#lang scribble/base
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        scriblib/footnote
          "../Images/image-support.rkt")

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@title{Addendum: Experiential and Experimental Textile Production}

@author{Morgan Lemmer-Webber}

@section{Spinning}

As I began preliminary research for this dissertation topic, I found myself intrigued by the technologies I was studying. In order to facilitate my practical understanding, I decided to learn the processes to the extent I was able. I started this experiential learning exercise with spinning. I purchased a kit from a vendor at my local Renaissance faire containing a wooden bottom whorl @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle} with a metal hook and a pound of wool roving.@footnote{ Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, WI, https://renfair.com/bristol/} My initial attempts to learn from diagrams and written descriptions in secondary proved difficult.@cite-footnote[Wild1970 35] With the assistance of dozens of how-to videos on YouTube, I was able to produce yarn. The Society for Creative Anacronisms (SCA), a community focusing on Medieval reenactment and crafts, has a fiber arts guild with experienced spinners who were able to give me hands-on instruction.@footnote{ The SCA is an inter-connected group of reenactment communities that fit within national and international networks. The local group in Madison, WI is the Barony of Jararvellir in the Kingdom of Northshield https://www.jararvellir.org/.}

With this instruction I was able to successfully and evenly spin wool at a thread-weight. I spin using my right hand to hold the roving while using my left hand to spin clockwise and draw out the fibers. This results in an s-spun thread.@cite-footnote[Wild1970 157] Given the toxic nature of many natural dyes and my lack of a workshop outside of my home, I have not learned ancient @index['("Dye Shop")]{dyeing} practices, electing instead to purchase wool that has already been cleaned, combed, dyed, and formed into roving. Since the construction of a @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle} requires only a shaft and a whorl, I have expanded from my initial purchased @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle} to make a variety of spindle-types of different sizes, weights, and whorl locations @figures["BlueWoolSpindle"]. For the spindle shafts I've used either 3/16" thick dowel rods or repurposed knitting needles. In ancient sources and iconography, spinning was always done with a @index['("distaff")]{distaff}; however due to the scarcity of commercial distaffs on available on the current market, most of the time I spin without a distaff. Unless I am spinning on the move, in a windy environment, or will need to make frequent stops, I find that the increased control I have over the roving is not worth the added arm strain that the @index['("distaff")]{distaff} adds.

From August 2015 to September 2020, my spinning practice was purely experiential. It was a craft that I could do while relaxing, watching TV, socializing, or even giving presentations.@footnote{ I gave a presentation on spinning while spinning at the Historical Craft Symposium held by the University of Wisconsin, Madison Material Culture Focus Group in November 2016, gave live-demonstrations and tutorials of spinning at the Irish Rose Alpaca Farm open farm days events in 2017 and 2018 (https://www.irishmeadowsalpacafarm.com/), and gave a presentation on Fiber Arts, Nostalgia, and Political Movements at Penguicon 2020.} While I did try out variables in this time frame, such as different sizes, weights, and configurations of @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindles}, none of this was done with anything approaching scientific rigor. The major reason for this is that testing or timing my own spinning before I have an easy facility with the craft would not give me useful data. In September 2020 I did a series of timed sessions spinning with controlled variables. I used a bottom-whorl spindle with a 12" long x 3/16" diameter shaft, a cyllyndrical wooden whorl with a 2.5" diameter x 3/4" height, and a 3/8" nickel hook. The total weight of the @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle} was 1.4oz. Over a series of ten sessions equaling 12.25 hours, I spun .8oz of marino top wool totaling 127 yards of thread.

While my five years of experience spinning in my free time cannot compare to the level of experience of a Roman @italic{@index['("quasillaria/spinner")]{quasillaria}} who spun professionally for most of her life, it gave me a minimum level of expectations for the massive time-investment it would take to dress a Roman loom.

