Wealth from wool: light stable isotopic provenancing of sheep wool textiles from urban medieval sites in northern Europe

• Applicant: Dr. Isabella von Holstein
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology ; Medieval History ; Animal Breeding, Animal Nutrition, Animal Husbandry
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 283184820

The wool textile industry in the Middle Ages (9th-15th centuries) was large and profitable: making and selling wool textiles was important both economically and socially in all parts of Europe. Many different types of cloth were made, and many were worth enough to be traded long distances. A large number of wool textiles have been found in archaeological excavations in medieval towns in northern Europe, from Ireland to Finland. These represent the work and belongings of a cross-section of medieval urban societies. Understanding where these objects originated is an important addition to the information on textile trade and consumption derived from historical documents, which typically record only the first sale of new cloths, to relatively rich consumers or middlemen. This project uses analysis of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen isotopic composition to identify where the wool in these textiles came from. This project is the first to employ light stable isotope analysis to identify the origin of archaeological artefacts composed of organic raw materials. Ecological and food studies have shown that these values depend on where a sheep lived (because of variation in temperature, humidity, plant types in pasture, soil type, etc.), and also on how the sheep was farmed (e.g. given different types of fodder, moved between different types of pasture). Archaeological studies have shown that these values are not greatly altered by burial, and that these analyses can therefore be used to identify the region of origin of an archaeological wool textile. This project will test 30 samples of sheep bone and 30 wool textiles from each of 8 archaeological sites in Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Finland. Results will be compared to data from modern wool from the same regions, to check how sheep farming in these regions was different in the past, and to indicate the origins of the textiles. This information will be interpreted in the context of textile-technical analyses of the textiles themselves, indicating in which tradition they were made. The project aims to identify how many textiles from each site are non-local, which regions these non-local textiles came from, and how the quantity and nature of non-local textiles changed over time. These analyses will tell us about the development of economic, social and technological connections between the targeted regions, significantly expanding on the data in the written record. It will examine for the first time whether early patterns of contact are the same for wool textiles, the major commodity of the later Middle Ages, as they are for other traded objects at these sites, e.g. ceramics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Cheryl Makarewicz