Category: Object Reconstruction Project

ORP: Cruciform Brooch

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THE OBJECT

The cruciform brooch I chose for my modeling and research paper was found in a cemetery at the West Stow site. Since brooches of a similar cruciform style were found in the same cemetery at West Stow and in other locations. Considering what has been discovered of other Anglo-Saxon grave goods, it is reasonable to assume this brooch accompanied a late Anglo-Saxon into the afterlife. Twelve brooches of the cruciform style were found in the cemetery, all made of a bronze alloy.[1] According to Stanley West, the brooch is typical of the Leeds Type V.f. and is a “remarkably successful, decorative piece, with a flowing, rounding design of masks and bird heads.”[2]

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ORP: Eriswell Spearhead

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Little Eriswell

In 1957, workers digging a hole for the installation of an oil tank discovered bones and artifacts indicative of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Lakefield airfield near Little Eriswell in Suffolk. Two years later, another patch of the cemetery was discovered while foundations were being dug for a hospital. An inventory of all the findings, including objects that were buried with the people there, was kept during the process of the excavation. In one of these graves, an iron spearhead was recovered, found well above where the left shoulder of the body would have been and with wood remains still inside the conical ferrule, the section which would have affixed the spearhead to the shaft of the weapon.

The original spearhead from the Eriswell excavation.

Spears in Anglo-Saxon Culture

Spears were believed to be incredibly prolific weapons during the time of the Anglo-Saxons, due to the majority of them having been found within burial sites; roughly 4 in 5 burial sites contained one. They were much cheaper than swords to produce, and so they were frequently allotted to foot soldiers. Anglo-Saxon spears themselves definitely had certain distinctive qualities to them, such as open ferrule sockets around the spear’s mandrel, which would lead to such an assumption. It is possible that this was the role of the particular individual who died, as also found with the remains were a shield boss, a pattern welded iron sword and a small iron knife, though it is wise to remind myself that the dead do not bury themselves. In any case, it draws a strong connection to spears being symbolic of a warrior. Despite this, archaeological data on weapons burials does not corroborate this notion.
Weapon burials were, according to research, heavily associated with the “ethnically, social and perhaps ideologically based ‘warrior class’”. This was seen as many burials that included weapons were also frequently adorned with generally far more wealth than those of adults that had not. Skeletal data also suggests against the idea of the simple fact of death in battle or of being a warrior would qualify one for such a burial; there was little correlation for wounds and weapon burials and some weapon burials even had people with various diseases and disfigurements that would have precluded their service in an army. The evidence at Little Eriswell absolutely corroborates this; among the spearhead was also found several more weapons, including those of a very advanced make, including a pattern welded sword, a quite expensive and masterful piece of equipment for the time. Furthermore, the skeletal parts that did remain showed several vertebrae with Schmorl’s nodes, a condition that denotes spinal deformity, as well as evidence of osteochrodritis dissecans on the right femur in the form of a shallow concavity, a disease that causes stiffness and locking of the joints: certainly not a boon on the field of combat. While there was not much commentary on the metalwork of the spearhead itself in the Little Eriswell report, there is some implication that it was a least somewhat well made, with iron fragments of other items having been found in the same grave, perhaps implying that the spearhead was at least made durable enough to last the test of time.

 

Making, Part I: Photogrammetry

I had no experience in metalwork, nor the time to learn such an art. So I “made” in the way I knew how: digital modelling. My first attempt was through a process called photogrammetry, where I was given photos of the artifact itself on a green screen from many different angles, where I then tried to construct a digital model using a computer program. The first step in this process was called masking, where I took the 37 photos of the spearhead and cut out parts of the background that I didn’t want the computer to use in the final construction. I then began to run the program through the process of building the model from these photos; aligning the photos, building a “density cloud”, which creates a cloud of points that the program will later fill in when it creates the mesh, or the digital 3D object, and then finally building the textures, which includes all the colors and finer details that are too small to perceive properly, so they are set as variations in color in order to make a less resource intensive final product. Unfortunately, after repeating this process over and over, troubleshooting many errors and watching tutorials, as well as seeking help from other students, I was left with nothing, due to the quality of the original photos that had been taken.

The program, Agisoft Professional, and the beginning vertices of the spearhead.

The density cloud. Note the lack of detail in the spearhead itself, and mostly in the mat beneath it.

The final model. Note the correspondence to the density cloud in terms of detail.

 

The most frustrating part about this failed attempt at recreation was how hands off it had been. Unlike actual metalsmithing, this approach was far less intuitive and automated; in fact, it would be less accurate to say that I had made the model rather than communicated to a computer what I wanted, which then had made the model. This led me to seek a far more hands on and involved approach, while still utilizing skills that I possessed.

 

Making, Part II: Freehand 3D modelling

The next process that I pursued was that of freehand modelling. This process consists of using a digital workshop within which a 3D artist can align points by hand. A 3D model is primarily built from flat triangles, which themselves are composed from 3 vertices, or single points in 3D space, connected by 3 edges, which are in turn connected by a single “face”. All this data is conveyed numerically to a renderer, which projects little lines in 3D space; if it would hit a face, it renders a solid surface there. These rendering lines are drawn for every pixel on the screen; this is why higher resolution screens generally take up more resources.

What I did was I used the various tools provided to me by my program of choice to create what I thought, based on research, this spearhead could have looked like when it was first made. So I first decided to create the head, by first creating a rectangle, then deleting and reshaping the geometry to create the leaf-shaped figure. I then “extruded” or lengthened the back of the head, and created a conical socket by folding the vertices into themselves. I then separately created an admittedly lazy “shaft”, which consisted of little more than a stock cylinder that had been stretched out like a piece of taffy. I placed this shaft within the cone, and using a “sculpt” tool, I “hammered” the edges of the cone around the shaft, making sure to leave the joint open in true Anglo-Saxon style.