@section{Weaving}

In July 2017 I built a small warp-weighted loom so I could better understand the mechanics of the technology @figures["Loom"]. When this project was built I was living in an apartment and did not have access to any saws, so the loom was built on a small scale out of materials I had on hand. The frame was made of spare stretcher bars, the top beam and @index['("heddle")]{heddle} were made of 1/2" dowel rods, the @index['("heddle jack")]{heddle jacks} were supports made for curtain rods, and the loomweights were fishing weights. While this loom obviously was not made of period-appropriate materials, or to the scale used in the ancient world, it functioned mechanically like an ancient loom would. I made two small pieces of fabric on this loom, both out of a 70:30 wool : silk blend that I spun myself. The first piece was a simple 1:1 tabby or plain weave, which means that I alternated 1 strand in the front row of warp threads to 1 strand in the back row.@cite-footnote[Wild1970 46] I secured the back row of warp threads to the @index['("heddle")]{heddle} by the simple expedient of tieing them on.@footnote{ I believe this method contributed to my issues in regulating the spacing of the warp threads} In my initial attempts, I had trouble regulating the spacing of the warp threads, so I crocheted a line across the threads at near the top beam and again above the weights. In order to switch from the negative shed between the two sets of warp threads in their original position, I pulled the @index['("heddle")]{heddle} forward to rest on the @index['("heddle jack")]{heddle jack}, creating the positive shed @figures["Shed"]. On the second piece, I incorporated a tablet woven border followed by the tabby or plain weave, this both added a decorative embellishment and established better spacing of the warp threads at the top @figures["TabletBand"]. In both of these samples, I used a single-ply thread for the warp. Whether it was due to the quality of thread I'd spun, the weight-ratio of the weights used to the size of thread in the warp, or because it was single-ply, several warp threads broke in both samples.

In June 2020, I built a full-size Roman 2 beam upright loom based primarily on the images of looms in the Forum Transitorium frieze and the fresco from the Hypogeum of the Aurellii @figures["Loom" "ForumTransitorium" "Aurelii"]. For this loom I used 6' tall 4x4 posts for the vertical beams, 4' long 2x4s for the horizontal beams, and 10"x39" pieces of pressure-treated, finished plywood for the bases. Working under the assumption that whatever looms were in use in Karanis were packed and moved when the town was abandoned, I made this loom easy to disassemble. It is held together by 8" carriage bolts which, if removed, allow the loom to be broken down into the above listed components. The @index['("heddle jack")]{heddle jacks} were cut from 2" diameter dowel rod and are each 3.5" long, with a .5" divot cut into them @figures["HeddleJack"].@footnote{ To cut this divot, I used a miter saw pulled partially through the dowel on each side. I would not recommend this technique since it is difficult to secure a round dowel rod as a workpiece on a miter saw. As I was making the last cut, the workpiece shifted, the saw bound, and my finger was trapped between the dowel and the fence, severely bruising and spraining my middle finger. Because this injury took months to heal, I have not had as much time to work on this project as I would have liked.} This configuration was based off of surviving heddle jacks from Karanis @figures["KM3779"]. Given my experience with broken warp threads in my warp-weighted weaving samples, my limited amount of free time, and the massive time investment of spinning on a @index['("spindle/whorl")]{drop spindle}, I elected to dress this loom with a 2-ply tensel wool warping thread which I purchased. In this style of loom, the width of the horizontal beams provides the negative shed, in this case 1.5". I used a 1" dowel rod for a @index['("heddle")]{heddle} and placed another 1" dowel rod between the two sets of warp threads when binding on to the heddle to maintain consistent spacing. When connecting the warp threads to the heddle, I used a continuous strand of crochet thread and secured each loop with a knot.@footnote{ For another example using this method, see @cite[Möller-Wiering2015 124] figure 4.3.12} Unfortunately, when I finished binding the warp onto the heddle and pulled the heddle back, I discovered that I only had roughly a half inch of positive shed, too small a space to pass a shuttle and weft thread through. In order to create a workable shed, I made extensions for the @index['("heddle jack")]{heddle jacks} using a 2.25" hole-saw bit on a 1" thick board @figures["HeddleJackExtension"]. With a workable positive shed @figures["Shed2" "Shed3"], I was able to weave using the same 1:1 tabby or plain weave using a single ply homespun wool weft thread. Since the warp thread was two ply, the single ply weft was disproportionately small and left noticeable gaps in the weave. Without any homespun plied wool at hand, I used a commercially produced acrylic yarn, which produced a more consistent weave @figures["Weave"]. The continuous tension on the warp threads caused the negative shed to stick somewhat, so I used an 18" metal ruler as a weaving sword, inserting it horizontally through the shed then turning it vertical in order to allow the space to pass the shuttle through. For lack of a weaving comb, I have been using a hair pick to beat down the weft threads into a tight weave.

