Northern Archaeological Textiles

By Frances Pritchard and John Peter Wild

This volume presents the papers from the seventh North-European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles (NESAT), held in Edinburgh in 1999. The themes covered demonstrate a variety of scholarship that will encourage anyone working in this important and stimulating area of archaeology. From the golden robes of a Roman burial, to the fashionable Viking in Denmark, through to the early modern period and more technological aspects of textile-research, these twenty-four papers (five of which are in German) provide a wealth of new information on the study of ancient textiles in northern Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781782979791

Book preview

Chapter 1

Gold Textiles from a Roman Burial at Munigua (Mulva, Seville)

Carmen Alfaro Giner

Introduction

Of all the provinces into which the Romans divided the Iberian Peninsula, Baetica was doubtless the most appreciated for its richness in every sense and for the speed with which its inhabitants adapted themselves to the process of Romanisation (Thouvenot 1940; Padilla Monge 1989; Chic 1997); for this reason, it was the only one which became, under Augustus, a senatorial province. The strategic and economic attractions of this territory (especially the mining of metals) originated well before Roman times in a large number of indigenous settlements at a high cultural and economic level.

These indigenous peoples, Tartessian, Phoenician and Iberian (Bonsor 1899), were later to live alongside a series of colonies and municipalities of Roman making: we might draw attention, due to their proximity to Munigua, to those of Astigi (an Augustan colony), Urso (source of the famous lex Ursonensis), Hispalis and Corduba (Caesarian colonies), the Caesarian municipalities of Ilipa, Siarum and Italica (home of emperors Trajan and Hadrian), Carmo (a Julian municipality), Orippo, (today a suburb of Seville) and Irni (of the famous lex Irnitana (D’Ors 1986)). Thanks to the preserved fragments of the municipal laws of some of these small towns inscribed on enormous bronze sheets, we know much more about the municipal legal system common to the Roman Empire.

Munigua (Municipium Muniguense) belongs to the Flavian period (AD 68–96), although excavations show that in the Augustan period there was already an important indigenous settlement here. Alongside a few obviously Roman architectural elements (some walls), we have a clearly dated tessera hospitalis from this period (Nesselhauf 1960). The second century represented a period of greater economic development and civil construction, and in the third century the town became less active and was finally abandoned (Hauschild 1985, 255).

The aristocratic tomb of Munigua

The Munigua archaeological site was excavated for many years by the German Archaeological Institute of Madrid. Works were initiated in 1957 (Grünhagen, Hauschild 1979a). The tomb containing the fabrics was discovered in 1982 (Hauschild 1979). At present, Dr T Schattner has restarted excavations in the area (Schattner forthcoming) and has commissioned us to study the textiles. The totality of the findings will be the subject of an exhaustive publication on which a large team of experts will collaborate.

The capitol of Munigua consists of a temple-sanctuary which is of the same architectural type as that of Fortuna in Praeneste. It is therefore a kind of revival built two centuries later in the era of Vespasian. Dedications to Hercules, Fortuna and Dis Pater and the names of important families are frequent in the inscriptions.

There are two small burial grounds in the city area (the eastern and western necropolis) and, connected to the eastern necropolis, a mausoleum of the second century with four openings in the stone floor for cinerary urns. Our tomb, of the bustum type (pyre and fire) without any overlying architectural structure, was discovered directly in front of the mausoleum, on the last day of the 1982 excavations (Blech, Hauschild, Hertel 1993, 9). This meant that Dr Hauschild felt obliged to make a drastic decision. He had to choose between leaving it in the ground until the next dig (knowing that everywhere lay small pieces of gold textile) or collecting it all as carefully as possible. He went for the second option and, the burial being fairly superficial, he divided up the entire area into twenty-six rectangular sections. Each piece of the burial was made up into a bundle reinforced with cloth and plaster. Only later was a textile restorer from the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum of Mainz called for consultation, but was unable to get the materials X-rayed. The humidity and acidity of the earth have caused much deterioration inside the bundles of iron, bones, wood and glass.