The spearhead, before use of the sculpt tool to close up the ferrule

This is where the simulation of the method began to fall apart. First off, the model was far too flat and blocky, even though it held the general shape quite well. This meant I had to apply what is known as a subdivision surface, which essentially adds detail and a smoother overall shape to the model. Furthermore, both pieces were colored a very dull gray, which is standard for almost all modeling programs, but I wanted something with color. And so I mapped the faces of the model on some stock images of metal and wood for the head and shaft, respectively, which allowed them to display the respective portions of the image within the renderer. I tried my best to mimic how the metal and the wood itself bent around the shape of the spear, but without much hands-on experience with the relevant craftwork, I found this quite difficult to ascertain. There were also lighting issues being caused by some of the unseen geometry, such as within the socket, and so I had to delete it, leaving the inside of the mesh completely transparent (only one side of a face actually renders solidly; in order to have both an inside and outside to an object, two faces must be created). This forced me to close up a bit more of the joint, and flatten the spearhead even more to the shaft. Finally, I was also having issues with the aesthetic qualities of the spearhead; that is, it was far too reflective, not only looking more like a polished plastic than steel, but also washing out a lot of detail, such as the spine of the blade.

I then took this final model, and with the help of Brittany Johnson and Austin Mason it was 3D printed, and this was the most satisfying part of the experience, because I finally got to touch and feel the object that I had been creating. It wasn’t perfect; it was only about the length of my hand. But it still gave a tactile sense of this object, which is important to understanding the lives of those who used it.

The 3D printed spearhead. A little smaller than the real deal.

 

Conclusions from the Experience

The advantages of 3D modelling were obvious enough from the get-go. The infinite material, as well as the tools that allowed for an almost limitless range of geometry and incredibly efficient workflow meant that I could produce the most functional part of this object very quickly; its shape. One thing that had occurred to me, especially during troubleshooting and tweaking, is that the intent of my design was quite different. Indeed, I was focused more on the aesthetics i.e. the shape of the spear head, the geometric qualities of the ferrule, the reflective qualities of the metal, whereas an Anglo-Saxon blacksmith would have been more focused on function. If it were easier to not have the joint be separated when smithing a spearhead, it is unlikely that we would see the split ferrule on these spearheads.

The final product.

This, I feel, highlights the value to this sort of modeling: when I tried replicate the object, as well as ape the methods used to create, I was forced to put myself in the mindset of the smith. While maybe I didn’t learn a similar appreciation for technique and limited material that the actual craft would have, considering shape and look so closely made me feel a little closer to the material culture itself, and as a result made me feel closer to the actual people, allowing a more accurate interpretation of the culture based on the things they used. The specific value of 3D modeling is its ease and accessibility in comparison to many of the crafts that would have been practiced at the time, in particular metalsmithing.

 

Further Reading:

Hutchinson, Patricia. The Anglo Saxon Cemetery at Little Eriswell, Suffolk.

Leahy, Kevin. Anglo-Saxon Crafts. Stroud, Gloucestershire: History Press, 2010.

Welton, Andrew J. Encounters with Iron: An Archaeometallurgical Reassessment of Early Anglo-Saxon Spearheads and Knives: Archaeological Journal, 201

Härke, Heinrich. “”Warrior Graves”? The Background of the Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite.” Past & Present, no. 126 (1990): 22-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/650808.

 

ORP: Anglo-Saxon Knife

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Introduction

If I had to define the objective of our class I would say it was to learn history through interaction with materials.  The purpose of my individual paper was to better understand the Anglo-Saxons by studying a knife they left behind. This knife was discovered without a home in the West Stow Heath, an excavation site rich with Anglo-Saxon artifacts.  I went through a process of remodeling the knife through the means of photogrammetry, and the end result was as close as I could get.  

 

Background and Context

As I had mentioned earlier the knife was not found in a home or building, so trying to figure out what the knife’s primary use was little more than educated guesswork.  It was found outside so there is a stronger case for the knife being a farming tool over something that would be in the house. The best explanation I can come up with was that it was used as a tool and was possibly dropped.  The benefit of having a knife was that it could be used for a wide variety of tasks. This could mean that knives were carried around frequently and could have been lost or dropped outside. Additionally, there were multiple other knives discovered in the West Stow Heath which implies that knives were common tools.


The knife was created out of iron which was normal for knives, however, iron was a valuable material for Anglo-Saxon smiths.  The smiths had developed methods to conserve as much iron as possible during the crafting process. I bring this up because the knife I studied was one of the biggest ones found in West Stow.  Once again, the extensions I can make are limited but it is possible that the size could have been indicative of status or that the knife was made for a specific task. Anglo-Saxon knives were also exceptionally made.  They are better made than Roman knives and other medieval knives. This is in part due to the process in which the blades were heat treated and had steel added to them. The reason why knives were so well made is because of the demand for them.  People needed knives far more than spears or swords because knives are more useful in an agricultural and domestic life. The smiths had extensive practice making knives due to the high demand for them. This lead to a refining of their technique and an increase in the quality of knives.  I emphasize their quality because this did not apply to all metalworkings. For example, spearheads were not the same quality as knives because they were not made as much. Smiths had more practice with knives hence why they were crafted better. The Anglo-Saxons were, in reality, farmers over warriors and the quality of knives implies that.

