaker
And they were embroidered in silk threads and couch gold metal threads and i was looking at them I can vividly remember it now looking through the glass in the display case thinking this is unbelievable the the skill of these people is it was yeah it was just an enlightening moment and on the apprenticeship we had um gone back as far as the 12th century to Opus Anglicanum but we'd never gone further and at that point when I was looking at the Cuthbert embroideries I was thinking to myself well this came before Opus Anglicanum how did this happen where how did all this all develop why has nobody done anything about this have people done things about this why do I not know about it all these questions were milling around in my head and that was the start really ah so it's all my brother's Durham cathedrals on St Cuthbert's fold so I went back I
00:05:34
Speaker
to university and I thought right I'm going to do my undergraduate dissertation on early medieval embroidery and I realised that nobody had actually done much about it.
Exploring Early Medieval Textiles
00:05:45
Speaker
A wonderful lady Dr Elizabeth Coatsworth she had done some work on embroideries but from that period but really nobody had done a detailed analysis looking at everything and that was the start of it really that sucked me into the black hole And I've been ah at it ever since.
00:06:04
Speaker
That is really incredible. i love those sorts of stories where you have this real world experience and it just ignites a passion for ah for a topic. Yeah. And you want to spend all your time working on it. Yeah.
00:06:18
Speaker
Since this was a field that you learned had not been explored very much, where are you finding your your evidence and your research basis? Is it a mainly ah material evidence? Is there any written evidence or images from the period? And how are you gathering that sort of evidence to recreate and make these items? Yeah.
00:06:43
Speaker
um So this is one of the really cool things about the early medieval period. It was um an era of flux, really, particularly within the area we now call Britain the or the United Kingdom.
00:06:54
Speaker
So the Romans had left in around 450, or just before, actually. And the native Britons, which included people who were in the population before the Romans came, but then people who'd come over through the Roman Empire as well,
00:07:08
Speaker
were calling on the Germanic tribes of continental Europe to come over and um help them fight against the Picts who were in Scotland, the Scotty who were in Ireland, and other tribes who were coming down. so Now the Romans had left, they thought it was easy pickings.
00:07:24
Speaker
So you have this melee of people and cultural ideas coming together. And that's resulted in a vibrant material culture, some of which survives today, some of which is embroidery.
00:07:37
Speaker
The majority of pieces really are what we would call archaeological pieces. So they're very small. They look brown nowadays, very shades of brown, and they survive in various conditions. So sometimes you will have the actual fibres, the threads surviving, but sometimes they're what we call mineralised, where they've been placed in the ground, mainly burials, but other contexts too.
00:08:01
Speaker
and next to a metal object. And as the metal object has changed, the chemicals of check of that object have changed in the ground, they've leached into textiles and the embroidery.
00:08:13
Speaker
And while the fibres have disappeared, disintegrated, these chemicals have kind of a casing that show you what was there.
00:08:23
Speaker
So we have that type of material evidence. But then we have evidence from things like St Cuthbert's Shrine, you have these beautiful surviving pieces.
Practical Skills in Historical Research
00:08:33
Speaker
But then you have the Bayer Tapestry. Of course, that's why I finished my period in 1100 and not 1066, which has survived.
00:08:42
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's just survived everything, really. It's amazing that it's come down to us the way it has. ah We don't know how long it was originally, but it survived at just over 68 metres now. So it's it's huge, really is.
00:08:54
Speaker
So that's your material evidence. But then you have documentary sources. And sometimes they are very specific and they will write about gold work or something else, in or they'll be describing something. And that's very much from the later period, items that are given to churches or ecclesiastical centres, things like that.
00:09:16
Speaker
But sometimes you can read between the lines and you can get hints of what was there. You also have art historical sources as well. So you get these lovely illustrations in manuscripts.
00:09:29
Speaker
And sometimes you get carvings that were crosses or other sculptures and monuments. And you can see things through those as well. And it's ah this is one of the things I love about my period and what I study, because it's about putting all of that together and then reading between the lines and approaching it from so many different angles that you can uncover lots of different aspects to it.
00:09:51
Speaker
And that's also why archaeological theory is a good thing, because that gives you a way in. so for example, the set using what we call sensory archaeology, where you think about embroidery through the senses, or something called, oh gosh, it was there, it begins with E, it's just gone.