Fig. 1.1 Scanning electron micrograph of a silk fibre (right-hand image) from Munigua (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

In 1998 a systematic excavation of each of the bundles began in the museum laboratories. To date nos 16 to 19, 1, 8, 8a, 12 and 21 have been studied. The first two showed the largest amounts of gold textile and twisted cord. Fragments of iron, bronze, small nails and little bits of bone were found in nos 18 and 19. No 21 had a fragment of cylindrical ivory (5mm in diameter, 13cm long) which may have formed part of a small spindle of a kind common in this territory. In the Seville Archaeological Museum there is a significant and very well preserved small collection of Roman spindles, shortly to be published in Archaeological Textiles Newsletter.

The jewellery and ornaments which have appeared so far (some necklaces and a bracelet) seem to suggest that a woman was buried here. The analyses of the few bones recently found will surely confirm this. The large accumulation of long iron bars and bronze elements which could be the legs of some piece of furniture suggests that all this may constitute a funerary iron bed on which the richly dressed corpse was placed (Blech, Hauschild, Hertel 1993, 9).

The textile remains

What is of interest to us is the textile activity which can be linked to this region, especially to Munigua. In fact Munigua has provided us with small but very interesting fragments of material which can help us to understand better ancient textiles and their probable distribution through trade. They represent a technical innovation in the Hispanic region, as they are the first gold textile remains to be found there, with the exception of the Roman ornamental netting from Medina Sidonia, Cádiz (Alfaro Giner 1983–84). Our present paper will focus on tiny pieces of rich fabric which may have been parts of ornamental braiding or trimmings.

To date, we have no information as to whether there were remains of other fabrics in the burial, for example linen. In the present case the gold may have consisted of a simple sewn braid for exclusively ornamental purposes. Luckily the high quality material on which we are reporting has remained almost intact over time, namely gold, as yet not analysed, and what seem like short silk filaments of white, blue and vermillion red. Unfortunately the fragments of cloth or braid are very small and the fibres are barely visible to the human eye, but we are looking at remarkable wealth in the funerary dress of the deceased.

Fig. 1.2 Scanning electron micrograph of cotton fibres from Munigua (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

The colour of the fibres seen under a microscope or a binocular magnifier was so brilliant that at first we believed them to have come from the clothing of the people who made up the bundles or from the restorers who recently excavated them in the laboratory. But soon we realized that, in totally aseptic conditions, these tiny coloured fibres kept on appearing deep inside the earth of the packets and stuck fast to the gold remains. Photographs obtained with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) revealed clearly that some actually came from the hollow sections of the gold threads. Occasionally the fibres showed the double structure typical of silk (Fig. 1.1), with a diameter of 9μm. (This value comes within the category which Pfister considered usual in the soie véritable of the textiles of Palmyra (1934, 45) in which ‘la fibre mesure de 6 à 12mm sur la même fibre, exceptionellement 15mm’). In other photographs we seem to be looking at cotton fibres (Fig. 1.2). As comparatively little material has been studied, a more definitive analysis is needed to determine their exact composition. At any rate the colours of the fibres are of intense brightness and we are attempting to separate the white, blue and red fibres into three groups with the aim of analysing the dyes later.

The high temperatures reached in the funeral pyre caused the fibrous cores to disappear and the gold threads to begin to melt together. This occasionally gave the material a crushed or wrinkled appearance. A large part of it was lost in this way, as well as the hypothetical base fabric on to which we think the precious materials were either sewn or woven. As the bustum cooled down, the gold threads, now hollow, solidified, creating the small compact surfaces illustrated in Fig. 1.3. However, in some of the pieces the structure of the fabric is well preserved (Fig. 1.4). It consists of a plain tabby weave (1/1), with tight Z-twist threads along the weft, the warp threads no longer existing. Presumably, if they were of animal or vegetable fibre, the fire destroyed them. The gold threads were composed of a fibre core with a ribbon of gold spiralled around it. The thin gold strips are approximately 0.2mm wide, twisted on a 0.1mm diameter thread. There are 10 threads per mm of weft, that is to say 100 threads per centimeter.

Fig. 1.3 Scanning electron micrograph of gold fabric from Munigua, its surface partly distorted by heat (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

Fig. 1.4 Scanning electron micrograph of gold (weft) threads from Munigua. The yarn is now missing (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

For now we are unable to comment on the form or pattern of the material as a whole. The gold fragments appear in the earth in no particular order which might help us to understand this. However, it is sometimes possible to observe in many of them a rhomboidal form (Fig. 1.5). If this form follows a particular design, it is as yet impossible to demonstrate it. We must wait for the excavation of the bundles to be completed to give more information in this respect.

