Session: #696

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Cloth Cultures in and beyond Viking Age [EAA ComTex]
Content:
The period AD 650-1150 offers a rich set of data of textiles, leather, fur objects and textile tools from rural and urban settlements as well as burials in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden alongside other regions, such as Ireland, the UK and Russia. Previous scholarship has indicated that a series of changes took place in clothing traditions, textile design, technology, and the organization of textile production on the threshold of the Middle Ages (Bender Jørgensen 1986).
New studies have shown that research on cloth culture holds great potential for general archaeological interpretations of the development of society. Cloth culture is based on the idea that all societies use cloth-type materials, such as textiles and leather, but how they do this is specific to each culture (Harris 2010). It is clear that textiles and textile production played a major role and had an economic, social and cultural impact on Viking Age society (Andersson Strand 2021). By integrating established methods of textile analysis with new innovative methods, such as proteomics and aDNA-analyses combined with a clear theoretical framework, a better and more diverse understanding of textile and skin crafts and their importance can be gained.
In this session, we will facilitate new and innovative perspectives and insights into Viking Age Cloth Cultures. We invite all scholars working with questions and materials related to new knowledge about Viking Age textiles and clothing, craft technologies and knowhow about the significance of textiles and textile production in general.
Keywords:
Cloth Culture, Viking Age, Middle Ages, Textiles skin and leather, Textile production, Theoretical framework
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
ComTex

Organisers

Main organiser:
Eva Andersson Strand (Denmark) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Susanna Harris (United Kingdom) 3,4
Ulla Mannering (Denmark) 5
Joe Wallace Walser III (Iceland) 6
Marianne Vedeler (Norway) 7,8
Affiliations:
1. Centre for Textile Research
2. University of Copenhagen
3. School of Humanities
4. University of Glasgow
5. National Museum of Denmark
6. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ICELAND
7. Museum of Culture History
8. Univ. of Oslo