00:10:09
Speaker
Entanglement theory, where you where you where you look at all the different ways in which things can come together and mix up and then move on their journeys and object biography theory, which tells you the story of an object and that they all give you different ways into looking at these small surviving examples and of telling their stories really Do you think that your experience as an embroiderer kind of gives you some advantage over other scholars in the past in looking at these items and your experiences actually knowing how to perform the craft and what stitches might have been used in certain places or something something along those lines? So I wouldn't say an advantage being color act here. I would say it enables me to look at things differently.
00:10:57
Speaker
But yeah, definitely. Because sometimes people will look at and um something and they'll say, oh it's been made like this because they know the theory of it.
00:11:07
Speaker
But actually, when you're able to make it and then you recreate it, you realise, well, no, it can't have been made like this because it doesn't work. The practicalities of what is being suggested don't work.
00:11:21
Speaker
Or, the equipment isn't right for making it in that way, both textiles and and embroidery. There's also things that you find where you think, oh, yes, this is this stitch. It's definitely made that way. And then you analyse it on the actual piece and you realise, and then you do a bit and you realise, no, it wasn't made like that at all. They had a completely different way of making this stitch that we work in a certain way today.
00:11:48
Speaker
So it gives you, i think it gives you other... openings and ways of looking at things that perhaps people who haven't got that practical side wouldn't do automatically let's put it that way Are there other challenges that you face when you're trying to recreate some of these historic embroidery items or methods, things like ah the types of fabric or thread or the dies that are used?
Recreating Historical Textiles
00:12:16
Speaker
ah Is any of that a hurdle or just a challenge as you are working on these projects?
00:12:22
Speaker
So yes, i'm I'm hesitant to say a hurdle or a challenge in the sense that for me, When I'm looking at creating a piece, I know that I need things that, ah materials, that are as closely related to the originals as possible.
00:12:42
Speaker
And when I say related, so the spin, and the dyes used, how it's being woven and and things like that. And that's because when things are, and let's take, for example, dyes,
00:12:57
Speaker
When fibres are dyed with chemical dyes, the fibres react differently to how they're dyed with natural pigments. And then the dyeing processes that are involved will alter the yarn, the finished yarn, et cetera, again on top of that.
00:13:15
Speaker
If it's not just about recreating something that looks the same, which is fine, in some circumstances that's all you need. and I don't know, say for example, you want something to hang in a museum exhibition so that people have a visual understanding of what an object looks like, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that.
00:13:34
Speaker
But if you are trying to understand the properties of the fibres and the materials you're working with and how they worked with certain needles and equipment, and then how that affected the embroiderers and how they were working and thinking about things, then you need things to be as close to the originals as possible.
00:13:53
Speaker
And so that's why I go down that route and commission fabric and threads and things. That's an excellent segue into my next question. What are you learning from recreating these items? What are you learning about um the materials and the techniques and the cultural context and significance of these items from your recreations?
00:14:14
Speaker
So for me, it's really interesting because when I first started this, it was about... exploring really how these things were created and the processes involved in that. And it and it's still that up to a point.
00:14:29
Speaker
But what I hadn't anticipated was the fact that ah for people who don't embroider, this is going to sound really weird, but but for people who do craft or or bake or things, they'll know what I mean. When I sit there and I do these embroideries, you kind of get in the zone and you find yourself getting into the embroidered mindset, obviously up to a point, because I mean, I live in ah you know in a house with central heating and nice lighting and all of this kind of thing.
00:14:59
Speaker
But you find yourself just, I'm thinking of when I did the Cuthbert Manipal, the segment that i recreated from that, and I was doing this the gold work, the background couching.
00:15:11
Speaker
And you just really get into that, into the zone where you don't really need to think about that And I was thinking, well, this is how the early medieval embroiderers would have been thinking about it. And they could have been doing this and they would have known the materials worked this way. And that's oh, and that's why they stitched it like this. and oh And that's why this has turned out like that.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that's what intrigues me more now is the fact that I can sit down if I'm not disturbed i'm um and I'm in the right frame of mind. I can begin to think a little bit like the embroideries themselves and understand the decisions they made and the fact that their fibres and threads and needles were working in this way. And that's why they did it the way they did. And I love that really more so, I shouldn't say this, more so probably than just recreating the piece.