Process

I decided to take the route of photogrammetry in my reconstruction process due to liability issues with metal working.  Nonetheless, I intended to make the best out of what I had and began the long and strenuous journey of 3D modeling. The process itself was not difficult just time consuming, and most of the time I found myself frustrated with the program.  However, in its own way, I was facing the resistance of the 3D modeling program. Resistance in materials is one of the key elements of material culture that I learned about in class and that is highlighted by Tim Ingold (material culture expert).  Most of the time spent on the process was waiting for the object to render. However, I constructed two chunks, each representing one side of the knife. I had to manually align both of these chunks in order to get a better representation of how the knife looked.  Additionally, I had some issues with the green screen which lead to me individually masking each of the 82 photos. Both of these things could have been done automatically with the program I was using but it just was not working in my favor. After doing most of the project manually, I had reached a point where I could apply a density cloud so that I could sit back, relax, and look at how my (hopefully) beautiful Anglo-Saxon knife.  Unfortunately, the rendering took around three hours on one side, and after it finished I could not successfully merge the two chunks together. The result was one decent looking side to a knife.

Conclusion

Although I could not get hands-on with smelting and molding I did still face plenty of resistance, just through a different medium.  I would like to discuss the benefits of using 3D modeling. If you are an observational learner this is the process for you. I learned a lot about the overall design of the knife which I could examine without damaging the object.  I think that when examining older artifacts, photogrammetry is an excellent resource. It is a form of interaction with an object that you may not be able to touch, and I would say that it is the next best thing. Now, I would have much rather preferred to have actually done some metal working so that I could better empathize and understand what the smiths actually had to go through to make a quality knife.  A more authentic recreation would enrich my ability to not only understand the Anglo-Saxons, but also to discuss the extensions I had with some of my own experiences incorporated into them.

 

 

ORP: Eriswell Girdle-Hangers

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This class focused very closely on material engagement as a way of understanding the culture and people of the past. Individually, we each chose a specific artifact to reconstruct either physically or digitally with the intent that focusing closely on a specific object and performing the steps of making a model would teach us about the process that the original makers of the objects would have experienced. I chose the 6th-century bronze girdle-hangers from the Eriswell cemetery in Suffolk for my reconstruction project. Through the process of researching and recreating the artifact, I learned not only details about how it was originally made but also how it served a wider culture of displaying one’s status and identity on their body in a visible manner.

 

Background

Beginning in the 5th-century, Anglo-Saxons buried their women with accessories and ornamentation to indicate who they were while alive. The growing inequality between the rich graves and poor graves throughout the 6th-century indicated changing power dynamics in society as individual families grew more powerful and wealthier than others. Styles of dress became an important vehicle through which to display one’s status, and regional styles of dress began to develop across Early Medieval England. A shared elite style of dress began to spread as well as contact between the powerful Anglo-Saxon families increased. Girdle-hangers were a part of this growing shared elite culture.

Girdle-hangers were a symbol of status that powerful women would have worn. The distinctive shape of these specific girdle-hangers was meant to resemble that of keys, signifying that the woman who wore them was the keeper of her household. These objects were discovered across England, from Little Eriswell on the eastern side to Cowdery’s Down in the west. It becomes evident through burial archaeology that the women, many of whom wore brooches and other jewelry in death, likely served as walking cultural symbols. Their regional-style dress made it instantly recognizable where they came from, and their level of finery indicated their place within society.

 

Reconstruction

My wooden model girdle-hangers

My reconstruction of the Eriswell girdle-hangers led me on an adventure in which I encountered many of the problems, complications, and limitations that the makers of the original girdle-hangers would have faced. When I began my reconstruction, I had planned to make a digital model with Agisoft Photoscan, but the program was unfortunately unable to orient the photos of the artifacts correctly. Lacking the technological prowess to fix this problem, I decided to make a physical model. Lacking the knowledge and ability to cast things out of bronze, I decided to make my models out of wood. Already I encountered some common problems with which any maker must contend: the limitations of my own set of skills and availability of my materials. These limitations would shape the form that my finished girdle-hangers would take.

Preliminary sketch-plan of my model girdle-hangers. I learned during the creation process that some of the measurements are actually wrong because I am bad at math.

The key shape sketched onto the plywood. Notice the “X” at the end of the key where I continued to modify the design right up until I cut the shapes out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key shapes and the band saw used to cut them

 

During my initial design process, I attempted to sketch out the exact dimensions of the girdle-hangers when I realized how little this would have mattered to the original makers. Exact measurements did not matter when it came to these objects. What really mattered was their distinctive key shape, since they had no actual functional purpose at all beyond sending a visible message. The designs I had made turned into a rough guide for the creation process, but by no means were they a step-by-step manual. I knew that when I began the process of making the models, I would need to mostly just think on my feet and, as before, allow my particular skill set and the materials available drive the project, which they did indeed. While making the models, I found myself constantly running into problems and reacting to them, adapting always to what my materials and tools would allow me to do.

One of the best insights I gained when making the girdle-hangers was the fact that each key must have been made either from two different pieces or had a transition cast in the metal. Halfway down the shaft of each key, they turn 90-degrees to fit onto the crossbar that holds the two keys together. This transition, either a twist or a seam, occurs on a part of the key that appears to be wrapped with bronze wire. It was my conclusion that the bronze wire served to hide the 90-degree transition from view. I came to this conclusion when attempting to recreate this part of the models; I chose the two-pieces approach, attaching an eye bolt 90-degrees to the broad side of the wooden key and wrapping them with string to strengthen the seam.

The end of the bronze girdle-hangers turned 90-degrees to the broad end of the key shafts, the transition wrapped in wire

The ends of my girdle-hangers, made of eye bolts turned 90-degrees to the broad end of the shafts and wrapped in string

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While my process and the end results of my project were not perfect – from the materials and tools used to the processes that I created in my mind – creating these girdle-hangers helped me engage with the objects made centuries ago and allowed me to step into the shoes of the original makers to experience the limitations and complications that they experienced.

 

Further Reading

Kevin Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Crafts (Stroud: The History Press, 2010).

Robin Fleming, Britain After Rome (New York: Penguin Group, 2011).

Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Dress and Identity,” in The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, ed. David A. Hinton, Sally Crawford, Helena Hamerow (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Christopher Scull, “Social Transactions, Gift Exchange, and Power in the Archaeology of the Fifth to Seventh Centuries,” in Hinton, Oxford Handbook.

