View as Visual Story
Petra Linscheid carefully pulls a large folder from a cupboard in the Academic Museum of Art. She opens it to reveal a linen sheet around 1,500 years old, decorated in the center with a brightly colored, slightly hole-ridden woven pattern with leaf motifs. It was found inside a grave in Egypt.
“The dry climate is very good for preserving the material,” Linscheid explains. Two small red holes and some discoloration from the burial are visible at the bottom.
“The discoloration shows us that it was later used as a shroud. But the flecks of rust come from the modern day and indicate that the fabric had been nailed to a collector’s wall. All cultures used this simple linen binding. But this beautiful knitted pattern also existed in the Baroque period, for example, but not among the Franks. Although they were familiar with it from the Romans, they made a conscious decision not to use it because it didn’t fit their identity or culture.”
It is under the microscope that things get really exciting: the two researchers spend several hours studying every piece of fabric, analyzing not only the weaving technique that was used but also how the yarn was made. This particular sample produces some exciting results. “Here you can see that these yarns are S-twisted, meaning that the twists go from top left to bottom right, as was common in Egypt, Palestine and Syria,” Linscheid says. “The other is ‘Z-twisted,’ which was the standard practice in Asia Minor and Europe. That’s good to know if you’re really struggling to classify a fabric. We sometimes also find Z-twisted yarns in Egyptian wool applications of this kind. These are usually ultra-fine, made from cashmere, for instance, and often dyed with Tyrian purple. So you can infer a link to imports and trade relations.” The Egyptians used these Asian woolen yarns to enhance the value of their fabrics.
Linscheid then points to an imperfection in the fabric and says: “Pieces have been removed from here. From the days of the archaeology boom sparked by Napoleon’s Egypt expedition until the early 21st century, it was quite common to rob tombs, cut bits out and then sell them.” The individual scraps were often used to study the techniques used to make them and ultimately ended up scattered in museums, cupboards or attics all around the world via roundabout routes.
Particular importance is attached to material that can be accurately dated, which is added to an online database at the University of Bonn. This allows historical developments to be identified and the original fabrics and patterns to be digitally reconstructed. “From a methodological perspective, I love the visual aspect,” she explains. “It also has a lot to do with enjoying solving puzzles. Different pieces from the same tomb, different fragments of the same piece, scattered to the four winds, that we can put together again.”
Hardly any fabric from the Early Middle Ages
Whilst Egyptian material is often well preserved, finds from the early Frankish kingdom are generally in a poor state. One piece held by the LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn, which the pair are currently investigating, measures a mere 0.15 of a square inch (1 square centimeter). The trained eyes of Lubos and Linscheid are needed in order to determine that the scrap encrusted onto this particular belt buckle is woven fabric rather than simply a fleck of dirt.
It is a chance discovery from a tomb that was preserved thanks to a chemical reaction with the metal of the buckle. “The moisture creates corrosive salts, which penetrate the textiles and preserve them,” Linscheid explains. This not only leaves clues about the technique used to make them. “It also tells us a lot about the material culture, about traditions and about social developments as well,” Linscheid adds.
“For a long time, archaeologists worked largely without textiles, because they’re organic materials that decay,” Lubos explains. This is one of the reasons why many modern reconstructions seem empty in some way. “And that’s a shame. Naturally, fabrics played a very prominent role in everyday life at the time, both in people’s clothes and for decorating rooms,” Linscheid reports.
The Franks had their own style
Grave goods and remnants of clothing are particularly helpful for providing clues about the early medieval period, when written sources were scarce. “An unbelievable amount happened between antiquity and the Middle Ages that we don’t know very much about,” Linscheid explains. Studying a large number of finds allows regional or chronological similarities to be spotted with patterns and characteristics of workmanship. “Unlike with the Egyptian fabrics, of course, we know the context of the local finds, such as the precise tombs or graves that the goods came from,” Linscheid says. “This lets us find out whether the same production technique was always used in the tombs of Frankish men in a particular region in the 7th century, or whether garments always had slits in the same places.” This makes it possible to determine what style was common, she says, or whether there was any sense of cultural affiliation. This is because, although the Franks were familiar with Roman weaving techniques, for example, they stuck to their own handicraft traditions. They had their own style, one could say.
Essentially, the fabrics became more complex and were given complementary patterns on their two sides. “One of the most exciting finds is a fragment from an early medieval tomb, where several small-scale patterning techniques had been put to sophisticated use on a single fabric,” Linscheid says. “We were able to find this technique in other tombs as well. This also changes our preconceptions of early medieval dress sense. People didn’t spend the Middle Ages walking around in potato sacks, in other words.”
There is only one thing that is almost impossible to figure out. “Our work can tell us a lot about techniques and about what customs the Franks had,” says Lubos. “But, of course, you’re also itching to find out what colors were in fashion.” However, many of the color pigments have decomposed. And the rust-red shade is just that: iron oxide.