00:16:01
Speaker
Could you share any particular moment maybe or a project where working directly with creating ah textile or embroidery technique revealed something very unexpected to you?
00:16:16
Speaker
i think the one that sticks in my head and comes to my mouth is that recreation of part of the St. Cuthbert Manipal. um So I went into that with a number of aims.
00:16:28
Speaker
So The amazing Elizabeth Plenderleith had analysed these embroideries and her report was published back in the 1950s in a huge volume. It's famous among people who like Durham and St Cusper and who ah who study our period. is the It's a volume edited by Batterscombe.
00:16:49
Speaker
And she didn't make, she just analysed. And I can't, nobody really knows her background really, apart from the fact that she was married to Harold Plenderleith, who set up and ran what was then the science lab at the British Museum.
00:17:04
Speaker
And the embroideries had been sent down there for cleaning and she had the opportunity to analyse them. I mean, how cool is that, really? So she wrote this report. i mean, it's an excellent report, but she wrote things in particular about the fact that the silk threads that were used for the filling, filling in the clothes and the faces of figures and things,
00:17:27
Speaker
were flat threads, they were floss. And then she says that the threads, the silk threads used to outline these areas were slightly twisted and they were a completely different thread.
00:17:41
Speaker
And you take that face value and you think, yeah, okay, that makes that makes total sense. But then when I was doing the embroidery, was thinking, well, the measurements that she gives for that thread, the outline thread are not really double the width of a of the single flat thread, which is what it would be if it was two threads twisted together, which is what she's saying it was.
00:18:05
Speaker
And the twist, the way the um thread was spun, it wasn't regular. And if it had been spun into a yarn like that, the spin and then the ply would be regular.
00:18:16
Speaker
Why is that the case? And so I was working with this and I realised that it wasn't a completely different thread at all. They were using the same type of thread that they had used for the filling, but double.
00:18:29
Speaker
And then they weren't consciously twisting it and before they were working it. The irregular twists and ply that was happening was happening because of the way as an embroidery, you turn the needle.
00:18:43
Speaker
So I'm sorry this is a podcast because you can't see me. I'm actually mimicking, turning the needle as I talk. They ah regularly turn the needle as they're making the stitches. And that created exactly the same thread that you see on the original pieces.
Public Engagement and Cultural Significance
00:19:01
Speaker
And for me, that was just like, you just wouldn't know that.
00:19:05
Speaker
You wouldn't even think about that, would you, unless you were making it? So that was one thing. The other thing was, um I said originally I had ah ah some specific aims and I never told you what they were, but one of those was, Plenderleith talked about the gold thread that was couched that was stitched in place for the background on on the manipole and the stowl.
00:19:26
Speaker
And she said that it had this weird, the holding stitches had this weird interlocking thing going on on the back, which isn't normal. And so she did a sample with completely different threads, much larger scale. And she was saying, this is inevitable. It's just the way it works. it You know, theres they didn't do it on purpose.
00:19:49
Speaker
So I was thinking, well, is that true? Because you've got to, for me, you've got to use materials that, as I said before, are close to the original as possible. And so I was doing the stitching and she was right.
00:20:01
Speaker
It is just the way threads are worked. And it's because you sew two gold threads to one strand of thread on the ground fabric. Whereas nowadays we don't stitch ah we only stitch, well, don't stitch one gold thread to one thread on the ground fabric. You just put them up next to each other and then sew them down.
00:20:20
Speaker
It was interesting that, yes, she was right. Her experiment was correct. And that was one of the things that I was looking at. But it was also, it told you so much more about the way...
00:20:31
Speaker
the embroideries were working and the the ground fabric and how that was interacting with the gold threads and things like that which I also found quite fascinating. Yeah your work has been engaging both academic and public audiences broader audiences especially your work recreating the embroidery and I'm thinking of your YouTube videos here. um you You have produced both traditional scholarship on recreation and analysis and peer reviewed items, but you have these YouTube videos. And how do you approach making and this craft when you're creating content for a wider audience that is not academic at all, as opposed to creating content for ah solely academic audience?
