Welcome to the March 2021 post. This is the second of the two-part installment about Viking textile production, Weaving Identities II. In this post Dolores Kearney continues where Mary Valente left off. Dolores focuses entirely, on Viking Dublin, approaching the women of that settlement and its textile production through the concept of the châine opératoire... Continue Reading →

Welcome to the second installment of 2021's Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles Blog. We continue this year's series with a two-part post about Viking Age textile production. In 'Weaving Identities Part 1', Professor Mary Valante discusses Viking-Age evidence for textile production from rural Iceland, Scandinavia and Dublin, showing that it was vital to both the local... Continue Reading →

Just realised that a paper I gave at the European Association of Archaeologists conference in 2018 is now live on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1pyp3tfk6jo In the 15 minute paper I explore the multiple layers of meaning the 10th-century ‘Cuthbert’ stole & maniple had to early medieval society from the materials through the embroidered designs to wearing /... Continue Reading →

Happy New Year and welcome to the first Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles post of 2021! We are starting the new year off with a bang. Celia Elliott-Minty has been weaving and braiding for about 40 years and in that time has explored most of the recognised techniques, although tablet weaving has remained her favourite. Following... Continue Reading →

I’m pleased to announce that I’m joining the Archaeology Department at the University of Glasgow to work with Dr Susanna Harris as the textile Post Doc’ on the 3 year AHRC funded National Museum of Scotland & University of Glasgow ‘Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard’ project. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this... Continue Reading →

I’m pleased to announce that today I’ve been accepted as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

I’m really excited about this! My first ever peer reviewed journal article, ‘Embroidery and it’s early medieval audience: a case study of sensory engagement’ has just been published online in World Archaeology. It can be accessed via this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2020.1835530 Here’s a short abstract: Sensory archaeology is used to access the early medieval ‘mindset’ to... Continue Reading →

Welcome to December and the 'most wonderful time of the year'. Thank you to everyone who has read and followed the blog since its inception in August. I really do appreciate that so many people are interested in early medieval (and other periods) textiles in all their forms and uses. The sharing of knowledge and... Continue Reading →

Welcome to the fifth installment of ‘Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles’. This month Christina Petty discusses weaving 2/1 (unbalanced) twill weaves on warp-weighted looms: the evidence, the problems and her experimental archaeological approach to the weaving process. Chris’s passion for textiles started at the age eight. Today she is primarily a weaver, spinner and dyer, but... Continue Reading →

Welcome to our fourth instalment of ‘Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles’. This month we are travelling through the Mediterranean, North Africa and Asia during Late Antiquity and the early medieval period, where we discover how the invention of steel needles changed weaving processes and the production of embroidery. Karen Carr was an Associate Professor of History... Continue Reading →