Introduction to Prehistoric Textiles with Sally Pointer

In October, following the completion of my PhD, I found myself at a bit of a loss of what to do until I started my subsequent research associate position. I had a few months on the run up to Christmas relatively free, so I decided to join an Introduction to Prehistoric Textiles: an online course with Sally Pointer. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to prehistoric textile techniques, focussing on Northern Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age and is still active until the end of February at: Introduction to Prehistoric Textiles — Plants & Colour. 

It was a fantastic course that I couldn't more highly recommend (there is a summary of my thoughts on the course at the end of the post), and this blog post will broadly cover some of the items that I made over the last two months. Obviously the vast majority of the crafts and items described in this blog are directly from the course material, however, there are quite a few that are the product of the suggested reading and the many tangents that it was ever so tempting to explore! 

The products of a couple of months work, laid out on the local common.  

Descriptions.

There are too many items to describe in detail, but I'll aim to cover some of my personal highlights. During this couple of months, I have been moving backwards and forwards from my family home in north Cumbria to my partner's family home in Northern Ireland and one of the benefits of this,

 was the accessibility to a wide range of materials. 

One of these was an abundance of flint from the Ulster White Limestone- something that is rather scarce in Cumbria. I had never attempting knapping and while this was not included in the course, I felt that if I was going to do this properly (i.e., from scratch) then some cutting materials were vital. Over a few days, quite a few pieces of flint, and a frequently bruised knee, I managed to create a variety of Palaeolithic (I'm not quite skilled enough to develop my knapping skills into the Neolithic!) hand axes, bifaces and blades, testing them through cutting fibres, engraving and working bones- I even managed to skin a road-kill Brown Hare without making any holes in the skin! 

One of the foundations of the course (being textile-based) was the production of fibre, cordage and yarns. I have had some experience making cordage before and being a spinner, quite a lot of experience spinning fibre on a drop spindle and wheel, so one of the major joys of this section was experimenting with new fibres and material. 

While I had produce nettle cordage before, I had not yet experimented with tree bast fibres and I particularly enjoyed producing quite a large amount of Juniper cordage. In north Cumbria, many of our juniper trees are dying due to infection by the Phytophthera pathogen and while it is incredibly sad to see so many dying or dead trees, it did offer an ample supply of partially retted Juniper bast fibre! I particularly enjoyed creating a three-ply cord, reconstructing the oldest known cord produced ca. 50,000 years ago by Neanderthals in France (- click here for the paper- ), and adding the red-brown cordage as accents to small twined baskets.

After spending the last three years in Northern Ireland, I also had an ample supply of flax, and particularly enjoyed spinning fine threads. One of the biggest challenges on the course was producing beautiful cords, threads and yarns, often displayed on Willow bobbins and then finding the courage to actually use them for a further purpose (e.g., weaving) and taking that risk to produce something that might not turn out as nice! 

 

Living on the Pennine Coal Measures bedrock, I also have access to a supply of haematite (red ochre) and limonite (yellow ochre) which allowed me to further decorate some of my tools (e.g., spindle whorl, comb and needle case). I have presented my work to some local craft and textile groups and one thing that frequently comes up is the cohesive and visually appealing colour palette of the work.

Of all of the textile, basketry and tool making, the one product that is most frequently commented on are the needles- whether this is due to their perceived difficulty in crafting them, their relation to the modern day equivalent or something else inherent to them, I do not know. I produced needles out of four different materials: Red Deer antler, Red Deer nasal bone (for a very useful curved needle), Sheep bone and Woolly Mammoth tusk. The Mammoth tusk was a bit of a novelty, but produced some beautiful needles, although they felt the most brittle out of all; the Red Deer antler was my favourite as it had a fantastic bend and flex to it. 

After producing a variety of needles, it was fitting to make a needle case, however you need quite a large bird to produce the wing bones big enough to make a hollow needle case- a Gannet on the shores of Loch Ryan did however, prove to be more than fitting. This is probably one of my favourite items, engraved and painted with ochre pigments, with a bog Yew plug and wrapped leather stopper. 

I was surprised that the aspects of the course I found the most enjoyable/rewarding were many of the tool making sessions. While I enjoyed many of the more textile-focused elements (especially the sprang net), some such as the backstrap loom, I found myself saying "I could just knock a far nicer and bigger bit of textile up far quicker" but this misses the point. There are far easier ways of doing things but the joy and learning of the prehistoric processes can outweigh the final product. 

Summary:

The course: I was very impressed with the course content and it was certainly value for money. I would definitely recommend the course to anyone who was interested and it is presented in a very approachable manner (i.e., there is an understanding that not everyone has access to flint, bones etc). I also appreciated the accessible academic sources that backed up the skills learnt. The only improvement I would have said would be that it would have been nice to have a bit more of a community, while there are various social media groups and there was a Q&A session (which I sadly missed so maybe this is unfair) but a social media group just for the course where participants could show off work and discuss ideas would be nice. Finally, after finishing such a fantastic course I look forward to producing more work and its a shame there is no 'Advanced Prehistoric Textiles' course!

The future: I'm currently thinking of my next project/ development. As discussed I particularly enjoyed knapping and I'd like to further develop my knapping skills. I also notably enjoyed the twined basketry and in the future I'd like to expand into 'Prehistoric- inspired' or contemporary basketry- especially 'hybrid' baskets including multiple materials- leather/hides, natural cordage and materials and ceramics.