00:21:20
Speaker
I will put little note here. I know nothing about embroidery and I find your YouTube videos absolutely fascinating. i i i just started watching one and I just got so sucked in for quite a while watching all the stitching on both the backside and and the front side.
00:21:40
Speaker
I mean, it's just beautiful to watch you working and to see something come to life out of just some fabric and thread. You just have this this image come to life. So how are you thinking about creating that content and engaging people like me who know nothing about that? So it's funny, really, because, you know, I've never really thought about it in detail before. and So for me, I treat academic audiences and the general public the same when it comes to the kind of content. and
00:22:13
Speaker
It's just that I think that there are certain people around the world who are interested in this sort of thing. and they can't access academic publications for lots of different reasons.
00:22:26
Speaker
And the idea for the YouTube was to enable that access and to enable that people to engage with that without having all those barriers in place.
00:22:37
Speaker
And for it not to be dumbed down, but to have intelligence and discussions about it. And so When I create those videos and I'm chatting over the top and things, a lot of that is a stream of consciousness coming out. And sometimes like when I'm there editing it afterwards, I say oh my God, that is completely much drivel.
00:22:58
Speaker
but you know But I leave it in and hope for the best. But it is about giving people that same information and data, but in like i said, in an accessible way.
00:23:09
Speaker
And when I write these things up for academic publications, writing is a different medium. So you don't have those images and you can't embed videos into a journal article or a book. So that makes a difference. So the way you write things is very different. I don't write my videos. I know a lot i know a lot of YouTubers will script their things out beforehand. I don't do that because I don't know what the embroidery is going to say, or um so to speak. And I don't know what my brain's going to think when I'm actually doing the stitching.
00:23:42
Speaker
So it is more of a stream of consciousness. And I do sometimes use that to inform things that I'm then going to write about later on. So it's a two way, I think it's a two way process, really.
00:23:57
Speaker
And it's about, as I say, getting it out there to a wide audience, getting people interested in this sort of thing. And, and treating people like they're intelligent. There's no question that's too silly. so I don't mind.
00:24:08
Speaker
i mean, I am rubbish at replying at the moment because I've got a lot on, but I do try and answer questions. And I, And I do say in the videos, you know, ask these questions. No no question is too silly. That's what it's all about, really.
00:24:21
Speaker
That doesn't answer your question, does it? Sorry. Well, it does. And I really like the idea that you are really trying to bring the same information to a broader audience and kind of remove some of those barriers and um These videos are a really great way to do that. It it is making a lot of what might be difficult to understand in writing very clear when you've seen it demonstrated right in front of you in a video. I certainly wouldn't understand reading a description of some of these stitches and the output. But when I'm seeing it on the screen and you doing that, it it it makes total sense.
00:25:00
Speaker
You know, it's it's funny you say that, actually, because um I have had academic friends ah watch the videos. and And have actually said that it does complement the written descriptions and things that they perhaps they innately know because of their discipline, but actually seeing it does change their perspective on the way they perhaps understand.
00:25:22
Speaker
what's been on the written page, not just by me, but by other people as well. Yeah, I think reading something about the historical consequences of what you're doing, or the context of of what you're doing that that can make more sense in writing, but actually seeing, seeing the embroidery happen and seeing what you're doing, it it just comes to life in a very different way.
00:25:46
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit about your current project that you're working on, that you're leading, Entangled Textiles, Senses, Connections, Power in the Early Medieval North Atlantic, 450 to 1100 The description on your university page, it sounds...
00:26:02
Speaker
incredible. And I'd love for you to um just briefly give us an overview. And i i know you've only been working on it for um around a year or less than a year now. But if there's anything that so you have any ideas or discoveries that are emerging at this point, I'd love to hear about it.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, so well, I can give you the background it. So before I started at ManMet, Manchester Metropolitan and University, I was a postdoctoral research associate. And that's that's a step that once you've done a PhD, you can go on to do this, be a postdoctoral researcher, or you can go, if you're able, you can get um a job within a university. But most people now do this postdoc step.
