Week 5: Craft and Technology

• Carding wool


  Aligns the fibres with teasels
• Textiles: archaeological indications


  • Spindle-whorl
  • Loom weights
  • Loom (vertical or horizontal)
• Spinning wheel


  • From China via Arab world
  • Already known in Europe in 13th century
  • Part of spinning wheel discovered in 18th century well on rural site
• Guilds opposed use of spinning wheel

  Due to conservatism and protection of spinners
• Spindle whorl


  Disappear from archaeological record after 1550
• Loom-weight


  • Belongs to warp-weighted loom
  • Keeps warp threads under tension
• SFB with loom weights

  • In Dalem, Germany
• SFB as a weaving hut is a strong indication for the use of a warp-weighted loom
• Warp-weighted loom


  Replaced by horizontal loom after 1000, slow replacement
• Weaving commonly done in cellars => moist conditions good for thread
• Operational sequence after weaving

  1. Fulling (walking and tucking to make thicker fabric)

  2. Dyeing

  3. Tenting (stretch the cloth because of the shrinkage)

  4. Shearing => pressing
• Fulling


  • Uses urine and fullers earth
  • Common practice from Roman period onwards
  • With feet = walking and then fulling mill from 14th century
• Archaeological traces of fulling

  • Fulling pits
• Dyeing


  • Could be done before or after fulling, yarn dyeing + involved application of heath
  • Vat base used for copper cauldron that dyes fabric, typical archaeological find
• Cloth seals


  • Convenient indications
  • Every city has its own cloth seals
  • Every part of the operational sequence has its own seal
  • Four grade of quality (highest quality = 4 seals)
  • Seals = archaeologically seen as pliers
• Cloth seals in Amsterdam

  • From 1350, pliers with seal found
• From flax to linen

  1. Harvest

  2. Rippling (separate seeds from stalk)

  3. Retting (fibres loosened)

  4. Willowing (crush wooden stalks)

  5. Scutching (remove impurities from woody fibres, straw)

  6. Heckling (combing)

  7. Spinning

  8. Weaving
• Linen smoothers


  • Made of glass, smoothened the fabric
  • Most between the 9th and 15th century but was still used until the 19th c.
  • High distribution in low countries = high linen production in the area, excavation and research is high in these areas (Netherlands and France)
• Few archaeological indication of final stage of production (tailor in Milan 1400)
• Operational sequence of leather

  1. Prepare hides

  2. Tanning (soaking in water, liming, scraping, deliming, tanning in pit using tannins from oak bark)
• Finds in tanneries


  • Tanner pits, large quantity of animal bones, lime, tools
• Three steps in production of iron

  1. Bloomery process

  2. Reduction/smelting: from ore to bloom

  3. Primary smithing: from bloom to iron bar

  4. Secondary smithing: from iron bar to object
• Glass


  • Consists of silica, stabilising element (lime), flux (soda/potassium/lead), impurities
  • Flux agent shows development over time (soda-lime glass, potassium glass (from 1000), lead glass (from 1675))
  • Difference between making glass from raw materials (Spanish kiln from Andalusia) and from old/new glass (kiln from Glastonbury Abbey)
• Glass production in northwestern Europe

  • Common in Merovingian period
  • Rare in Carolingian period
  • Absent in 10th-13th century
  • 14th century in castles
  • More common in 15th century
• Glass production locations


  • Germany
  • Belgium
• Mills


  • Waterpower: with vertical and horizontal wheels + ship mill
  • Animal traction: horse mill (existed in Roman period)
  • Windmills: from 12th century
• Mills


  • Used for grinding cereals to flour
  • Breakthrough of industrial mills in 16th century
  • They used crankshaft (converts rotation to reciprocal motion, up and down), developed region Zaanstreek-Alkmaar