Archaeological Textiles
YAC Attack 132! Viking Braid
Today most of us buy our clothes. Can you imagine having to grow and prepare your own fibre, spin your own yarn, weave your own cloth, and make your own clothes?
Textiles have been made in one form or another for at least 20,000 years. This makes weaving and winding fibre one of the oldest technologies still in use today.
In the past this is what nearly every family had to do, and in many societies around the world this still happens. As well as wearing clothes to protect us from the weather, they have always been worn to make statements, and to give people individual or group identities. Clothes and textiles have therefore been, and continue to be, a very important part of human lives.
The oldest evidence for the use of fibre to make clothes comes from the Upper Don region of Russia where a 20,000-year-old stone figurine was found with a carved twined-fibre skirt.
Many dyes in the past came from insects and shellfish. For instance, the purple cloth used for the togas worn by Roman emperors was dyed using a shellfish found in the Eastern Mediterranean area. Extracting the dye was along and very smelly job, so it was only used for the clothes of very important people.
ACTIVITY: Have a go at making your own Braid, the Viking way!