Patricia Hutchinson, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Little Eriswell, Suffolk (Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1966).

ORP: Ipswich Ware Urn

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Several angles of the Ipswich ware urn

Context 

This object is an Ipswich ware urn that dates back to Early Medieval England. It was crafted in Ipswich, Suffolk, a port town near the site of the Sutton Hoo burial. During the seventh and eighth centuries, underwent much expansion and economic growth as a result of its role in the North Sea trading network. It is perhaps because of that growth that a group of Frisian potters were drawn to Ipswich to found a crafting enclave around the year 700, which produced ceramic wares for approximately one hundred and fifty years.

The wares that the Frisian potters produced were very economically successful, as evidenced by how far they spread across the region. One example of how prevalent these wares became in Anglo-Saxon society can be found at the archaeological site of the West Stow Village. Excavations at West Stow, which was a rural farming community, found that the proportion of potsherds that were from Ipswich wares matched the proportion of potsherds from more local wares.

One of the main things that differentiates Ipswich wares from the traditional Anglo-Saxon wares that predate them are the fact that they were made by specialized and dedicated crafters, rather than farmers who had a broader array of skills and split their labor between a variety of tasks. Additionally, the Frisian potters had better clay and tools at their disposal when crafting the wares, as crafters were often higher status than farmers. Ipswich wares were made using turntables, and were therefore more regular in form than the traditional wares that were created purely by hand. Additionally, Ipswich wares were fired in kilns, which are more easily controlled than the bonfires used for traditional firing.

Overall, the Ipswich ware urns represent a technological advancement in pottery, while also demonstrating that at least one part of Britain had recovered enough from the collapse of the Roman occupation to attract foreign crafters for long periods of time.

Process

I chose to attempt to digitally reconstruct this urn, since I felt that it would challenge me more than creating a physical reconstruction in the College’s pottery studio. The modeling software I used is called Agisoft PhotoScan, which uses a volume of photographs of an object from as many angles as possible to create a three-dimensional model of the object.

The first step was uploading the pictures of the urn into Photoscan into two separate chunks, one of the top and higher angles, and the other of the bottom and lower angles. next, I aligned the chunks, then aligned both of their photos. After that I built dense clouds from the chunks, and a mesh from the dense clouds.

A view of the ‘model’ after the building of dense chunks

At this point, I was confused because I had done all the steps that I should have done, but nothing resembling an Ipswich ware urn had seemed to take shape. In curiosity, I began to mess with the display to see if there was anything that I was missing. As it turns out, there was.

My completed digital reconstruction, perhaps?

I was able to create a digital model of the urn, but because of both its remoteness from the center of the monitor and my own lack of experience with the software made it so that I was only able to view it from one angle.

Insights

Overall, my efforts to digitally reconstruct this urn suffered from my own lack of skill, and from low resolutions of rendering. This is comparable to how efforts towards physical reconstruction could have suffered lack of skill with the medium of clay, or from inferior tools or materials.

If I had made a physical model, I would have had a very different experience which would have most likely been a more successful one. There is almost more to be learned from failure than from success, so I do not regret attempting the digital reconstruction. This reconstruction process made me appreciate how difficult it can be to accomplish something that can seem simple and linear, as well as the frustration when a final product does not fulfill its intended function-both experiences that novice potters first learning how to craft Ipswich ware urns surely experienced 1300 years ago.

Particularly, my difficulties with viewing the model impressed upon me the importance of viewing your work from multiple angles, and even from a distance if possible, in order to take as much of it into consideration as you can.

Further Reading

Blinkhorn, Paul. “Stranger in a Strange Land: Middle Saxon Ipswich Ware” Accessed May 13, 2018.
http://www.academia.edu/401957/STRANGER_IN_A_STRANGE_LAND_MIDDLE_SAXON_IPSWICH_WARE.

 

Fleming, Robert. Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise: 400-1070. London: Penguin
Books, 2010.

West, Stanley. West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village. Ipswich, UK: Suffolk County Council, 1985

ORP: Square-Headed Brooch

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Context

Pre-conversion (5th-7th centuries) Anglo-Saxon fashion is rather elusive, as there is little to no documented evidence from this period. What evidence we have comes almost entirely from the material record, and much of this evidence comes from burials. However, the predominance of certain buried fashionable items, especially in women’s graves, gives us some idea about what the early Anglo-Saxons wore and what those items may have signified for the wearers.

The square-headed brooch is one such fashionable item. The brooch is a rather common find in women’s graves from the early period, and this suggests that it was a popular ornament, at least in certain social circles. I recreated a square-headed brooch from the cemetery at Little Eriswell, Suffolk, and much of my research on the brooch centered around the cemetery itself and the rest of the grave goods buried with the brooch.

The Little Eriswell cemetery is an early (mid to late 6th century) East Anglian cemetery. It does not seem to have been linked to an inordinately rich cemetery; the only notable markers of exceedingly high status are a high-quality sword and textile. Moreover, the degenerate condition of the brooches and ornaments at the gravesite corroborate this modest picture. This does not mean, however, that there was no social stratification at Eriswell. Certain graves have few or no grave goods, while other graves, like the one I researched, hold more grave goods, many of which appear to be luxury items.

The grave I researched holds a female in her twenties. Along with her brooch, she is buried with two cruciform brooches, a collection of amber, glass, and jet beads, an ivory ring, girdle hangers, and a collection of odd metal trinkets. These trinkets may have had spiritual significance to the owner, since they seem to have had no pragmatic or aesthetic purpose. The gilding on the square-headed brooch, the beads, and the ivory ring all indicate that, while the owner was not excessively wealthy, she had some moderately high status. The ivory ring also indicates that Eriswell was likely connected to some international trade route.

