Archaeology with a side order of fiber crafts

I've seen this technique at the Lower Saxony spinning group meet-up in June and @disgruntled-lifeform has asked about it, so here is a tutorial. I'm not comfortable with having videos of me taken and no one to take the video anyway so I hope photos are enough...

Little diclaimer: I have only seen someone else doing this so I just pass this knowlegde on. I don't know where it originates. Also: I assume you already know how to spin a single and know the basics of chain- or Navajo-plying

It's really an intreresting technique. You spin and chain-ply in one go, no endless spinning and after that endless plying, which is very practical if you (like me) are no fan of endless spindle plying. Or if you only own one spindle for whatever reason - everyone knows spindles are gregarious animals and keeping only one is not appropriate XP

You need:

A drop spindle of your choice with a leader (Maybe one a little bigger than mine, since the yarn we wind on the spindle is a three-ply, which means it is thrice as thick as your usual single.

Fibres of your choice you want to spin

It's important that your leader has a loop at the end to pull your single through.

Step 1: Spin your single as you always do. *spinspinspin* You want to do that standing up as you need the single to be quite long:

Step 2: Then butterfly the single up on your thumb and forefinger to avoid tangling:

Step 3: Pull the single through the loop of your leader and unwind it from your fingers. At the beginning it's easier to sit down for this step until you get used to the finger movements. It's difficult to pull the single through the loop while holding the spindle in your hand and we don't want any broken fingers!

Step 4: Pull the single all the way through until just a little bit below the beginning of your unspun fibres:

Step 5: Then you just ply the loop together in the opposite direction from the direction you spun the single - just as most of you will do anyways while plying. The spindle wants to turn in the opposite direction by itself anyway. Make sure the new loop at the end stays open!

Step 6: Wind the plied thread on your spindle. Then secure it well on your spindle's hook. Take Care Of The Loop. It Must Stay Accessible for the next section of spun singles.

Congratulations you have your first section of chain plied yarn on your drop spindle.

Then you repeat the whole thing again and again: Spin a long piece of single - pull it through loop - ply - wind on spindle - secure the new loop at the end on your hook and then go on spinning.

mutuals/followers who are involved in historical research especially the late 18th century in new england:

this is the only object in daniel brown's house in cambridge mass in 1785 that i cannot identify for the life of me.

the context it's in is a room containing beds, clothing, kitchen/cookware, and for some reason "forty-one new scythes".

i'm reading it as either "Slam Bunk" or "Ham Bunk" (leaning toward "Slam" based on the rest of this particular person's handwriting), but nothing comes up when i search either of those terms, even with dates added. it looks like it's worth 1/6 of a penny if i'm understanding the notations of value correctly

🔁 lukka-this-boat

🚣 lukka-this-boat

👤 ugarits-finest-merchant-deactivated11770102

man, fuck you guys

#y'all hear anything? #...must've been the wind

🔁 wenamun-of-waset

☀️ wenamun-of-waset

cities these days just don’t respect the will of Amun like they used to… back in the days of Pharaoh people used to ACTUALLY pay the gods some respect!!

🌲 byblosiophile

for the last time, we are not giving you free lumber

☀️ wenamun-of-waset

but i hauveb no money 🥺

#i only wish to carry out the will of amun :( #its not my fault i was robbed in a tjeker town :(

some stuff!

Aegina/Localism/Religion

Polinskai︠a︡, I. (with Jameson, M. H.). (2013). A local history of Greek polytheism: Gods, people and the land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Brill. -> full on methodological reconsideration of greek religion as we know it through the athenian lens, with the Dorian island Aegina as case study

E. Aston, Mixanthropoi: Animal-human hybrid deities in Greek religion. Liège, 2001.

J. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago and London, 2002.

Thessaly

Aston, E. (2024). Blessed Thessaly: The Identities of a Place and Its People from the Archaic Period to the Hellenistic. Liverpool University Press.

Mili, M. (2015). Religion and society in ancient Thessaly. University Press.

