Dear All,

16th Annual Meeting of European Association of Archaeologists 2010 (http://www.eaa2010.nl/) will include the following session:

Threads to the past: novel methods for investigation of archaeological textiles and other organic materials

Session organizers:
Margarita Gleba (UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK)
Susanna Harris (UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK)

Abstract
Archaeological textile research has been an understudied area in history and archaeology. However, in the past few years the field has witnessed a major dynamism as demonstrated by numerous conferences and publications on the topic, as well as establishment of large-scale interdisciplinary collaborative programmes, such as the Centre for Textile Research funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (2005-2015) and the pan-European project Clothing and Identities - New Perspectives on Textiles in the Roman Empire (DressID) funded by the European Union Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (2007-2012). These activities demonstrate not only that the field holds great potential in elucidating many aspects of past cultures, such as economy, technology, trade, fashion and religion, but also that at the moment there is a developing energy, expertise and collaborative will to draw from. The scientific methods have been or are being developed within archaeology (such as ancient DNA studies, isotopic tracing) that can be applied to gain new knowledge about ancient textiles on unprecedented scale. The overall aim of this interdisciplinary session is to demonstrate the potential of archaeological textiles for the investigation of ancient economy, technology and agriculture and to discuss new methods that can be applied to the investigation of textile fibre, such as Strontium isotopic tracing and DNA analysis.

Session Programme

Papers:
 

Susanna Harris (UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK): Investigating the material properties of archaeological textiles

Eva Andersson Strand (CTR, University of Copenhagen, DK): Loom-weights and weaving, textiles and production in the ancient Mediterranean

Janik Liliana (University of Cambridge, UK): 'Weaving invisible' looking for earliest traces of plant fibre use and weaving through phyoliths analysis

Margarita Gleba (UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK): Textiles, wool, DNA and sheep domestication

Karin Margarita Frei (University of Copenhagen, DK): Provenance studies of ancient textiles, a new method based on the Strontium Isotope System

Bodil Holst (Bergen University, Norway): Identifying archaeological textile fibres using modern analysis techniques

Ulla Mannerin (CTR, University of Copenhagen, DK): The Voldtofte find. An excellent example of how new analyses cam create new interpretations

Tereza Stolcová (Nitra, Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, Slovakia): Latest results of the laboratory research of in situ blocks with organic materials from the Early Migration Period chieftain's grave in Poprad-Matejovce, Slovakia