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Tablet Woven Hallstatt pattern in 3/1 Twill in gold & purple

What: This entry uses the same pattern as seen in the “HallTex123” textile fragment found in an Austrian Salt Mine. This is

being woven using modern crochet cotton instead of period materials. This documentation was gleaned from my

Pentathlon entry in 2015, and modified for the piece I am weaving. This tablet-woven trim will be a gift for a friend.

Where and Who: Salt was considered “white gold” in ancient times for its ability to preserve food. The Hallstatt Salt mine

has provided this precious element for 7,000 years, and it also preserved buried textile fragments of the Bronze and Iron

Ages. Those who lived in and around the mine were well-off, and over the millennia there were support villages outside the

mine. It is not certain if the HallTex123 was woven at the mine villages or brought there by traders, but the salt miners

would have been affluent enough to purchase fine woven textiles. It appeared that the textiles found in the mine were

well-worn, and the researchers assumed that the new fabrics were used outside the mine and as they wore down, were

used inside the mine.

Tablet Weaving: “HallTex123” is the catalog reference number for the Iron Age textile fragment which was a tablet(card)

woven band. It was believed to have been used for the trim on the sleeve cuff of a garment. It was tablet woven using a

method called “3/1 twill”. In tablet weaving, square tablets with 4 holes are threaded with yarn (warp) and strung on a

loom. The tablets are turned and a perpendicular yarn (weft) is passed through the opening (shed) created by the yarn held

apart by the tablets.

Pattern: According to “Textiles from Hallstatt, Weaving

Culture from Bronze Age and Iron Age Salt Mines” edited by

Gromer, HallTex 123 is a “tablet woven border with a

meander and triangle pattern. The band was sewn together

into a circle and sewn-on to a twill fabric. Only fragments of

the twill, possibly a sleeve, remain.” You can see the Triangle

and the Meander (diagonal “Greek key”) patterns below.

Spinning: The extant band is 1.3cm (1/2”) wide by 22 cm (8

1/2”) long. There were 4 colors of spun and plied wool

thread used in the warp, and black horse hair used for the

weft. According to the thread listing below the blue-green and the brownish were Z twist direction and the

light-blue-green and yellowish were S twist direction. The thread was single spun S or Z, then plied in the

opposite, Z or S direction. All of the threads would have been spun and plied on drop spindles.

Thread Size: In the listing below, the spun and plied thread was between 0.1 to 0.2 mm thickness. The math

works out to 64 threads per centimeter, and a centimeter is 0.393 inches. This means they used yarn that was 25 threads

per inch thick for the warp.

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Dyes: According to the research paper “Micro Analysis on Hallstatt Textiles: Colour and Condition”, Joosten, “The blue

colour in Hallstatt textiles was obtained by using woad in combination with insect dyes, yellow dyes and tannins. The yellow

colour was dyed using a mordant dye, likely weld.” Also “the black textiles are most probably dyed with iron-gall black and

the additionally use of woad, red and yellow dyestuffs. In case of the brown, reddish-brown, green and olive-green textiles

it was not possible to determine whether the elements copper and iron, affecting the final colour of the textile fragment,

originate from a mordant or from the mine.” Ancient dyers used a variety of dyestuffs and mordants to get a rainbow of

colors and shades. The paper mentions orchil lichen or (cochineal) insects for red, woad for blue, weld for yellow, with

different mordants and overdyeing to get the subtle color differences.

Horse Hair Weft: The weft of the original was black horse hair. According to Belcher “Horse hair was used for weft on rep

and tablet woven textiles in order to back up the strength of the fabric and make them more resistant.”

Looms and Tools: The ancient weavers could have used several types of looms. In “Hallstatt Textiles, Technical Analysis,

Scientific Investigation and Experiment on Iron Age Textiles”, Edited by Peter Bichler, page 24, “These (band ribbons) were

either woven on special narrow looms or in tablet-weave technique…Ribbons were also produced on a simple tape

loom…The difficulties lie in identifying weaving tools consisting entirely of wood; for wood is hardly ever preserved on

conventional Central European archeological sites.” It is difficult to know what type of loom was used for creating the

Halltex123 band, but it could have been a belt loom, that tensioned the warp between the weaver’s belt and a stationary

object like tree or tent pole. It could have also been a simple wood frame, with the

warp passing under the weaver’s foot for tensioning. A warp-weighted loom was

likely NOT used for narrow band weaving, rather was best for wide swaths of fabric.