The brooch itself is pretty typical for its time period and location. It is adorned with abstract animal ornamentation, a hallmark of early Anglo-Saxon art. The patterns on the brooch, at first glance, seem purely abstract, but if one looks closely, one can begin to pick out certain anthropomorphic shapes: faces, serpents, horses, etc. As earlier mentioned, the brooch is gilded, indicating some modest wealth. Indeed, square-headed brooches are thought to have been markers of status; they likely held together a gown similar to the peplos-style gown of ancient Greece, which could have been held together by simple pins. That these brooches, then, were used instead indicates that they were likely a marker of status. Gowns themselves may have marked status in Anglo-Saxon England, since the more practical tunic could also have been worn.

                               The square-headed brooch from Eriswell.

 

Process
I modeled my brooch using Agisoft Pro 3-D modeling software. To do this, I uploaded pictures of the brooch from various angles into the computer program. I then “masked” the pictures, essentially cropping out everything in the picture that wasn’t the brooch itself, like the base and black background. I separated the pictures into different “chunks”; since different groups of pictures showed the brooch in different positions (right-side up, upside down, for example), the program would have meshed different positions together in the model if I had made one model alone. I then generated my sparse point cloud, the first layer of modeling, and then the dense point cloud, the second layer. I then manually trimmed away and combined my different chunks to form one cohesive model (sort of like photoshopping different images together, but with models). I finally created the mesh, so that the model became a 3-D shape, not a collection of dots, and textured it. At that point, my model was complete.

                                     Front and back sides of my model.
The process above seems rather smooth and streamlined, but many problems came up in the modeling of the brooch. Most of these stemmed from my ignorance of the software. I hadn’t used Agisoft before and was having to learn the system as I was modeling. For example, I didn’t realize I had to mask and was very confused when my model incorporated the black background. To troubleshoot, I consulted video tutorials, Dr. Mason, and a classmate, Brittany Johnson. I did not make my model in one go. My process was riddled with restarts and editing.

I also made a rough sketch of the front of the brooch. My goal in sketching was not to get a good 3-D image of the brooch, since that was what my computer model did. Rather, it was to get a better idea of the animal ornamentation on the front of the brooch. That ornamentation was extremely rather abstract, and my hope was that by drawing it out, I could notice more patterns and forms in the brooch.
                                                                               My sketch.

Insights
I found that both models, 3-D and sketch, offered different insights into the brooch and its making. I found that while my finished sketch was little help, the process of drawing helped me to understand the brooch much better. As I had presumed, I was able to pick up more and more patterns in the ornamentation. While I had already noticed the faces on different poles of the brooch, I hadn’t noticed, for example, the parallel serpentine designs on opposite sides of the “square head” of the brooch. I also thought that drawing the brooch gave me a better idea of what making the brooch may have been like. While Anglo-Saxon metalworkers would not have been sketching their designs using pencil and paper, they did carve it into the clay mold for the brooch, a process very much akin to my sketching. This in turn made the brooch-making process more human in my head; sketching the designs felt rather improvisational, and I could imagine myself as the brooch-maker, carving what designs I thought looked fitting into the brooch.

Whereas the process of sketching the brooch gave me an insight into the brooch-making process, I found that modeling the brooch did not help me at all, but my finished product certainly did. The abstract, distanced nature of running a program distanced me from the brooch. Copying and pasting images and commanding the program to run various, abstract tasks did not bring me closer to understanding the nature of brooch-making. However, my finished 3-D model, which I could turn around and look at from all sides, like I would a physical object, was exceedingly helpful. First of all, it was the most natural possible way for me to understand my object. I could look at different pictures of my brooch, but the 2-D nature of these images kept the brooch disjointed in my mind—I found that that spatial incoherence made it harder for me to retain an idea of the brooch’s form while I was researching. Having a coherent, 3-D image greatly helped me subconsciously fit together the brooch in my head while I was researching.

On a more fundamental level, though, having a 3-D model allowed me to have a semi-tactile connection with the brooch. A common argument against technological developments is that they distance the maker with the made. If I write with a computer, for example, I am not having the touch-based connection with writing that I would have if I were writing with pencil and paper. I am not actually crafting the letters. Yet if I hadn’t 3-D modeled my brooch, I would have had even less tactile avenues for understanding my brooch. The only other resources at my disposal were pictures, which only offered a visual connection with the brooch. Even if I traveled to the museum where the brooch is held, the brooch would be behind a glass case. I wouldn’t be able to turn it around and inspect it on my own terms. My 3-D model, however, does give me that experience, even if it is virtual. I can turn around my brooch at will and zoom in where I want. This is a much more natural process than the others at my disposal. Furthermore, if I wanted a physical connection with the brooch, I could 3-D print my model, and that way I could have a true physical, tactile connection with the brooch. Technology, then, can make archaeological work more natural, not necessarily less. This is an important insight for the future of the digitalization of archaeological work. If it is prioritized, we can use technology to make archaeological work more natural for more people, not just those that have the resources to go on digs and have tactile connections with artefacts. This furthermore can be used to make historical education more natural, and indeed, museums are increasingly creating accessible 3-D models to supplement their exhibits.

Bibliography

Hutchinson, Patricia. “The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Little Eriswell, Suffolk.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 59 (1966).

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

Leahy, Kevin. Anglo-Saxon Crafts. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2003; reprinted Stroud: History Press, 2010.

Meaney, Aubrey L. “Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones.” BAR British Series 96 (Oxford, 1981).

Owen-Crocker, Gale R. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988; reprint, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004.

 

ORP: Wrist Clasps

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For my object reconstruction project, I focused on re-creating a pair of Anglo-Saxon wrist clasps, which were found in grave 28 at the Little Eriswell cemetery in Suffolk.