00:26:46
Speaker
So I was ah a postdoc researcher on a Arts and Humanities Research Council, that's a big funding body over here in the UK, funded project called Unwrapping the Galloway Horde.
00:26:58
Speaker
And this was hoard that was found in the area of Dumfries and Galloway in what's now Scotland. But it was probably buried around 900 CE.
00:27:09
Speaker
And at that time, that area was part of the kingdom of early medieval Northumbria. And it's A very special hoard because the contents of it is very mixed and different to, let's say, all other hoards really that we know about. And as part of that, there were different textiles within it. And that's what I was doing in my as my part of the project. I was analysing and writing about these textiles. And one of them was um a wool fabric and it went off to be radiocarbon dated.
00:27:43
Speaker
And it came back as being... around about 100 years older than when the horde was buried. So this is really exciting, obviously. But it got me thinking because it reminded me of another piece of textile that was probably an apron strap on like a pinafore type dress that was found in a female burial in Iceland.
00:28:06
Speaker
please don't ask me to say the name because I would just ruin it. But I can give the link to the article. Absolutely, we'll put it in the show notes, yes. Brilliant. And then people can read it properly. and This piece of wool was radiocarbon dated and it too was and around about 100 years old when it was put in the ground within this female burial.
00:28:28
Speaker
And so as the way my brain works with these things, was like, well, What's going on here? We know textiles were precious. They were one of the most expensive things that people owned because of the time involved and the effort involved in producing them.
00:28:44
Speaker
And we know that they were in circulation for a long time and that they would be recycled and reused and handed down until they were no longer of viable use. But the fact that these were that old, 100 years old, so you're looking at a good few generations, to me,
00:29:03
Speaker
pinged in my head and made me think well is there something else going on here at this time are there certain textiles out there that are in circulation and being held within female contexts so let me explain that a bit more obviously the female burial in Iceland obviously female gendered but the the Galloway horde The amazing Mary Davis, who was another person on the research project, she was doing a lot of research on different aspects of it. And she realised that quite a lot of, not all, but quite a lot of the objects within a certain part of the hoard within which this wool textile was part had female connotations and female gender linked to them.
00:29:49
Speaker
In my head, I was thinking, well, is there something going on here where you have certain, probably wool, textiles that are being kept in circulation within the female community and have they got special meanings and things associated with them so I think the examples we all know are named swords you know you've got King Arthur's Excalibur you've got the swords in Beowulf to name the some of the famous ones
00:30:23
Speaker
and they're named and these swords have their own histories and biographies and powers and they they have to be given to the right person. And if they're not given to the right person, disaster ensues, you know. and But when the right person gets them, everything tends to go well and amazing feats of whatever occur.
00:30:46
Speaker
And I was wondering, well, okay, Could textiles, certain textiles, be a sort of female equivalent to what's going on with these swords? And they are they're woven, they are gathering stories to them, and as they're passed from one person and one generation to another, they're gathering more mystique and supposed power around them.
00:31:10
Speaker
And, I mean, with the Galloway Horde, for example... Other examples of this type of woven textile are found in different parts of what's now England.
00:31:23
Speaker
And so this particular textile has travelled a long way. And you can imagine the further it travels away from where it was made, the more mystery and power and mythology can surround it And so therefore, I think, wondering, well, is this a form of soft power that's being wielded And how does this fit into early medieval society? And is this giving women a tangible way of controlling the world that they didn't understand because they didn't have the science that we have today?
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, like I say, a soft form of power within a very masculine world. Well, as we view it today, a very masculine world. and So that's how the project started. Exactly. And now I'm reading about different types of textile to see if I can find ones that i think, oh that could be one.
00:32:09
Speaker
If they've been radiocarbon dated and they give a nice date, that would be fantastic. If not, I'm hoping that maybe I will be able to talk the owners, the institutions who own these things into doing little radiocarbon dating. Always a bit of a a discussion needed around that sort of thing. And a lot of the time they'll say no for obvious reasons, but you never know.
00:32:31
Speaker
and to see if there's any pattern. Obviously, we've got to work with the surviving textiles, which are very small in number. But I'm also going back across the sources, so primary sources from the period, reading rereading them from this point of view to see if anything pops out.
