A holistic approach to experimental archaeology

July 26, 2017 | Autor: Jacqui Wood | Categoria: Experimental Archaeology, Metallurgy, Prehistory, Textile Technology, Leather Technology
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CHAPTER FOUR A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY JACQUI WOOD

The popular notion is that prehistoric life mostly fits Thomas Hobbe’s seventeenth century description of their life as ‘nasty, brutish and short’. A people too primitive for technology cold, sick, hungry and thoroughly uncomfortable as they scrabbled for a meagre subsistence. In an attempt to discover if this dismissive opinion about the lives of our prehistoric ancestors was correct or not I began my research over 30 years ago. Yet how is it possible to put oneself in the mindset of a prehistoric European and learn what life was really like for them when one was brought up in the 20th century cushioned with boundless technology? Most archaeologists would say it is an impossible task. Some of my discoveries over the last 15 years have I believe proved them wrong. I set myself very clearly defined rules about how I would undertake such research from the beginning. Primarily I felt it was essential to attempt to replicate all the skills encountered in a prehistoric settlement such as ceramic production, leatherwork, textiles, metallurgy, cooking, house structures and so on. The most important requirement was to use only the materials that were available to the people being studied. There would be no point using materials or technologies that were known to have been from a later period. This absolute attention to detail at all times is essential if the research is to have any academic validity. The second rule I set myself was to have no formal training in any of the craft skills undertaken as I felt this would be a serious disadvantage to my research. No matter how one tries one cannot help but be influenced by such training and therefore the research loses its soundness. As you can imagine it took many years before this holistic approach started to reveal results, as I had to rediscover through trial and error their basic craft skills like I was a young apprentice in prehistory myself.

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Very often I found it was the by-product of one activity that became the vital ingredient for the next, thereby discovering ancient recycling patterns in a settlement context. One common skill in a prehistoric settlement would be the making of baskets of all forms and sizes to carry and store goods in. This is substantiated by ethnographic studies of basketry around the world. However, when replicating baskets myself I decided to make them out of any material I could find in nature apart from Willow (Salix). The reason for this is that willow basketry has been practiced in one form or another continuously since prehistory, therefore there was nothing to be discovered from working with the material. So I started making baskets out of fresh grass by plaiting them and coiling the plaits and sewing them together using a bone needle with strands of grass as the thread. Thereby demonstrating that large and small containers could be made from fresh grass with just a bone needle and some skill. This activity of course led on to researching how best to make a bone needle before I could start. Flint knapping is one skill I found difficult to master yet I used flint tools in many processes. I had a colleague who would make me bone needle making tools, a saw, an awl and a notched flint blade to round off the square edges once the needle was cut from the bone. Unfortunately flint saws have a habit of becoming blunt quite quickly when used continually. I found that it took me 4 hours to make a needle using those specific tools and 4 and a half hours to make a needle out of random flakes of flint. I also discovered that cooked bone was easier to work with than uncooked bone and lamb leg bone was I discovered was the best. I am sure not everyone would have been skilled at flint knapping and there would have been some like myself that did not make specific tools for a job, but used rough flint flakes instead. I found the best way to manufacture a variety of flakes was by covering a flint nodule with a cloth and hitting it with a large rock. The practicalities of this approach are evident as it took me only 30 minutes longer to make the bone needle using debitage rather than waiting for a skilled flint knapper to re touch specific tools repeatedly. After many years lecturing on various aspects of my research in Italy I was subsequently commissioned to make a replica of the ‘Ice man’ or ‘Otzi’s’ grass cloak and shoes for the new South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, where his remains were to be exhibited. I was commissioned to make the replicas in December prior to the museum opening in March, which I might add is not the best time of year to start looking for grass to make a cloak with. Added to this the museum could not tell me what type of grass it was made of only that it was over 90 cm long, 2cm wide at the top tapering to 1 mm at the tip or hem. I was

