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Setting the Scene

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Setting the Scene 1 Setting the scene he link between cloth and clothing may seem an obvious one to the casual reader, and yet within the archaeological world ‘textiles’ and ‘costume’ are Toften treated as two separate studies. This division has arisen naturally out of the inherent characteristics of the two subjects and out of the need for two different approaches to their research. In essence, textiles are a product of a technological process and the analysis of their structure and raw material requires at least some scientific and technical skill. This means that textile data can be collected methodically and processed numerically, out of which chronological and regional trends may be described, imports and native wares identified, economy and patterns of trade rationally argued. The study of costume, on the other hand, deals with something more illusive and abstract. How we dress represents the face we show to society and clothing may – sometimes unconsciously – be used to express age, cultural affiliation, social and economic status and, at a personal level, our degree of conformity or independence. How costumes spread geographically and socially is entirely unpredictable. A new fashion may begin with the elite, or originate in the street, or field, or battleground. It may spread like wildfire, jumping political, race and gender boundaries, and then pull up short at the borders of some particularly conservative community. Research into costume requires the consideration of a range of different sources, visual, written, and archaeological, and also an understanding of the context of the material: for the rep- resentation of an emperor, or a priest in sacrificial robes, or an illustration copied from an earlier manuscript, may have little to do with the everyday clothing of the period. When handled intelligently, however, the study of costume has immense rewards, for it offers the chance to come closer to the heart of who people were, their self-view, their aspirations and the meaning they ascribed to their own lives. The reason for drawing the two subjects together for the Early Anglo-Saxon period may be found in the material itself. At the core of this book lies a database of textile records collected from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of the 5th to 7th centuries (see Chapter 3). The textiles are mostly the remains of clothing, since the Anglo-Saxons, when they inhumed their dead rather than cremated them, placed the body in the grave fully dressed. This clothing survives only as fragments adhering to metalwork (Chapter 4), but work on the textiles automatically draws the researcher into the study of costume. By the process of recording which textile is pierced by the brooch pin, and the layering of the different fabrics, or the orientation of garment borders, patterns of use and the shape of the clothing inevitably start to appear (Chapter 5). Costume then becomes a subject which can be counted, sorted, ordered and used as a research tool, just like any other form of archaeological data. In order to complete the picture, evidence from the Anglo-Saxon settlements, c h a p t e r 1 where the people buried in the cemeteries had lived their lives, has also been reviewed. Clothing is the end-product of a long series of crafts, represented by a range of different hand tools which are found scattered through every village and farmstead of the period. The nature of these tools can help explain the structure of the textile products (Chapter 2) and sometimes even the make-up of the garments. Out of these separate but interlinked studies – textile manufacture, textile products, garment accessories, and costume styles – some consistent patterns have emerged which in turn have relevance to more general studies of the Early Anglo-Saxons (Chapter 6). The original aim of this work was to review the available evidence and to present it as a resource for archaeologists and museum professionals. While writing the book, however, a different theme began to assert itself. Of its own volition, the volume turned into a study of women and of that significant part of women’s lives that involved clothing the community. Anglo-Saxon women were clearly and demonstrably in charge of textile production and, if Anglo-Saxon men took as much interest in changing fashions as women evidently did, the archaeological record has not shown it. Since every attempt to give men equal space within the volume failed, in the end it seemed better simply to celebrate the fact that women were for once in the spotlight. There have been any number of histories in which men are centre-stage, while women, despite our best efforts, are in the wings. On this occasion the roles have been com- prehensively reversed. Finally, this volume is written by an archaeologist, primarily for other archae- ologists, but it is hoped that it will also prove useful to