 

Background

Wrist clasps were a fairly ubiquitous item in the kingdom of East Anglia and showed up in many of their inhumation cemeteries. They are often made of bronze, are rectangular, and have a hook and hole closure system that allowed them to be linked together. They would have been used to hold together the sleeves of a woman’s dress in a manner similar to that of modern cufflinks.

 The hook on the back of one clasp

The clasps found in grave 28 were fairly nondescript compared to the the more embellished ones cast in silver or covered in intricate patterns found elsewhere, but when considered alongside the other items in the grave (such as a waist bag and girdle hangers) on can infer that the woman in the grave was of high status, or had relatives who wanted her to appear that way in death.

The metalworking needed to produce the clasps would have been accomplished by a trained craftsperson, who could have used one of two casting methods. The first would involve carving a mold out of clay block and then pouring the molten metal in. The second, known as lost wax casting, would involve making a wax blank of the clasps, forming a mold around it, melting out the wax while firing the clay mold, and then casting the piece. Irregardless of the methods used, the time, materials and expertise needed to make them meant that even the most basic wrist clasps conferred an image of material wealth.

Reconstruction

Through the process of trying to make models of the clasps I encountered what Tim Ingold, a scholar of material objects, refers to as “material resistance” or what might colloquially be referred to as problems. Photoscan is an interesting program because while it does create something, the user inputs are almost the direct antithesis of making by hand. Ingold describes making as the process of “a correspondence between mindful attention and lively materials” and in the case of Photoscan, there is very little material to work with. Throughout the process of modeling the clasps, I didn’t feel like I was taking part in the process of creating, but rather I was troubleshooting the creations of the computer when something odd happened. I didn’t sequence the photos, find matching points, or generate polygons (all steps in the generation of a 3D model), the computer did all those things, and I was left to scratch my head and consult YouTube tutorials to find out why the model looked more like an angry swarm of bees than a wrist clasp.

 Wrist clasp or pointillist art?

Another interesting aspect of Photoscan is how it takes away time as a variable in the practice of making. Where metal cools and pottery dries, all the data in my model sat in perfect stasis until I had figured out what the next step in the process was.

Insights

Despite the issues I encountered, the process of modeling the wrist clasps yielded valuable insights about material correspondence and the analogous similarities between making by hand and making digitally.

Zooming in and out from the model the same way one would step back from the table when making a pot made me feel more connected to what I was making and I was able to view it as an object rather that a cloud of points that the computer spat out for me. Masking out the putty in the source images to keep the gray color out of the final texture also has elements of metalworking mixed in. When a cast piece of metalwork was removed from a mold, it would likely have some remnants of the mold attached to it, such as clay dust or sand, and I saw the process of masking out the gray color to be the same as cleaning up a cast to finish the making process.

 Masking out the putty

Similarly, the time spent waiting to see if the last input create a workable model or a formless blob was similar to the process of waiting for the metal within a mold to cool. Every time I launched a new step, I felt similarly to how a metalsmith may have as they waited to see if their cast turned out correctly.

Even in the failures of the model, I saw mirror images of how physical making could have failed, further interlocking the physical and the digital as I worked through the modeling process. After creating blobs that followed the general contours of the wrist clasps, I was a little disheartened. But after a while, I noticed how the way that one end of a clasp looked like a description Kevin Leahy, a modern craftsperson, provided when explaning the danger of metal cooling and solidifying before it reached the bottom of the casting mold.The incomplete end of my model looked as if the same problem had occurred in the casting of my clasp.

 The “incomplete” end

While I was examining the class, I noticed one had extra texture that wasn’t on the clasps themselves. I understood that it existed because I hadn’t cut all of dark background points away from the clasps, but it also looked like what would happen if a ceramic mold cracked and metal had pooled outside of the shape the clasp was supposed to be in.

 The “pooled” metal behind a clasp

The idea that two completely different methods of creation could result in the same visual effect, even across hundreds of years, really shifted my opinion on digital model making.

In the end the result were not perfect, or frankly even that good, but through the process of making the clasps I learned more about the way Anglo-Saxon metalworkers may have felt and got a better sense of the benefits and limitations of making digitally compared to physically.

 

The finished models: a valiant effort, but not quite the genuine article.

Further Reading

Hutchinson, Patricia. “The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Little Eriswell, Suffolk,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 59 (1966): 1–32.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London:Routledge, 2013.

Leahy, Kevin. “Anglo-Saxon Crafts.” Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010.

Owen-Crocker, Gale R. “Dress and Identity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Anglo Saxon Archaeology, edited by Helena Hamerow, David A. Hinton, and Sally Crawford. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

ORP: Double-Sided Comb

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About Object 1402

A double-sided bone comb found at the West Stow Settlement.

Object 1402 was described in the archeological records as a “double-sided bone comb in very fine condition.” The comb was found during the archeological excavations at the West Stow settlement that were undertaken by the British Department of the Environment beginning in 1965. During the excavation process, the department uncovered the remains of around 75 buildings and thousands of artifacts that served to add greatly to the known material culture of these people. The comb was found in Sunken Feature Building 51 (SFB 51), one of the most northern structures present at West Stow. This small building, about thirteen feet by seven feet, had a pit dug into the ground (it was estimated to have originally been about two feet deep) over which the building was situated. SFB 51 had two central support posts, as was fairly typical of the other buildings found on site, with straight walls and rounded corners. Interestingly, despite the comb being considered one of the better examples found at West Stow, there was very little else discovered in this building, only a single hook, and a few broken pieces of pottery. The small size of the building and the artifacts that were found suggest that SFB 51 was originally a domestic area that probably housed relatively few people, as would be expected in a single-family settlement.