Fig. 1.5 Small fragments of the gold fabric from Munigua adhering to one another (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

Fig. 1.6 Twisted cords of gold from Munigua. The longest is 2.7cm. (photo. Carmen Alfaro Giner)

Along with large quantities of this kind of textile, which always consists of very small fragments, twisted cords of gold are also frequent (Fig. 1.6). Those visible in the photograph are composed of two 0.6mm diameter cords in a Z-twist, each consisting of fifteen to eighteen 0.1mm threads in a Z-twist. These combine in an S-twist to form a cord 1mm thick and 27mm long. The function of these small gold cords in connection with the fabric is as yet unknown, but their form might suggest the presence of some kind of fringe.

Epilogue

As we know, fabrics made with gold thread were already in use during the Hellenistic period: finds have been made at Vergina, Macedonia (Andronikos 1984, 191–195) and Kertch in the Crimea (third century BC) (Stephani apud Pfister 1934, 23). Nevertheless there have been more finds in burials of the late Republican and Imperial Roman periods, from the first century BC to the fourth and fifth centuries AD, by which time their use had become relatively common (Wild 1970). The best preserved were those found in arid regions like Palmyra (Pfister 1934, 17, 18, 45, 54, pl.I, IVb, XIIa; 1937, 11–12; 1940, 16, pl.III) or Dura-Europos in Syria (Pfister, Bellinger 1945, 60), all of these prior to the last quarter of the third century AD. We have precise descriptions that distinguish between the mince lamelle d’or battu, of an average width of 0.3mm., and the much more fragile membrane organique doré.

From the northern Roman provinces remains of gold threads are also preserved. Those in a cist for ashes from Worms, described in 1885 and possible dated in the second century, could be the closest to ours (Wild 1970, Table H, 9). In the territory of Gallia, the materials described in old excavations are sometimes preserved and sometimes not. However, in either case their presence demonstrates that the use of fancy fabrics or braids including gold around a core of silk or other fibres was not uncommon during the Empire (Desrosiers, Lorquin 1998, 58, 60, 64). Chronologically, the parallels closest to our textiles could be those of the three cinerary urns of Arcs-sur-Argens, Le Touar (Var), although in these there are only 10 threads per cm (Desrosiers, Lorquin 1998, 67).

We need new finds both well dated and excavated with present-day techniques. The recent finds of Naintré (Vienne) with fabrics outstanding for their size and beauty will enrich our knowledge of the late Imperial period (Bédat, Cardon, Desrosiers, Moulherat and Relier in this volume, chapter 2). The comparison of gold textiles preserved in various Roman provinces may soon allow us to draw conclusions on the manufacture of, and trade in, some very sophisticated materials which surely demanded highly specialised craftsmanship.

Acknowledgement

This paper is a first review of the gold textiles which appeared in Mulva (ancient Munigua) a few years ago. We are grateful for the generosity of the present project director of ‘Mulva IV’, Dr T Schattner, for allowing us the preliminary publication of the results so far obtained. We are also thankful to L Medina, A P Romero and L Rodriguez, without whose work this paper would not have been possible, and to the translator, Vega Bermejo.

Bibliography

Alfaro Giner, C 1983–84 Notas sobre una redecilla romana de Medinasidonia (Cádiz). Boletín del Museo de Cádiz 4, 77–81.

Andronikos, M 1984 Vergina. The Royal Tombs and the Ancient City. Athens.

Bonsor, G E 1899 Les colonies agricoles pré-romaines de la vallée du Bétis. Revue Archéologique 2, 126–40.

Blech, M T Hauschild and D Hertel. 1993 Mulva III. Das Grabgebäude in der Nekropole Ost. Die Skulpturen. Die Terrakotten. Mainz.

Chic, G 1997 Historia económica de la Bética en la Época de Augusto. Sevilla.

Desrosiers, S and A Lorquin 1998 Gallo-Roman period archaeological textiles found in France. NESAT VI, 53–72.

D’Ors, E 1986 La Ley Flavia municipal (Texto y Comentario). Roma.