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also informed that it was a very strong type of grass as the cross members were also made of the grass which in effect held the whole garment together. Within days of my commission I was informed that the museum wanted my replica’s in Bolzano by mid January to be photographed for the museum catalogue. This gave me four weeks to find the materials to make the cloak with. I enlisted the help of members of staff of Cewe gardens and the Natural History Museum in London to try and identify the grass for me. The Natural History Museum suggested that I might find such a grass in the New Forest in Hampshire and Cewe gardens thought a grass something like it grew somewhere near Turin. This was not much help to me because at that time of year the grass would have been covered by a layer of snow in that region. So I made the first replica of the grass cloak out of sedge grass, which was certainly strong enough but a dark green colour. I decided to artificially bleach it thinking that this would be good enough for the catalogue photographs, then giving me three more months to find the right material for the exhibit before the museum opened. When I arrived at the museum in January with the sedge grass cloak and the shoes it was suggested that I should examine the original cloak in the museum store to try to determine what kind of grass it was made of. When I finally looked at the cloak I could see that all the photographs I had previously seen of it had been misleading. The cross members of the cloak were not made of grass at all, but the exceptionally strong small leafed Lime baste (Tillia Cordata) which part of his shoes were made of too. In effect this meant that the grass need not be so strong at all as it was held together with the Lime baste cross members. This baste fibre has a clearly identifiable honeycombed surface on it, yet it is the same colour as the grass so on the photographs it was impossible to distinguish between the two materials. I also could see that the 1 mm tips or hem of the grass cloak had been weathered to that thickness. I subsequently identified the grass as the common Upright Brome grass that grows on the roadsides and rough ground over the whole of Europe. Whilst examining the cloak it was clear it had been laced up at the front because twisted loops of lime baste had been linked at the ends of each horizontal interlinking to accommodate lacing. There was also a long piece of twisted twine at the neck which substantiated this theory because that is what would have used to lace the front of the cloak. This suggested something to me about how the cloak was worn because if it was laced up at the front the cloak must have had slits in it otherwise the arms would have been pinned as it were to the torso. I suggested this to the museum when I was making it, but they decided not to have slits in the cloak as it would not hang well on the manikin they had for the exhibit. Another

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anomaly I noticed when looking at the cloak were the lime baste shoulder straps (Fig. 4-1). I realize immediately then why the cloak had to be worn off the shoulder with straps. In order to add enough grass to make the cloak fit for the purpose the top plait would be too thick to be worn at the neck. Therefore the straps were there to hang the cloak off the shoulders (Fig. 4-2). I suggested in a paper I wrote for EAA Lisbon that there must have been some sort of covering on the shoulder area or the cloak would not be weatherproof. If a small grass cape were added on top of the cloak to shed snow away from the shoulder region this would have been quite adequate for the purpose (Fig. 4-3).

Fig. 4-1. Grass cloak.

Fig. 4-2. Grass cloak with shoulder straps.

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Fig. 4-3. Grass cape added on top of the cloak.

The cloak is in no way restricted by this type of top cape. No such item was found near his remains, yet having his shoulders exposed to the elements whilst the rest of his body was well covered seems to have been completely ignored by the museum and those specializing in the subject. In order to attempt this holistic approach to my research I would over the years specialize in one area of research at a time to build up a cross disciplinary picture of daily practices. One year I made string out of every plant fibre I could find with some interesting results and in 1997 I researched how to cure leather from sheepskins. It occurred to me that after the community had a surfeit of sheepskin rugs to sit or sleep on, might not the sheep’s leather and wool be more useful separately utilized? My primary research was to manufacture the skin into leather rather than dwell on the wool element. So I proceeded to scrape the membrane off the skin with flint tools. It occurred to me that if I sewed some twine around the edge of the cleaned skin and pulled it tight I would form a bag with the sheepskin. I decided to cure the skin by putting oak bark chippings into the bag and filling it up with water. I then hung the bag high up in a tree so that animals would not be able to damage the skin whilst it was being cured. After a few weeks I noticed that the wool was starting to fall off the skin and on closer inspection found that flies had laid their eggs between

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the skin and the hide. Maggots had hatched out and were eating the membrane that held the wood to the skin. (Fig. 4-4). They cleaned the skin beautifully and removed the wool in one piece so that it appeared that it had been cut cleanly away with a knife. After a while the maggots turned into flies themselves and flew away. Not long after that the skin at the top of the bag that had not been in contact with the oak bark rotted and the bag dropped to the ground. The bag was well cured leather and the wool was intact and ready to be spun into yarn. Whilst as far as I know there is no evidence in the archaeology for such a practice I am sure that someone might have thought of the same idea in prehistory when they saw how well it did the job with a minimum amount of effort. If one does not try all manner of research such as this one is not going to discover the plethora of activities that might have been practiced throughout prehistory. One year it occurred to me that it would be useful to have a well cut into the water table inside one of my roundhouses just as they had in medieval times.

