Overview

I am an archaeologist whose research has been centered on archaeological textiles. I spent most of the 1980’s cataloguing textiles in museums all over Northern Europe, to establish an overview of the development of textiles, textile technology, and modes of producing them from the beginnings to the Middle Ages. Later, I got involved in the excavations of the Roman quarry of Mons Claudianus in Egypt, investigating the many thousands of textiles found there. My attempts to understand ancient textiles led to contacts and collaboration with textile craftspeople, reconstructing fabrics and garments such as the garb of King Canute, wool sails for Viking ships, and other textile items from various archaeological contexts.

Issues and Interests

Insights into the craftspeople’s form of knowledge have opened my eyes to many new aspects of textiles such as feel, quality, visual expression, but also that I lacked ways to describe them in a suitable academic format. The need to find ways to remedy this has been a focus point in my research and teaching in recent years.

Further reading

‘The Epistemology of Craftsmanship’, in: Textilien aus Archäologie und Geschichte. Festschrift Klaus Tidow, edited by L. Bender Jørgensen, J. Banck-Burgess & A. Rast-Eicher, Wachholtz Verlag, 2003, pp. 30-36, ISBN 3-529-01712-4
‘Archaeological Textiles between the Arts, Crafts and Science’, in NESAT IX: Archäologische Textilfunde – Archaeological Textiles, edited by A. Rast-Eicher & R. Windler, Archeotex, 2007, pp 8-11, ISBN 978-3-033-01267-7
‘Handicraft Knowledge Applied to Archaeological Textiles’, The Nordic Textile Journal 2005, pp. 86-119, ISSN 1404-2487

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