Grünhagen, W and T Hauschild 1979a. Sucinto informe sobre las excavaciones arqueológicas en Munigua en 1974. Noticiario Arqueológico Hispánico 6, 283–291.

Grünhagen, W and T Hauschild 1979b. Sucinto informe sobre las excavaciones arqueológicas en Munigua en 1976. Noticiario Arquelógico Hispánico 6, 301–307.

Hauschild, T 1979 Sucinto informe sobre las excavaciones arqueológicas en Munigua en 1975. Noticiario Arqueológico Hispánico 6, 295–297.

Hauschild, T 1985 Munigua. Informe preliminar sobre las excavaciones en casa 1 y casa 6 (Campaña 1982). Noticiario Arqueológico Hispánico 23, 255.

Nesselhauf, H 1960 Zwei Bronzeurkunden aus Munigua. Madrider Mitteilungen 1, 142–154.

Padilla Monge, A 1989 La Provincia romana de la Bética (253–422). Ecija.

Pfister, R 1934 Textiles de Palmyre découverts par le Service des Antiquités du Haut-Commissariat de la République française dans la Nécropole de Palmyre. Paris.

Pfister, R 1937 Nouveaux Textiles de Palmyre, découverts par le Service des Antiquités du Haut-Commissariat de la République française dans la Nécropole de Palmyre (Tour d’Élahbel). Paris.

Pfister, R 1940 Textiles de Palmyre découverts par le Service des Antiquités du Haut-Commissariat de la République française dans la Nécropole de Palmyre III. Paris.

Pfister, R and L Bellinger 1945 The Textiles. In M I Rostovtzeff et al., The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Final Report IV, Part II. New Haven.

Schattner, T G forthcoming Sucinto informe sobre las excavaciones arqueológicas en Munigua, 1997. Anuario Arqueológico de Andalucía 2.

Thouvenot, R 1940 Essai sur la Province romaine de Bétique. Paris.

Wild, J P 1970 Textile Manufacture in the Northern Roman Provinces. Cambridge.

Chapter 2

Two Gallo-Roman Graves Recently Found in Naintré (Vienne, France)

Isabelle Bédat, Sophie Desrosiers, Christophe Moulherat and Caroline Relier

In December 1997 two Gallo-Roman vaulted tombs were accidentally discovered in a sand quarry in Naintré, a few kilometers north of Poitiers. Built next to each other and of similar construction, these graves each had a stone sarcophagus containing a lead coffin. In one of them was the body of a young woman, while the other held a child of about ten years old. The state of preservation of the tombs and the furniture was exceptionally good. A handful of flowers was resting on the coffin of the child, whose sarcophagus was surrounded by many burial objects. Among them were a bronze basin, a wooden box containing four glass vials of perfume, a collection of marine shells, broken pieces of glass and miniature dishes. The woman’s grave furniture was limited to a bronze pitcher, a pair of sandals and an amphora. Upon opening the coffins, the archaeologists in charge of the excavation noted immediately the excellent state of preservation of the textiles in the child’s coffin and suspected the presence of shellfish purple and gold threads as the body was wrapped in a purple coloured material resembling leather, and gold was visible throught some slits in this material. In contrast, the remains of the young woman were reduced to a skeletal state and rested on a badly deteriorated cloth mattress. In view of the presumed scientific value of the fabrics found in the child’s grave, it was decided to give priority to the conservation and study of the textiles.

Very quickly, a multidisciplinary team was formed. It included the archaeologists, Caroline Relier (Unité de Traitement et d’Information en Conservation, Saint-Denis) (in charge of solving the specific conservation problems and establishing the best way of removing the textiles), Sophie Desrosiers (analysis of the textiles and their function), Christophe Moulherat (identification of fibres and textile analysis), Isabelle Bédat (ECAT Laboratory, Toulouse) (post-excavation conservation), and two pollen analysts, Michel Girard and Thi Mai Bui (CRA-CNRS, Valbonne).

The study of the Naintré textiles is in its initial stages due to the fact that it was only in October 1998 that the fragments were made available to the laboratory. Many more years of study will be necessary to recover all of the information embedded in them. Nevertheless, it seemed of interest to us to share the information recovered up to now, in part to add more examples to the corpus of preserved Roman textiles and in part to put forward the ingredients for a discussion about the excavation and conservation of such a well preserved corpus with those colleagues who have a much longer tradition of working with archaeological textiles than the French. This paper will focus on four aspects of the finds: the conditions and the method of excavation of the coffins; the important data derived from the participation of textile specialists in the excavation; the results of a detailed analysis of some fragments and finally a few comparisons.