Fig. 4-4. Skin cleaned by maggots.

As far as I knew there was no archaeological evidence for such a practice and I wondered why. So I dug a well in the floor of one of the houses and lined it with wattle and it served its purpose wonderfully. That was until the following year when we took some water from the well and found it thick with mosquito larva. In hindsight it was obvious that was why people did not have standing water in their homes in prehistory, as they would have been bitten in their sleep. Yet in making the well, which was by the way quickly filled in, we now know why they did not do it. Another example of trying what seemed logical was when I build my first roundhouse out of wattle and daub and thought I would cut windows in the wattle walls. As far as I knew there was no evidence for windows as the

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archaeology only reveals the postholes of the dwellings. Yet I would want windows in my house, especially wattle and daub houses, as it is so easy to cut them out without upsetting the structural integrity of the walls. I created blinds out of reeds and skins to pull and peg down if it was cold and windy and they were a great success. It was not until many years later that I read a report about a burnt house in Denmark with window edges in the burnt daub that it appears there was after all evidence for the practice. We have to remember that these prehistoric dwellings that are a now familiar part of open-air museums around Europe were ordinary people’s homes. They would not have been the brushed bare examples visited by the public, that is, unless prehistoric families favoured the modern minimalist furnishings of twenty first century homes. They would have been probably messy and cluttered with all the paraphernalia of daily life including children’s toys. Where is the research into children’s toys in prehistory? Did those children never play with anything? Even the children of Dickensian England working most of the day had toys. I used to have groups of 7 year olds in my reconstructed Bronze Age settlement for many years and toy making was one activity they loved. I would give them bits of string and send them off into the field to go and make something to play with. It was amazing how many girls made dolls, boys made bows and arrows and even balls out of bundles of moss and leaves. They all however consistently made grass and stick boats to race each other in the stream with interestingly. It is a popular misconception I feel to assume that prehistoric people were so very different to ourselves. Children would be children and mimic the roles of their parents and women would want to make their homes comfortable and make tasty food for dinner and men would have strived to bring in a good crop or hunt for a tasty animal. I believe we have not changed that much at all since then. We have forgotten basic survival skills because we have no longer a use for them, but in a survival situation necessity would find these skills reinvented. Here is an example of how this holistic approach I have adopted in my research is vital if we are going to make real discoveries with experimental archaeology. If one is blinkered in one discipline such as textiles or ceramics one sees a settlement situation through a very narrow window. Recycling is not a new concept and so many broken and discarded artefacts would have been utilized into new tools and products. I was employed by Lake Ledro museum in northern Italy in 1998 to see if I could replicate some of their museum exhibits and possibly reinterpret their uses.

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Initially, I was interested in a broken sledge runner in one of the cases. It had notches cut out at the top and at the bottom of it indicating it had been utilized into another item after it had been broken. Two cases along in the museum was a long narrow linen woven belt. I noticed that it looked just about the same length as the sledge runner if stretched between the notches I just mentioned. I proceeded during my stay at the museum to replicate the sledge runner and attempt to use it as a primitive belt loom with some linen yarn. The utilized loom worked perfectly indicating that it could have been used for that purpose. Another and very much more dramatic discovery I made at the same museum was in a case of ceramic objects labelled as cheese moulds (Wood 2007) (Fig. 4-5). Having done a considerable amount of prehistoric cooking research over the years this immediately took my interest. The ceramic objects were 8.5 cm high with a 3 cm hole at the top and an 8 cm hole at the bottom. The whole fabric of the object was pierced by matchstick sized holes in it too. Presumably the cheese mould suggestion was because they thought the holes were to release the whey from the curds in the initial stages of cheese making. However, when I took one from the case and looked at it I noticed that the inside of the mould was vitrified indicating that it had been subjected to intense heat post ceramic production. I thought initially that it might have been a small lantern top and in view of this decided to replicate the pot the next day and demonstrate its use at the museum open day at the end of the week.