The weavers in period would likely have used bone or wood cards and

shuttles/beaters to weave. The Hallstatt archeological findings did not reveal any

weaving tools at all, since bone and wood did not survive. But similar looms, cards

and shuttles/beaters have been found in other digs like Starom Meske,

Czechoslovakia and Osberg, Norway (black and white photo, Collingwood).

What I did:

Threads: Because this weaving was started in January 2002, before this competition was offered, the entry is not

about the yarn, but about the pattern being woven. I used crochet cotton size 10, in purple and gold for the

warp, with the same purple thread as weft. The gold thread has metallic strips twisted onto it, not exactly period.

Though there are numerous period examples of pounded metal strips being woven into tablet woven bands, this

certainly does not recreate that.

Loom and Tools: The threads were speed-warped (Please Weave a Message, Hendrickson) onto a modern Duryn Tablet

Weaving loom in order to keep exceptionally-tight tension on the weaving. I also used plastic Lacis cards and a bone shuttle

to beat.

Pattern: According to the pattern on the first page, there are 21 cards. See the Warping Diagram below, the border (or

“selvedge”) cards, 2 on the left (B1 & B2) and 4 on the

right (B5 thru B8), are threaded with “blue-green” in all 4

holes. I used a greener version of blue-green for these

border cards. Just inside these border cards is one card

each side of brown for all 4 holes (B3 and B4).

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The 13 cards of the main pattern has 5 cards (5-9) in the center of brown, and 4 cards (1-4, 10-

13) on either side of those center 5 threaded with blue-green (I used the Bluer of the blue-

greens) in the A and B holes. The C and D holes of these center 13 cards are warped with the

Yellow. The brown and bluer-green will form the background color and the yellow will form the

pattern. The cards were threaded S, see graphic on right.

Creative Check Line Pattern: The weaving pattern itself consists of 2 “Meanders” (slanted Greek-

key) and 2 Triangles, in 72 picks (turns) of the cards. When initially trying to weave this pattern, I

found it difficult to correctly follow the pattern, and impossible to know if the cards were in the

correct positions. An error was not obvious until several picks, requiring unweaving and

restarting. So I created a “Check Line” for each line of weaving, to cross check the card positions

at the end of each pick. This took a lot of head-scratching, and for me was the most creative part

of this project.

Weaving: By placing the full Weaving Pattern above on a metal board and using a strip magnet to mark each line, the Check

Line can be compared to the actual position of the Hole (A, B, C or D) on the top of the card closest to the weaver. In the

Pattern above, the Arrows Down ↓ in the Turning Line mean to turn that card one quarter turn towards the weaver. For

numbers 1, 2, 3, the card is turned away from the weaver. The numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., correspond to the Card numbers. To

me, this is revolutionary, since it enables the weaver to ensure they are weaving correctly pick after pick. I have taught

many people to weave this and other 3/1 twill patterns using the Check Line. My Instructions for weaving the Hallstatt

band, as well as the full Check Line weaving pattern are in the appendix.

Twist Neutral: A happy surprise about the HallTex123 pattern is that the 72 picks are “Twist Neutral”, which means after 72

turns of the cards, the un-woven threads are not twisted. This makes long lengths of this pattern a joy to weave because

the twist does not build up over time. However, the border cards DO build up twist, since they are continuously turning in

the same direction. I could have used swivels on the ends of each of these border cards to un-twist them, but I chose to

change the direction of the border cards’ turning at the end of the 72 picks.

Length and Width: There appear to be 4 iterations of the 72 pick pattern (of 2 triangles and 2 meanders) in the 8.6” long

extant piece. This would mean that each original iteration of the pattern would be a little more than 2 inches long. My 72

pick pattern is 4 inches long, twice as long as the extant piece. Also the extant piece is described as being ½” wide. My

weaving is 5/8” wide. I warped my loom for 12 feet (144 inches). I have 72 inches done, about half way. I can weave 4

inches per hour.

Bibliography:

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Textiles from Hallstatt, Weaving Culture from Bronze Age and Iron Age Salt Mines” edited by Gromer, Karina, 2012 ISBN-

13: 978-9639911468.

Hallstatt Textiles, Technical Analysis, Scientific Investigation and Experiment on Iron Age Textiles”, Edited by Peter

Bichler, BAR International series 1351, 2005, ISBN-13: 978-1841716978.

Micro Analysis on Hallstatt Textiles: Colour and Condition, Ineke Joosten, Maarten R. van Bommel, Regina Hofmann-de

Keijzer, Hans Reschreiter, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 2006.

The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, Collingwood, Peter, Faber & Faber(1982)

Please Weave a Message, Hendrickson, Linda, (2003)

STANDARDS & GUIDELINES for Crochet and Knitting, Craft Yarn Council