It is necessary to note that no coins nor inscriptions of any kind were found. Thus, until a complete study of the burials and their furniture is achieved, the two tombs cannot be dated, at present, with more precision than to the late Empire (fourth century and very beginning of the fifth AD).

Conditions and method of the excavation of the coffins

After the confirmation of the presence of textiles in the tombs, Caroline Relier (Relier, in prep) drew up a plan of work consisting of three phases:

First phase: establishing around the sarcophaghi a climate control that was, at the same time, close to the presumed climate of the graves and adapted to conservation and study concerns. A 20m by 2m cellar was prepared at Poitiers with a climate control installed by a specialist firm in order to try to maintain a humidity level of 85 percent and a temperature around 8–10 degrees. These levels were not adequate to prevent the development of micro-organisms. The removal of the coffin lids stopped their growth by fostering air circulation, but, unexpectedly, it aggravated the dehydration of the now-exposed bodies. Even though the implementation of climate control slowed down considerably the degradation of the tombs’ contents, it could not stop it completely and hence quick action was crucial.

Second phase: the removal of samples in order to better discern the different textiles present as well as their state of preservation. The material that could be studied immediately after the discovery of the tombs allowed us to assess – even before the actual excavations had taken place – the presence of threads of vegetal origin, silk, wool and gold filé. The material resembling leather was in fact a silk damask, the outer layer of which had become smooth and shiny, with an almost plastic-like appearance.

Third phase: a collaborative excavation adapted to conservation conditions that were totally different in the two sarcophagi.

In the case of the badly deteriorated woman’s grave, after having removed the skeleton, her textile mattress was taken out in square sections with small sheets of metal. Even this simple work was made difficult by the presence of large bumps in the bottom of the lead coffin, bumps probably due to the corrosion of the lead by bodily liquids. The removal of the child’s body was much more complicated. The bottom of the coffin was also covered with bumps and was extremely fragile – making impossible not only the removal of the coffin from the sarcophagus, but also the removal of the body in one piece. We thus decided to undertake an excavation layer by layer, working to uncover the gold textiles in a very uncomfortable position. During our breaks we tried to figure out if it would be possible to take out the coffin by first making a lateral cut in the stone sarcophagus, and then cutting the lead coffin in order to get access to the body. We were not able to pursue this course of action because, just at this point in time, the Archaeological Department at the Ministry of Culture in Paris stopped the excavation. When we were allowed to continue work, six weeks later, the passage of time had caused serious damage. In particular, the vegetal fibres had desintegrated, serious shrinkage had occurred in the areas with animal fibres due to their dehydration, and, in the wool and gold thread tapestry bands, there was fracturing of the decorative elements due to the shrinking of the animal fibres that formed the contours of the designs beside the stable gold threads filling the motifs. (These observations made it very clear what happens to textiles that have been confined in a humid environment once they have been exposed to air. It permits a better understanding of why most of the extant late antique gold-thread tapestry bands are in a very fragmentary state and separated from the textiles of which they were a part.) The body was then so fragmented that the extraction of a complete specimen was not worth pursuing any more. The portions were taken out according to the main visible cracks.

Thirty-two segments from the woman’s tomb and 114 from the child’s tomb have been recovered. Some of these have been X-rayed, and non-textile material such as bone and hair has been removed. Each segment has been carefully packed. Finally, the entire collection has been slowly adapted to the external climatic conditions, disinfected and deposited in the Research Laboratory of the French Museums in Paris.

Important data derived from the excavation

Although the woman’s grave was not as rich and well-preserved as that of the child, some interesting textiles belong to it. Beside various weft-face tabbies, we located some fragments of a very deteriorated piece with gold threads, the weave of which has not yet been identified, and a damask, probably in silk, alternating 2/1 twill and 1/2 twill with a unique orientation of the diagonals.

The child’s head was surrounded with textiles and the X-ray radiography shows thick gold threads underneath and at its left side (Fig. 2.1a: A). Between the body and the two sides