Fig. 4-5. “Cheese moulds”.

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This is where my holistic approach is a fundamental principle for discovering anomalies in the daily practices of prehistory. We need to take a step back now from the cheese moulds/ lanterns to some research I did into prehistoric lighting many years before. I had often wondered how Bronze Age houses were lit during the long winter months. If you have had occasion to sit around a log bonfire you would be aware that when fresh wood is put on the fire it gives off very little light for some time afterwards. So if one was weaving or flint knapping at the back of the house during a winter’s evening how would one see to work? Historically the soft rush (Juncus) was used by poorer people who could not afford candles as a form of lighting throughout Europe. The soft rush was peeled leaving a sliver of green on one side to support it and the pithy centre was dipped in fat primarily lamb or beef fat. Once dried the dipped rushes were then clipped together on a wall fitting and lit providing a bright light to the occupants of the dwelling. However, the green part of the rush once peeled and left for 24 hours becomes a strong twine for sewing grass baskets together with. I had a commission from a museum to make such a basket and peeled a substantial amount of the rush for the outer green part. This left me with a by-product of a large bowl of spaghetti looking white pith. Rather than waste it I dipped it in some fat and tried to ascertain if it would work as a light without the stabilizing green part left on it. I found that the pith was incredibly absorbent in its completely peeled form 5g of pith absorbed 350g of fat. Once the fat had cooled and the pith was stiff I put a handful of it into an incense pot commonly found in the Bronze Age archaeology of my region. The pith for the most part broke into 3cm long pieces and I lifted one of these pieces into an upright position and lit it. Within minutes the whole area of the pith caught alight and gave off an intense light. I noticed that a vapour floated between the pith and the flame and taking the pot outside I found that it did not blow out in the breeze. It kept self-igniting making it a very stable form of lighting, as it would not blow out if a draft came in from an open door. The pith must be dipped immediately after peeling, then it can be left in an open basket indefinitely without decomposing. When a small light was required then a small pot could be filled and lit. On the other hand if a large light was required a large bowl could be filled and lit and the resulting light is as bright as a car headlight. Therefore it made a light source infinitely variable depending on the size of the pot it was contained within (Fig. 4-6).

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Fig. 4-6. Two pots of different size.

So I immediately thought of this research to find a fuel for my lantern demonstration at the museum open day. I had no difficulty finding suitable rushes and processed them for the open day event. I lit my rush light and placed the Cheese mould/lantern on top. I was not expecting what happened next. A tall pencil like flame shot out of the top of the pot 32cm high and 3cm wide and made a sound like a Bunsen burner (Fig. 4-7). When a small stone was placed on top while it was burning the holes in the side of the pot allowed in just enough air to keep the flame alight, so that when the stone was taken off the tall flame returned. The archaeology of Lake Ledro is rich in metal working objects so it appeared that the Cheese mould was in the wrong case it should have been with the metal working artefacts as a controllable bench fire for soldering metals together. I began researching this possibility at the museum and found a flat tablet 12 cm by 8 cm with one cm holes in it. If two large stones were placed either side of the burner and the tablet was put on top it creates an area that could be utilized like a Bunsen burner and a tripod for soldering metals (Fig. 4-8). I subsequently found the burners at Bronze Age metal working sites all over Europe from Sweden to Poland Bulgaria to Great Britain. All labelled cheese moulds since the 1930’s and unchallenged as such until I read my paper on them at EAA Bournemouth in 1998. Of course I tried to see if they would work as a cheese mould, but they were the wrong shape to let the whey drain out effectively. Also I tried every conceivable type of fuel to make the burners work and nothing had the same effect as the fat soaked rush. Most other fuels just let out a soft glow

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like a lantern. So if I had not researched lighting after the commission to make the grass basket I would not have found the fuel to make the burners do what they were originally made for. I was visiting the Ashmolean museum in Oxford a few years ago and found another much bigger burner of the same form from the Saxon period; I have as yet to do some research into the capabilities of that particular burner.

Fig. 4-7. Cheese mould/lantern lighting.

Fig. 4-8. Cheese mould/lantern used as a Bunsen burner.

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Fig. 4-9. The Orkney hood.