 

Combs in Anglo-Saxon England

Bone and antler combs are by no means rare finds in excavations of Anglo-Saxon settlements, and at West Stow, they were one of the most commonly uncovered items. These included single- sided, double-sided, and triangular combs that were found scattered throughout many of the roughly 75 buildings uncovered on the site. While it is clear that these items were prevalent throughout England during this time, it remains uncertain of their cultural significance as they do not appear in textual sources from the era. Object 1402, for instance, though it is an unusually good specimen, but it still leaves many questions about its uses and those of many combs found throughout Britain. Were the broken teeth the result of the last 1,500 years underground, or were they teeth that snapped off before it was discarded? Who would have used it? Were combs primarily used by women, or would they have been seen as ungendered during the period? What does this comb tell us about the values of the Anglo-Saxons, does the level of detail put into the comb suggest vanity or merely a concern for hygiene?  Many of these questions will never be answered, and certainly will not be will not be derived from a single artifact, but if observing an object will not bring us to understand the lives of the people who owned it centuries ago, attempting to recreate its production and use will at least serve to bring us closer to the headspace of those who produced these objects and interacted with them years ago.

 

Recreation Process

I attempted to make a 3D model of the comb using the process of photogrammetry. Much of the process did involve mind-numbing struggles with the computer program or merely setting the computer system to run while I sat and read a book, but I also found that some of the process did give me a greater insight into the original making process. Through the process I had the ability to look at the object from many angles greatly improved my understanding of how the comb was put together, and allowed me to view the sides of the comb in much greater detail than I would have seen in a side-view photograph of so thin an object.

Top of the comb during the photogrammetry process.

Bottom of comb during the photogrammetry process.

In addition to this, I believe that part of the photogrammetry process gave me a taste of the actual process of cutting the teeth of the comb. I spent many hours laboriously cutting away the excess material that the computer had produced from the background, carefully shaving it away from the teeth of the comb.

Cutting excess material away from the teeth of the comb.

This long and intricate process (one that would have been made infinitely harder in the Anglo-Saxon period by the absence of an undo button) gave me an appreciation for the delicacy of the work. A bone worker would almost certainly have failed many times before he was able to create a comb so intricate with nearly uniform teeth. It would assuredly have been an arduous and often frustrating process, which led me to wonder, how these combs could have been so common throughout the West Stow settlement.

 

Insight Gained

While a digital recreation of the comb found at West Stow did not necessarily shed great insight into the physical process of bone carving during the early medieval period, it did add give a greater appreciation for the time and energy that would have gone in to such a creation and the delicacy of much of the work involved. I discovered this in the process of cutting the excess material from the model, as described above but also through time spent examining the object and trying to place it within its larger context. This is one of the benefits of the field of digital humanities and the possibilities it presents for the wider exploration of history. It certainly should not replace physical models or other forms of recreation, but as an added tool, it offers the chance to produce a greater number of models of items and helps us to integrate interdisciplinary fields to better our understanding of archeological sights such as West Stow. Through the process of photogrammetry, I was able to take pictures of an item on the other side of the Atlantic and produce a physical, printed model that gives us a good idea of the original. It may not be an exact replica, but I have a much better idea of the complexity involved in the original object, and it can now be seen by a wider audience.

A 3-D reproduction of the West Stow comb.

As is often the case, the greater understanding of the piece does not necessarily offer a greater simplicity to its historical narrative, but it does serve to enrich it and to give a more wholistic view of its place in history. Perhaps the recreation and reclamation of ancient objects and crafting techniques will not serve to answer all our outstanding historical questions, but it will, without a doubt serve to enrich our historical understanding. It is a journey of self-discovery that may vastly complicate our ideas, but it will also, overtime, allow for a greater exploration of Anglo-Saxon Britain through personal experience and immersion in many different avenues of historical exploration.

 

Further Reading

Ingold, Tim. Making. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Leahy, Kevin. Anglo-Saxon Crafts. Brimscombe Port Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2003.

West, Stanley. West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village. Ipswich, UK: Suffolk County Council, 1985.

ORP: West Stow Cemetery Bowl

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Ancient Anglo-Saxons often buried their dead with grave-goods, which could range from simple beads to highly-decorated metal brooches. Pottery pieces were common throughout Anglo-Saxon graves and could usually be classified as highly decorated funerary urns or plain domestic pots. The piece pictured in Figure 1 was a bowl found in the cemetery of West Stow, an old Anglo-Saxon village that was active around the fifth to seventh century CE.

Figure 1

This is unfortunate in the fact that there wasn’t proper documentation of the items found in the cemetery, specifically the context in which they were found so it cannot be said for certain what the bowl was used for or with whom it was buried with. However, based on its shape, design, and size, it was more likely a food bowl. Domestic pots were repurposed as funeral urns, but in West Stow, there is only one unearthed pot that has been confirmed as a funeral urn. It is also less likely that this bowl was used as a cremation urn or storage vessel because of its large mouth opening unless there was some sort of lid, though there was never one confirmed in the records.

I used earthenware clay to make the reconstructed bowl. To start, I created a cylindrical base the size of my palm and then rolled out long snakes of clay. Building up the bowl is similar to a coil-pot, where you wrap the snakes around the top part of the previous layers, but then you must blend the layers together to eventually make one smooth wall. When I wrapped each coil in a circle, I first melded both ends of the clay snake together by smearing it with my thumb and some extra small pieces of clay. Once I had a smooth, uninterrupted circle, I used my thumb to smear the clay downwards to connect the clay with the base, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

I continued this process around the base until the outside of the clay was smooth without any signs of folds. Once I was satisfied with the outside, I repeated this process on the inside of the coil, pushing my thumb downwards on the coil to connect it with the base. As I worked my thumb against the inner wall of the bowl, I cupped my hand on the outside wall so that I could control the formation of the overall shape of the bowl.

As I progressed with every layer, I placed the coil slightly outside of the last one so that the bowl would widen even more. As I reached the top, I purposely left the lip of the bowl uneven, as it was in the reference photos. I don’t believe this was a result of it being broken, as the color of the rim was as aged as the rest of the piece. The lip was also rounded, not jagged. However, my reconstructed bowl’s lip was much more exaggerated than the original.

