Tag Archives: iron age

Woad Experiments

The use of woad to tattoo / paint / stain skin has long been disputed. Caeser (The Conquest Of Gaul) recorded: “Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem.” – “All the Britons dye their bodies with woad [or glass] , which produces a blue colour…” Pliny backed him up by saying that the colour resembled “…that of Ethiopians.” But is this really woad?

Woad makes a poor paint as it has to be mixed with something else and tends to flake off flexible skin. It makes a worse tattooing ink!

So here it is, a woad dyed foot. Designs made with beeswax resist, in a similar way to batik. Who knows if anyone was doing this in 50 BC, but it’s certainly something to add to the possibilities!

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We shall see how it fades or wears off over the next few hours and days, watch this space! (and these toes…)

UPDATE: The morning after…

No wear overnight and looking bluer in daylight:

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UPDATE: Blue feet on the BBC

We’re 2500 years ago, on the banks of the Thames near Reading…
Cut to 16.50 for woad dyeing.

“Making History” BBC Radio 4, 23/08/2016

Buster Ancient Farm – Beltain Festival

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We had great fun at Butser. Firstly, it was wonderful to be able to demonstrate spinning, weaving and natural dyeing in a newly built Neolithic Longhouse. We were kindly invited to the event by Ancient Music as part of our new partnership. Alongside them, we were also part of the Mumming group, performing the travelling play during the evening. Mumming has a long tradition and is related to Morris Dancing. Each character is always the same and the plot is similar every time it is played. Thanks for you lovely feedback. Many of the visitors also seemed to enjoy meeting Knobbin ‘Oss, who loved eating the garlands from ladies heads!

Not suprisingly, the event was very popular, thousands of people were there to watch the Wicker Man burn down to the sounds of Pentacle Drummers.

http://www.butserancientfarm.co.uk/beltain-festival-2015/

The two knights, St. George and Turkey Snipe, with Beelzebub and Little Johnny Jack behind. Photo courtesy of Emma Sumpster.

The Salisbury Museum – Living History Fortnight (Newspaper article)

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Another delightful week at Salisbury Museum. We have created a new partnerships with Ancient Music, so alongside them, we varied the activities from last year. The schools got to experience a wider range of anient crafts than ever before: Fire-lighting, spear-throwing, natural dyeing, natural paint-making, using quern stones to grind wheat, spinning wool, weaving and experiencing the fantastic Wessex Gallery of the museum. Over the week we worked with 5 classes, both primary schools and a group of college students with special educational needs.

An article about our work at the Stone Age living history week appeared in the Salisbury Journal.

Many thanks to Salisbury Museum for hosting us and ensuring the sessions ran so smoothly.

www.salisburymuseum.org.uk

Silchester Excavation Open Days

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It was an honour to be invited to the last Silchester excavation open days. This Roman and Prehistoric excavation is a fantastic place for us to show some of the textile production techniques available to those people. We brought back the warp-weighted loom which we built for this event last year, and the students were very appreciative of an example of how the archaeology they were finding would have been used. We also modelled our new loom weights on finds from Silchester and Salisbury Museum.

Also many thanks to Kevin Standage Photograhy for giving us use of photos from his Silchester series.

www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/visit-the-roman-town/sil-visit-silchester-roman-town

Ufton Court: Willow Longship

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We’ve been asked to help Ufton Court design a prehistoric village for their Education department, to help them deliver the new Primary History curriculum, which focuses significantly more on prehistory than previously.

On a gloriously sunny spring day, we planted a living willow Viking longship as part of their new archaeological village. Soon there will be also an Iron Age roundhouse and a Saxon house for school groups to use too. Look out Saxons, there may be some Viking invasions!

http://www.uftoncourt.co.uk/

Silchester Open Days

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We were honoured to be invited to Silchester for both of their Archaeological open days in July and August.

Silchester is a Roman town in Hampshire, which has been excavated for the last 17 years by Reading University. They have discovered both the layout of the town and the Iron Age settlement which was there before.

At the first open day we took our new quern stones, as well as some grain, and helped the visitors use them to make flour. We ground all the grain we took in just the morning, the stones never stopped turning. It was brilliant to see the opportunities families took to educate children about the origins of bread they eat every day. The archaeologists were also exhibiting a Roman quern from Verulamium (St. Albans), and having ours for demonstration really brought it to life for the visitors.

Before the second open day, we made a replica of an Iron Age warp-weighted loom. We set it up and started weaving at the open day, demonstrating how it worked. This helped to put the finds of loom weights into context for both the public and the students.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/