Finally I would like to show how just looking at an artefact and writing a paper on how it was manufactured could be one reason why our understanding of prehistoric practises are being held back. A prime example of this practice was a paper written for the society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1952 by A. S. Henshall named ‘Early Textiles found in Scotland’. (Henshall 1951-52) This was the definitive paper on the Orkney hood, the oldest garment excavated in Britain (circa 200 AD), excavated in St. Andrew’s parish Orkney in 1867 (Fig. 4-9). This apparently unique garment, with its complex weaving and double tablet woven bands with fringe, was taken to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for display. The hood remained on display for approximately 83 years until it was studied in detail by A .S. Henshall for her paper. In 2001, after giving a lecture on my work at the Seachange conference in Orkney, I was commissioned by the Orkney Council to make the first complete replica of the hood. I went to the National Museum of Scotland for a day and with the hood in the office took photographs and measurements of it prior to making it. I was also given a copy of Henshall’s paper on the artefact and it seemed so comprehensive and detailed I thought I would have no problems making the replica. The suppositions in the paper all seemed so valid and logical and I had no

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reason to doubt that they were not right. That was until I started to make the replica putting her suppositions into practice. The first job I needed to do before I could begin to make a replica of the hood was to make a simple warp weighted loom. The easiest method of loom construction is to select two forked trees for the main uprights approx 11 cm diameter and 180cm long. Three straight branches are also required one to slot between the two forked trees and the other two to be lashed approx. 40cm from the base to stabilize the loom. This type of loom can be made in a morning and warping the loom can proceed in the afternoon. A series of 3cm holes are then required half way down the forked uprights to peg in the forks to lift some of the sheds. This was done with the aid of a modern electric drill but I have in the past drilled these holes with primitive push drills the latter takes about 15 minutes per hole. Two small forked branches 3cm thick and 20cm long are needed to peg into the holes in the uprights. Finally three straight sticks of hazel are required, two for the sheds and the other stick to hang from the top of the loom. The latter will be bound tightly with string to separate the warp threads and keep them apart during the weaving process. Now the loom structure is complete apart from the manufacture of the round clay weights to hold the warp threads taut. Taking my measurements from Henshall’s report in the 1950’s that the woven fabric was approximately 49cm x 45cm I positioned the loom struts to accommodate this. Henshall suggested that the fabric for the hood was cut from a larger piece of cloth ‘although no selvedge remains there is no doubt which set of threads is the warp, for a gore occurs at A on the plan, and irregularity which can only be formed in the weft.’ This supposition although valid when looking at the garment led me down a path which took at least a month of frustrated efforts to find out it was inaccurate; I will describe this in detail later. My measurements of the hood revealed that 10 warp threads per cm were needed, so to give myself a little cloth on each side I would need 540 half millimetre single z spun threads to warp the loom. Shetland wool is very easy to spin this fine, however when required for a single spun warp thread it needs to be very tightly spun in order to take the wear of the sheds and the pull of the weights. My previous experience when using a warp weighted loom was not with such fine warp threads. This led on to an interesting discovery, which will undoubtedly improve my weaving proficiency in the future. As a rule one ties bundles of the warp threads through the holes in the loom weights. Due to the fineness of this yarn and amount of warp threads required, as the warp threads were tied through the weights they could not fall freely and tended to rest upon each other thereby not applying the necessary tautness needed for the weaving