00:32:49
Speaker
And I'm going back through work that people have published to see if there's anything that that comes out ah from that as well. I started last November. That's when I started my job at Manchester Met.
00:33:00
Speaker
But i said as everyone knows, when you start a new job, lots of other things kind of crowd in the way. So I'm not working on it all the time because of everything else that I'm doing. And then there was another, I don't know what to call it really. Well, I'll just tell you what happens and then you call it what you like.
00:33:16
Speaker
So at Christmas, an academic friend sent a Christmas card saying, oh, congratulations on your new job. Your new project sounds really exciting. But I had said that, did the women curate these textiles?
00:33:29
Speaker
And in my head, I kind of know what that means. But she said, I don't believe women ever curated textiles. And I was like, oh, OK, that's an interesting concept.
00:33:39
Speaker
um I don't agree with it. And we've had a laugh about it since. But was like, I don't agree with that statement. But actually, what do we mean by curate? Because this individual is coming more from a museum kind of background, really. And I assumed that's what she meant, but maybe she didn't. Maybe she was thinking about curate a different way.
00:33:57
Speaker
So I've actually gone off on a massive tangent to try and find out, well, what do I mean by curate? Because I now think I need to add a whole chapter about the idea of curation. And I've discovered that from an archaeological perspective, the word curate is not a good word.
00:34:13
Speaker
And it's avoided quite a lot. Or they use it in italics and then skip on to the next bit, of but don't explain why they've put it in italics. But I'm hoping to get back on course very soon.
00:34:25
Speaker
So I think it's a case of watch this space. And I haven't really got any results to tell you. I'm so sorry.
Advice for Researchers
00:34:30
Speaker
so No, no. I think the detour sounds very interesting to explore the word curate in this particular context and the implications for archaeological research and methodology. i think that's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, it' it is because there's a whole thing that goes on about how things can be heirlooms.
00:34:51
Speaker
And things can be relics. And the word curate is used more often with things that are relics, that that people seem quite comfortable with that sort of thing. And obviously the word is used within museum contexts and things like that.
00:35:04
Speaker
But the idea of curating something just generally within everyday life seems to... cause a bit of let's say a bit of a stumbling block within people the way people think about things so we'll see I've kind of gone with the Oxford Dictionary's very broad and definition of what curate is for now and then if something pops up or if I can come up with a different explanation then that will send off on another tangent but at the moment let's hope we're going back to the main road now Well, if I could end with one final question, what advice would you give anyone, but particularly students and researchers interested and incorporating hands-on craft and making into their research practices?
00:35:53
Speaker
Just do it. Just, yeah, just, yeah, just get on with it and do it Because there There is a lot of theory out there about experimental archaeology. It doesn't really talk about embroidery. that Sometimes it includes weaving. A lot of it is aimed at ceramics or lithics or building structures and things like that. um That's really useful background um and important as well because you you need to embed your work within a theory, even if, say, on YouTube, I don't talk about the theory because
00:36:27
Speaker
I don't think people are interested, but if they are, then I will do an episode on theory. But for me, it depends what your research questions are. So if it's something about how do the materials work, how did they react when they're being manipulated, the kind of things I'm interested in, you need to be using research. I mean, it took me a year to find the right threads and materials and somebody who could weave the fabric for the Cuthbert Manipal project.
00:36:55
Speaker
And that was a lot longer than I anticipated. But in the end, I got the right materials. And I i hope that the results that have have come through that project now are as accurate as they can be as a result of that.
00:37:08
Speaker
I know there's a cost implication in that. So look up small funding bodies who will give you grants to help you with these things. There are these groups out there who will give small grants to help funded for you to get the right materials and the right equipment join groups like exarch exarch.net that has a lot of practicing experimental archaeologists and historians in there talk to people about their approaches and why they do things the way they do as well but overall it's be brave and just dive in there because you never know where it's going to end and you might take some steps back and go oh that one was rubbish i'm going to rework it or
00:37:53
Speaker
that didn't turn out how I expected. That's, well, that's not a bad thing. And it's all about that learning experience and building up confidence. That is such a great way to end today. Alex, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Well, thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed it.
00:38:10
Speaker
Thanks to everyone for listening today. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. I'll see you again next time on Around the Table.