EMAP_2012_Report_6_1.pdf (7.3 MB) - The Heritage Council

thread, we can assume some textile reference here). Similarly, the law tract Bretha Crólige
refers to a ‘woman of profitable handicraft’ who is entitled to have three judges assess her
maintenance; this term is glossed as ‘a woman who does profitable work with her hand, e.g.
an embroideress and women who perform steeping and dressing [of flax], &c.’ (Binchy 1938,
27).
Textiles
Textiles were used for many practical purposes in early medieval Ireland including clothing,
carrying bags, packaging, sail-clothes, fishing, trapping nets and other load-bearing resources
such as ropes. While this chapter deals specifically with clothing, some extant textiles may
reflect other uses of cloth. Some of these are urban; coarse tabby-weave cloth from a late
eleventh-century context from a site at South Main Street, Cork City appears to have been
treated with resin tar and may have been used either as a tarpaulin to protect merchandise
transported by land or sea or could have been applied as a form of waterproofing to
damaged planks of a ship (Heckett 2010, 562). Similar evidence of caulking the seams of
boats with fibrous materials was found at Fishamble Street, Dublin (McGrail 1993, 87;
Heckett 2010, 559). Linen fragments from a cereal-drying kiln at Ballyvass may reflect the
use of textiles as a base on which to lay the grain, or might suggest the use of sacks (Clark &
Doyle 2011).
The manufacture of textiles is strongly associated with women in the written texts. Tools and
items related to spinning, weaving and sewing are listed in the law tracts as the possessions
of women (Kelly 1997, 451). The role of women, and the importance of textile-working, is
also highlighted in the ninth-century Triads, where ‘the slender thread over the hand of a
skilled woman’ is one of the ‘three slender things that best support the world’ (Meyer 1906,
11). Women are also associated with sheep, which in the seventh-century Audacht Morainn
were valued for their fleece which was used ‘for the garments of the people’ (Kelly 1997, 67).
This association with sheep and wool also appears in Cáin Lánamna, where the division of
property in a divorce gave a wife one-sixth of any fleeces, but one-third of combed wool and
half of any woven cloth – implying that it was her labour which processed the fleece to
thread and textile (Kelly 1997, 449). Similar proportions apply in the division of flax, again
rising from one-sixth of the flax in sheaves to increased shares of the processed fibres and
finished cloth (ibid.).
While actual textile remains are scarce, the methods of processing from raw materials to
finished cloth offer several opportunities for evidence of manufacture to be discerned. In
most cases, this evidence will be of an indirect nature. Short of finding cloth in situ on a
loom, thread on a spindle, or a needle and thread in an unfinished seam, we must
extrapolate from the indirect evidence that these processes were undertaken on a site. This
evidence ranges from raw or partially-processed materials (flax fibres, seeds, pollen; wool
and fleece) to the tools associated with various processes. These tools include heckling and
carding implements and tools used in the initial processing of the materials; spindle whorls,
distaffs and spindles used in spinning thread; loom weights, pin beaters, weaving tablets,
weaving tensioners and other weaving tools; and needles and shears used for cutting and
sewing finished cloth.
There are issues in relation to the identification of artefacts/tools as relating to textile
working. One example involves iron pronged/socketed items, which are variously attributed
to either textile or leather working. Hencken suggested examples from Cahercommaun might
be weaving combs (Hencken 1938, 53), but Stenberger described them as a type ‘sometimes
called “leather-scorers”’ (Stenberger 1966, 46), an interpretation followed by Johnson (1999).
Maria FitzGerald in her research into early Irish textile working (FitzGerald 2000) suggested
that they might have been used for carding/combing wool prior to spinning. Bone pins or
points are also open to a range of interpretations, ranging from scoops to spearheads to
weaving tools, the last being favoured by Crowfoot (1945, 158), MacGregor (1985, 188) and
Hodkinson (1987, 49-50), among others. While some bone implements may have served as
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