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process. The only method that would keep the weight distributed evenly was to push a stick through the holes in the weights and tie the warp threads to the stick either side of the weights. This I found was an exceedingly superior way to warp a loom as when extra weight is needed during the weaving process the weights can be slipped on either side of the stick. The cloth of the hood was a 2/2 herringbone twill weave with very erratic widths on the chevron stripes. These widths ranged from 18 warp threads per stripe to 88 warp threads. This is very unusual as the chevron stripes in 2/2 twill weaves in the Iron Age period are customarily even. Henshall surmised in her research that the warp threads were single threads and the weft threads were fine and used double, in other words each horizontal thread was made up of two fine threads used together. If she was right that would suggest that the chevrons ran horizontally across the loom in a very uneven zig zag pattern. I began to thread the loom using this assumption. A 2/2 twill weave requires four different sheds to form the twill weave pattern. Therefore I had to calculate which warp threads should be attached to the four sheds incorporating the uneven chevrons into the calculations. I really did not think this would be a problem until I actually tried to do it. It is important I feel at this stage to detail just how uneven the chevron stripes were. These numbers are the warp threads per stripe each time they changed the direction of the stripe: 18, 18, 28, 24, 18, 38, 42, 26, 22, 88, 26, 26, and 18. It took about two days or 16 hours to thread the loom before I could start weaving. After twelve rows of weaving the pattern appeared to be working, until I inspected the reverse side of the cloth and discovered innumerable loose threads forming loops at the change in the chevron stripes. So I unpicked the weaving and started to re-thread the sheds again because the cloth was a 2/2 twill weave the whole loom had to be re threaded again another two days work. I did in fact re thread and start weaving the loom for 48 hours trying every conceivable method I could think of to accommodate the uneven chevron stripes. The only feasible conclusion I came to was that it could not be done with the zig-zag stripes horizontal. The only other way to try it was to treat the single warp threads as weft threads and the double fine weft threads as warps. So I re threaded the loom again using double fine threads as one, which worked very well although the two threads were not plied together, they were just a strong as if they were plied. The loom was threaded again and this time I was sure it would work as the twill weave went as a block in one direction until the number of rows were woven such as 18 rows, 18 rows and 28 rows etc. While studying the hood at the NMS I noticed that

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at each change in the chevron direction there were indented rows of threads at each change. After examining some of the close up photographs taken during its conservation in 1981 I noticed that there seemed to be three treads picked up along the row instead of the two needed for the twill weave. A simple solution to this anomaly occurred to me if I used a bone needle I could catch three warps threads and leaving one back and on the next row I could catch one thread with the needle and leave three back this created a similar indenting that was visible on the original. I continued to weave the fabric in this way, there were no looped threads and the weaving looked identical to my photographs of the original. However, when the weaving was complete and I took it off the loom and measured the fabric and it was at least 20 cm too long. It was turning out to be a very challenging project. The fact that the original hood was being taken back to Orkney for the first time in 100 years to stand for a while next to my replica did slightly add to the pressure on me to get it right. So I had to go back to my measurements and re- think where I had gone wrong. It had to be something to do with the thickness of the weft threads as the width was the right measurement. I had wrongly assumed that all the weft threads in the fabric were the same thickness I found when I calculated the widths of the chevrons to the number of rows that there were I found in fact that there were four very different thickness of yarn used for the weft. This was very noticeable with hindsight the 42 row band measured 4 cm whereas the 38 row band measured 5 cm. I ascertained that the four distinct yarns were as follows 7 rows per cm, 8 rows per cm, 9 rows per cm and 10.5 rows per cm. and these different thicknesses of yarn were erratically distributed throughout the fabric. Having had some experience teaching groups of people how to spin on a spindle whorl I have found that people find their own particular thickness of yarn that they find easy to spin. Most students acquiring spinning skills find that they can easily spin an even yarn at their own personal thickness, some very fine yarn and some much thicker. Whereas a skilled spinner can spin any yarn thickness to order, the average spinner tends to spin always at the same thickness. I suggest that therefore there were four distinct spinners making the yarn for the hood. This would account for the uneven chevrons of the pattern. If a fine thread was added after a thick one this would form a ridge in the weaving and be noticeable, but if one always changed the direction of the chevron when a new yarn was added the difference is unnoticeable, as I found to my cost when making my first replication of the weaving. After spinning the four required thicknesses of yarn I continued to re weave the cloth and the

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finished garment, when it was displayed in the case in Orkney, looked just like the original (Fig. 4-10). It was impossible to see the different thicknesses of yarn by looking at the garment and was easily missed which was the reason the original weaver made it that way. I would have missed it myself too if I had not tried to replicate it.

Fig. 4-10. Replica of the Orkney hood.