Since this work was done as I was researching and writing my dissertation, I did not have the time to gain much proficiency in weaving. In the future I would like to experiment with different types of weaving. I would also like to try a few attempts at adjustable tension for the two-beam loom. In the fresco from the Hypogeum of the Aurellii, a third, thinner, horizontal line is visible toward the top of the loom which I suspect provided some form of tension. Based off of the model of two-beam looms still in use in Palestine and Syria, I would like to test a third 'warp' beam that attaches either to external supports or to the wall behind the loom.@cite-footnote[Crowfoot1941 141] Given the small scale of my warp-weighted loom, I was easily able to weave by myself. The full-size two beam loom was built during the self-isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore I was unable to invite anyone to help me weave on it, therefore I only warped a smaller width which would be manageable on my own. In the future I would like to try a full-size project with the assistance of a second @index['("textor/weaver")]{weaver}. Time and access to tools and materials prevented me from doing so, but I would also like to make replicas of some of the bone @index['("distaff")]{distaffs} from Ephesus to test whether they would be usable even for short, ritual use.

@section{Artifact dispersal}

In archaeology, we rely on artifact assemblages and artifact dispersal to give us information about past societies, as I have done in this dissertation. So as an archaeologist who has lived with these historical craft practices as a hobby for the last five years, I took note about what my own home would indicate archaeologically. In my home I have fifteen @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindles}, all have wooden shafts, the whorls are of various materials (2 stone, 1 ceramic, 11 wood, 1 wood and stone), twelve have metal spindle hooks, two have ridges, one has a notch. six are bottom whorl, eight are top whorl, and one is a Turkish @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle}. I have two wooden @index['("distaff")]{distaffs}, one a ring-distaff, one a forked distaff. There is one wooden warp-weighted loom (miniature) and one wooden two-beam upright loom (full size). If the perishable portions of the looms were lost, there would be a set of 50 metal weights lined up parallel to a wall (these weights are actually fishing weights that have been repurposed as @index['("loom weight")]{loom weights}, but the context would still suggest a loom). There are also miscellaneous sewing needles, pins, and other sewing tools, an incle loom, an eighteenth century Lithuanian spinning wheel, and a rigid heddle loom circa the 1960. Two @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindles} are located in the living room, one in a bag in the entryway, and the rest of the textile tools are located in an upstairs office. The office is located directly above the living room, therefore those two assemblages may be co-mingled if the floor of the building collapsed.

If the perishable materials survived, my house could easily be interpreted as a centralized production center or a household involved in a cottage industry given the concentration of textile tools. If the perishable materials did not survive, we would still have three identifiable @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle whorls}, with a fourth stone object that is slightly too small and the hole in the center slightly larger than expected, and a full set of loomweights, enough to confirm domestic production of textiles and perhaps engagement in a cottage industry. Of course, if a copy of this written record was recovered within the house, the future archaeologist would know that the primary reason for these assemblages would be academic. Ten of the wooden spindles are made of identical materials, half with the hook positioned as a top-whorl and half with the hook positioned as a bottom whorl. My purpose for this is educational -- these are @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindles} I made myself out of cheep, durable materials to use for teaching others how to spin -- though such a clearly utilitarian set of spindles in contrast to those with decorations or made out of semi-precious stones may suggest a separate set of tools for the lady of the house compared to servants or workers. The future archaeologist may question the purpose of the miniature warp-weighted loom. Was it a model? A toy for a child? A loom intended for smaller items?

This future archaeologist would be further confused by the presence of tools which were conventionally dated by type thousands of years earlier than other technology in the same space -- such as a computer monitor and electrical lighting fixtures. Is this a collection of antiquities for display? Could these incongruous technologies be objects handed down within a family? This would not be entirely inaccurate as two of the @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindles}, a @index['("distaff")]{distaff}, and the spinning wheel were gifts from my mother, a fiber artist herself, and the ceramic spindle whorl was a gift from my confused mother-in-law who had no idea what it was other than something off of my wish list. Are these assemblages merely indicative of a consumer culture where the user might as well have six when one would do?

This whimsical thought exercise illustrates some missing evidence that we infer in our interpretations. I would have no qualms, as an archaeologist, asserting that a house with fifteen, or even four, @index['("spindle/whorl")]{spindle whorls} and evidence of at least one loom produced textiles at a higher output that necessary for the needs of the household, and yet, I have only produced a few misshapen woven textiles roughly the size of washcloths or dish-towels, a few knit sweater vests, some scarves, and several skeins of yarn with all of the equipment in this house.