EMAP_2012_Report_6_1.pdf (7.3 MB) - The Heritage Council

Chapter 8: Manufacturing on Rural
Settlement Sites
In looking at dress and ornament, we often focus on the finished products – the textile
remnants which hint at the material, cut and colour of clothing; the brooches, beads,
bracelets and other ornaments lost or hidden or otherwise left behind and subsequently
discovered by the excavators. But while these may indicate the use of these items by people
on a particular site, they may not speak to their place of manufacture. For that, the evidence
required relates to the process of manufacture – the tools used to process, spin and weave
wool or flax into thread and cloth; the furnaces, moulds, crucibles and other pre-requisites of
metal or glass working; the waste products of bone or lignite working, occurring as waste
cores, shavings, offcuts etc. The amount and range of such evidence from individual sites
may help to clarify whether the people who lived there were self-sufficient in their dress
requirements, or whether they acquired some items from elsewhere; evidence of larger-scale,
more specialised working in particular materials or ornament types may suggest provisioning
for a larger social group, or supply of markets or trading areas. Occasional references suggest
this latter sense of manufacturing for distribution or trade beyond the site of production, but
also with dress and ornaments being brought in from elsewhere. Thus, for example, cloaks
were exported from Ireland to Cambridge in the tenth century (Fairweather 2005, 130), while
the ‘great market of foreigners’ at the fair of Carmun sold gold and fine clothing (Kelly 1997,
459).
This section focuses primarily on the manufacture of textiles – presumably largely used in
clothing – and also briefly addresses the manufacture of various types of ornaments (see
other chapters for more detail on crafts in the materials involved here). Depending on the
nature and material of the object, we might expect a degree of specialisation/centralisation in
their manufacture. This applies particularly to the more elaborate metal brooches and pins,
evidence for the making of which often occurs on high-status secular or ecclesiastical sites. It
has been suggested that it was the wealth, prestige or power of the inhabitants of these sites
which allowed them to control the resources for manufacture, including the services of the
craftworkers. For some crafts, however, a degree of self-sufficiency in production might be
expected on ordinary settlement sites. This may particularly be the case in relation to boneworking
(although the more technically-demanding antler-working should not be absorbed
into this), where the raw materials and tools required to make a plain dress pin would be
readily available to all.
These issues of specialisation or common skills have implications in terms of contemporary
recognition and valuation of craftworkers. Written texts suggest particular crafts were valued
in early medieval Irish society, with their exponents being awarded high honour-prices in
recognition of their skill and the importance of their products (Kelly 1998, 61-3). Yet some
areas are conspicuous by their absence, notably in relation to female crafts. No honour-prices
are given in the law tracts for practitioners in the areas of spinning, weaving or sewing,
although some references to embroidery and the use of needles as pledges suggest a degree
of recognition of the skill involved; thus, in Bretha im Fhuillema Gell it is said that ‘the woman
who embroiders earns more profit even than queens’ (Kelly 1988, 78). MacNeill (1923)
translated a craftsperson in the law-tracts as a ‘wool-comber’ but Kelly (1988) identified this
individual instead as a ‘comb-maker’. If Kelly is correct, this indicates that spinners and
weavers were not mentioned in any of the early law tracts, suggesting that these tasks may
have been purely domestic activities. Yet textiles are a fundamental material for many areas
of society, not just dress. The silence of the texts might occlude the presence of female
craftworkers on many settlement sites, or induce us to overlook their evidence. However,
Triad 76 includes ‘the hand of a skilled woman’, alongside those of ‘a good carpenter’ and ‘a
good smith’ as the ‘Three hands that are best in the world’ (Meyer 1906, 11) – so there was
some recognition of this importance (as this immediately follows another Triad referring to
120