Ancient fragments of textiles have been found in the Bronze and Iron Age salt mines of Hallstatt, Austria, dating back from 400 to 1500 BCE.  I’ve always found it extraordinary when such fragile artefacts survive over such long periods of time.  In this case, many of the fragments were preserved by the salt itself, which gradually encased them.

Of the hundreds of examples found, most are from woolen cloth, although some tablet-woven bands were discovered as well.  Most of the weaves are twill, and many are of complex twill patterns such as point twill, herringbone, and diamond twill.  There is evidence of the wool being dyed a variety of colours, including red, blue, green and yellow, and these colours were then used to make designs of check, stripe and plaid.

These textiles are now stored and displayed at the Natural History Museum of Vienna.

Several of the fragments are large enough that it’s possible to count the threads and pattern repeats in order to re-create the weave.  This has been done by numerous researchers and their work displayed in many museums.  I decided to attempt this on my own loom, and have followed in the footsteps of the extraordinary Elizabeth Barber, who has done so much to bring the archeology of textiles into modern awareness.  She has reproduced one of the Hallstatt fragments of a green check. 

Below you can see the original fragment positioned over her reproduction.

If you have seen the cover of Barber’s book, Prehistoric Textiles, you will already be familiar with it!

I am using a Shetland 2-ply wool, instead of the single-ply handspun that was used in the original.  But otherwise I have kept the scale, the horizontal point twill, and the contrast stripes.   

I think it might make an excellent cushion cover!

In the coming months I’m going to try reproducing a few other examples!

References

Gromer, K and Loew, C.  Natural History Museum, Vienna

Barber, E.  1991.  Prehistoric Textiles.  Princeton: Princeton University Press

Images

Grömer, Dr. Karina and Peter Grömer-Mrazek, Dress ID- Project: “Clothing and Identities” – Textiles from Hallstatt, Last updated February,13, 2008.   

Barber, E.  1991.  Prehistoric Textiles.  Princeton: Princeton University Press