re-enactors and those who work in the heritage sector on the display and reconstruction of crafts and costume. For this reason, where archaeology is silent on certain subjects, such as the length of the Anglo-Saxon distaff or the design of the 6th-century shoe, sugges- tions for a credible reconstruction based on the nearest comparative material have been provided. Similarly, subjects outside the precise remit of cloth and clothing, such as bags, belts, purses and hair styles have been included in order to produce a more rounded picture of the appearance of the men and women of Early Anglo- Saxon England. Previous studies The study of archaeological textiles has a long and respectable history within the academic world. Hans Dedekam and Bjørn Hougen began with Migration period burials in Norway (Dedekam 1925; Hougen 1935) and were followed by Agnes Geijer on the textile finds from Birka, Sweden (Geijer 1938), Margrethe Hald on the Danish material (Hald 1950, republished in 1980), and Marta Hoffmann on eth- nographic and archaeological evidence from Norway (Hoffmann 1974; 1991). The early pioneers in Britain were Audrey Henshall (1950; 1952) and Grace M Crowfoot. The latter had learned traditional textile crafts while travelling in Arab countries and, having encountered Rodolphe Pfister, a chemist working on textiles from the Silk Road, she came to recognise the value of scientific analysis of dyes and fibres. When she died, her daughter Elisabeth Crowfoot took up her work and the majority of the textiles in the database reviewed in Chapter 3 come from Elisabeth’s published and unpublished reports. Also operating in Britain is John Peter Wild, whose influential doctoral thesis on the northern Roman Provinces amalgamates both textiles and 2 cloth and clothing in early anglo-saxon england costume, although the two elements had to be split for publication and his work on costume (1968; 1985) is perhaps less well known than his book on textiles (1970). Finally, the surveys of Lise Bender Jørgensen, first of Scandinavian textiles (1986) and then of European textiles up to AD 1000 (1992), form an essential background to any study of this kind. Many other researchers have now joined what has become a popular field, especially among women, and their publications may be found in the bibliography. Costume has always attracted the attention of historians although it has been the subject of political manipulation and romantic wishful thinking as often as genuine academic research. Amongst the more sound of the early authors is Joseph Strutt, whose two-volume work, The Dress and Habits of the People of England (1796, revised 2nd edition 1842, reprinted 1970), includes a review of early medieval his- torical sources as known at that time. The Nordic countries again led the way with Charlotte Blindheim’s series of papers in Viking, especially ‘Drakt og Smykker’ (Blindheim 1947), and more recently Inga Hägg on women’s dress at Birka, Sweden (Hägg 1974), Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander (1984; 2001) on Finnish costumes, and Margareta Nockert (1991) on the Migration period burial at Högom, Sweden, and its comparanda. For Anglo-Saxon costume studies the first major landmark was Gale Owen-Crocker’s doctoral thesis Anglo-Saxon Costume (University of Newcastle, 1976), rapidly followed by Hayo Vierck’s essays on the Continental and English evidence in Sachsen und Angelsachsen (Ahrens 1979). Elements of her thesis were published in Owen-Crocker’s Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (1986, updated in 2004), which is an accessible and highly readable review of the evidence for the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period, from the 5th to the 11th century. If there is relatively little reference to the work of Vierck and Owen-Crocker within the present study, it is because the aim has been to look at the archaeological evidence afresh, and to focus on the function of the textiles as the primary resource before comparing the material with the visual and written sources. The historical framework The limits of the study have been set by the geographic and temporal span of clothed burial in Anglo-Saxon England. Some burials may be a little earlier than the mid-5th century and some perhaps as late as the early 8th century, but essentially the period covered is from AD 450 to AD 700. The material comes from the area of Anglo-Saxon settlement up to the end of the 7th century, which effectively means the zone to the south and east of a line from Northumberland to Dorset. In order to understand the influences on Anglo-Saxon dress during this period, and the origins of the textile technology evident in their clothing, a brief review of the historical background is required. Before the Anglo-Saxons The earliest inhabitants of Britain were coastal-dwelling hunter-gatherers, whose clothing was almost certainly made from stitched skins, with twined rushwork for cloaks, hats and shoes.
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