Conclusion So just how can we imagine the past? The fashionable method is to look at anthropological studies of modern day primitive societies. These studies are thought to give us conclusive indicators about how people survived as hunter-gatherers. A popular source for this kind of research is to look at the indigenous people of Australia because some groups are still living that hunter-gatherer lifestyle. One particular television programme in the U.K. tried to show through experimentation the diet of the Mesolithic European. The first half of the series was filmed in Australia with aborigines who processed roots from poisonous plants for a source of carbohydrates in their diet. The presenter then came back to Britain and tried to replicate the processes with other poisonous roots to show a possible Mesolithic food source. Ingenious though the root processing practice was to see, did people in prehistory really do that? Personally I think not. The whole emphasis of

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studying the Australian aborigines was to demonstrate how they managed to survive in the desert interior of that country. But surely before the colonists arrived on their shores they were not living in the middle of the desert? I can’t imagine they would have chosen to live in a dessert when they had fertile green valleys all around their coastline. The aborigines had no choice but to learn how to survive eating poisonous roots. Their fertile lands were taken from them. Why would one even think of processing something poisonous when you had a wealth of tasty safe wild herbage to eat? This I feel is a prime example of how anthropological studies can be very misleading. When I first started my research into prehistoric cooking I took a different approach to previous studies, which were to look at scant food residues in ceramic pots. I looked at the pollen record to see what plants were growing around a particular site and took the assumption that if the plant was tasty and edible our forbears would have eaten it. All we have that is concrete evidence from the distant past are the artefacts that remain. Anthropological studies as I demonstrated can be flawed. As writing a paper on how an artefact was made without actually trying to make it can also be flawed as I discovered when I made the Orkney hood replica. How do I imagine the past? Well I envisage from my experience in replicating parts of their daily life (Wood 2004) it was very similar to our society today. We have forgotten the skills they used in their daily lives because we have no use for them. That does not mean that those people in prehistory were not warm and comfortable in their homes, ate good wholesome food, worked hard and played with their children just as we do. I found when demonstrating ancient cooking techniques at Biskupin in Poland for ten days at a time, one could not help but find simple ways to make oneself comfortable whilst working. The first three days would be spent making pits and preparing the kitchen as it were, for work. After that one found that one got bored and that boredom inspired inventive ways of making the camp more comfortable and efficient for working in. It is just human nature to do this and we must not look at prehistoric people and think they were any different from ourselves in similar situations. So yes I do think you can imagine in some part what the past was like if one takes a holistic and not blinkered approach to experimental archaeology.

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Bibliography Henshall, A. S. 1951-52. Early Textiles found in Scotland: Part One. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland No 86: 9-15. Edinburgh. Wood, J. 2004. The Use of Living Space in Prehistory. In Olena V. Smyntyna (ed.) Proceedings European Association of Archaeologists Meeting Lisbon 2000, Bar International Series 1224. Oxford: Archaeopress. —. 2007. A Re-interpretation of a Bronze Age Ceramic. Was it a Cheese Mould o a Bunsen Burner? pp. 53-56. In Gheorghiu, D. (ed.) Fire as an Instrument: The Archaeology of Pyrotechnologies. Bar International Series 1619. Oxford: Archaeopress.

CHAPTER FIVE IMMERSIVE APPROACHES TO BUILT CONTEXTS: CONSTRUCTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMAGES AND IMAGINARY DRAGOù GHEORGHIU

During the last three decades, digital information technologies have become a common instrument for reconstructing the past (Evans and Daly 2006), while virtual archaeology (Forte 1997: 10; Trapp et al. 2012; Gheorghiu and Stefan 2013: 51; Mesick 2013), in spite of some reticence (see Gillings 2005: 223), has developed into an archaeological subdiscipline offering complex tri-dimensional images which allow the viewer to immerse himself (Dixon 2007: 374 ff) in virtual volumetric reconstructions by means of instruments (e.g. Head Mounted Displays (HMD), data-gloves and position trackers), which provide sensory information and measure the user’s response (Bangay and Preston 1998). This state of consciousness is referred to as ‘immersion’ (Adams 2004) which can be divided into several categories including sensory, cognitive and emotional (Staffan and Holopainen 2004). This introduces the receptor to a state of “being there” or presence (Slater 2003; Giannachi et al. 2012; The Presence Project 2007). Despite the high degree of “reality” of Virtual Reality reconstructions, and of the use of devices for synaesthethic experiences, this kind of immersion is mostly based on the imaginary of the Virtual Reality designers and their attempts to improve the perspective-like perception of the human eye. This is the reason why I have searched for alternative methods of representation and immersion, which would allow the user to develop his/her own image of the subject experienced (Tringham, in press).

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