Arcadia

J. Roy, “On Seeming Backward: How the Arkadians Did It.” in Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, ed. S. D. Lambert,    Swansea, 2011, p. 67-86.

T. H. Nielsen, and J. Roy (eds.). Defining Ancient Arkadia. Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 6. Copenhagen, 1999.

myth and landscape/regionalism

G. Hawes. Myths on the Map: The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece. Oxford, 2017.

R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology. Cambridge, 1994.

and, a little bit older: S. E. Alcock, R. Osborne (eds.), Placing the Gods. Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (Oxford 1994)

Omg

archaeologists believe there is literally no way to tell where she originated! apart from like. Greece. We think. This is one of those pesky 'we have no clear first/local attestation of this thing so nothing is conclusive' historical issues.

Like, you can say you “know more” than the average person in antiquity - but you don’t. Maybe in a conceptual manner - yeah, we know about distant planets and galaxies, we’ve got germ theory, we have made a collection of the entire human genome, we have walked on the fucking moon - but from the perspective of someone from 500 BCE (if I may be allowed a dash of speculation here), does that matter?

In our industrialized, globalized world, I think we forget the sheer effort that went into everything. The sheer degree of skill needed to create homes, tools, clothing, ceramics, fine jewelry, statues, and everything in-between. The skill, knowledge, and effort that went into everyday subsistence activities, like farming, herding, and weaving; and into other trades such as shipping and manufacturing. These are not mindless tasks, devoid of calculation and forethought; to pretend they are in even the slightest is disingenuous.

I would even go so far as to say it is extremely classist & sexist, because - shocker - people still work in these fields. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the streets you walk, the buildings you eat and sleep and live in - these did not spawn out of a vacuum. Constant effort - unending, backbreaking labor, time, and skill has gone into the world we walk through today, so people can go on pretending like they’re somehow ‘smarter’ than those who came before them, when the only difference is that we* are able to concentrate on something besides our own survival. something otherwise ‘useless’ for everyday survival, and i say that as an archaeologist. Excavating a Bronze Age brewery does not provide food, it does not provide you with clothes (it actually damages them), it does not give you shelter, it mostly provides you with broken potsherds and a whole lot of dirt destined for floatation. Yes, it requires practical skills too - but many of these are essentially also used, even more frequently, in manual labor and agriculture.

And - in this broken, frightful world - we are so damn lucky** that people can even spare time for this, to learn more about the ancient world. And we are even more lucky that - when we are born with health complications, are disabled, or are faced with diseases like pneumonia, measles, and COVID - that these are not death sentences. Artificial scarcity, corporate greed, and fearmongering can make them so, but there is still that ability to live. To focus on the past, instead of making it to the next day, the next week, the next month.

But - I want to emphasize here - this is all entirely reliant on the work of people who continue to carry out the same manual labor done by countless individuals - enslaved and free - up through antiquity. People whose calculations were their survival, whose understanding of the natural world and local resources made the difference between life and death.

To pretend like we are somehow more knowledgable, more capable, more “advanced” intellectually than those who laid the foundations for the entire fucking world we live in today, is a lie. A smug, disgusting little lie that spits on all we have done as a species (and all the progress we are trying to make) with the idea that “we’ve done it”, we’re “superior,” this idea that only encourages rotting in self-assured apathy while the world burns.

And you cannot appreciate the past when you approach it with false assumptions which are based on nothing except preconcieved notions of modern superiority and the belief that knowledge is both ‘quantifiable’ and absolute. We are just as capable of joy, wisdom, compassion, and love as the ancients; and we are just as susceptible to fear, anger, and hatred as they were. I’m not saying everyone has to know the ins and outs of every ancient industry ever to appreciate the fucking Parthenon, but if someone cannot approach the ancient world with an open mind, a sense of humility, and self-reflection - then I suspect they cannot appreciate the fucking Parthenon.

*When I use the term 'we,' I am referring to individuals who do not specialize in manual labor/blue-collar industries and/or engage in subsistence agriculture.