West Stow Bowl’s Uneven Lip

Reconstructed Bowl’s Uneven Lip

At this point, I started to focus on smoothing out the outside wall, as it was riddled with my thumbprint indentations. I used some water to help smooth the rim and other areas of the bowl that were cracking. Any areas that were too thick I fixed with my thumb pushing on the inside wall and my palm on the outside wall, helping keep the shape of the bowl. Doing this, however, created some holes, which I easily remediated by covering with thin scraps of clay and smoothing out with the help of water.

West Stow Bowl Walls

Reconstructed Bowl’s Walls

Initially, I wasn’t sure what tool I should use to make the impressions in the bowl. I wasn’t sure if I should make a clay stamp or find an object with a similar shape to create the indentations. I found a file one of my peers was using for her bone-stamp carving that was similar enough, although the Anglo-Saxons probably did not use a steel file for this bowl. Upon further research, I found that it had a technique applied to it called rustication, and the indentations, which are spaced apart, were made with single impressions of the forefinger, the depression caused by the finger-tip. However, I made the mistake of letting the bowl dry for too long, and by the time I came back for indentations, the clay was too hard for me to modify. I tried to recreate the look of the Type 5 rustication by using a chisel, but I couldn’t quite replicate the work.

Failed attempt at replicating the rustication

I instead did the impressions on a small, fresh piece of clay to at least get the feel for the technique.

Rustication on a piece of clay

My re-creation of the bowl was created with as many of the same techniques the Anglo-Saxons used as I had knowledge of. It is by no means a perfect reproduction; the base of the bowl is supposed to be a wide, flat bottom that curves up immediately, whereas my bowl has a clear, circular base with walls that go out then up. The indentations are not exactly how I would have liked them to turn out, either. It was difficult interpreting the written text explaining how the indentation was made; also, my fingers are not as large as the ceramicist who made the original bowl were. Due to time constraints, I could not double fire my bowl, although I don’t think this is too important to the authentic process. Firing is done in an electric kiln, something the Anglo-Saxons didn’t have in their arsenal. There was no evidence of firings done at West Stow, so it is more likely that they were instead done in large, bonfire-like conditions.

Old Anglo-Saxon pots are often described as crude and unrefined, which is something I and the rest of the class though initially when looking at Anglo-Saxon pottery. However, the model-making process has taught me that everything is harder to make than it looks, especially when considering that people in the past didn’t have the same tools and technology as we do in modern times. My first ever attempt at an Anglo-Saxon pot was a complete, massless disaster. The next two pieces I made (this included a pot and the bowl) were better, but it still was nowhere near the level of many of these Anglo-Saxon ceramic works. There were so many factors to consider: clay dryness, workspace temperature, the amount of clay used, checking wall thickness wasn’t thin enough to tear or thick enough to explode when fired, etc. It is easy to look down on “crudely-made” objects and attribute it to the lack of aestheticism, skill, and intelligence in a culture, but once one takes time to sit down and try to recreate the object, one will realize that perhaps they’re the ones who are lacking in aestheticism, skill, and intelligence.

 

ORP: Cruciform Antler Stamp

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Cruciform Stamp, West Stow

 

Background

Over the course of this term, both individually and as a class, we have learned a good deal about both the benefits and limitations of historic recreation as a method for exploring the past and the objects that survive from it. The following project is my personal effort to learn about a cruciform pottery stamp fashioned from antler from West Stow, a small Anglo-Saxon settlement that likely flourished in the early 5th to early 7th centuries. I researched the stamp and its context, and attempted to craft a replica using modern tools and my very limited (read: literally no) experience.

 

  

 

The original stamp was found not in one of the many excavated buildings at West Stow, but was rather one of the numerous artifacts found around the buildings, indicated that it was at one point lost or discarded. Pottery stamps were sometimes used on ceramics such as everyday cookware or storage vessels, but more often on funerary urns, pots that contained the cremated remains of a deceased member of the community.

Antler was a commonly used material in the Anglo-Saxon world. Though more difficult to find than horn or bone, it has more tensile strength, and was usually used for objects that would be under stress regularly, such as combs, or in this case, stamps.

It is unclear whether the shape the stamp forms has any spiritual or religious significance. At the time of its creation, Christianity had long gone from that area of the British Isles, and had not yet returned, so the cross shape it makes was probably not intended as a Christian sign. Perhaps the shape was influenced by designs from the continent– specifically from the Franks, who often traded with the Isles and who had remained Christianized. Maybe it was just aesthetically pleasing. Or perhaps it was informed by some error during the carving, as my own copy was. Whatever the truth is, however, it remains a mystery.

 

Process

  

(Sorry about the bad picture quality for these, but I don’t know how to fix it.)

 

To start, I was given a piece of deer antler and a box of assorted tools, including metal files/rasps, saws, chisels, and clamps for securing the piece. I also ended up borrowing a knife from a friend, which was helpful in refining the stamp design towards the end of my work. All of these tools, with the exception of the clamps, are the recommended toolset of “Halldor the Viking,” a dedicated boneworker and Medieval re-enactor. 

Halldor had some other pearls of wisdom to share apart from the components of a perfect toolkit, like steering clear of roe deer antler and recommending that the horn be soaked for the 48 hours prior to carving to soften it, but I decided to dive right in. I took the tools outside with me to work in the spring sunshine and wind, as an Anglo-Saxon craftsman might have done when the weather was good. I realized fairly quickly, however, that working outside, though pleasant, was difficult without any kind of infrastructure for antler carving, such as a workbench to place my work on. In the end, I split the difference and moved to sit on a cement and rock feature that I could use as a hard and stable surface.

I was very hesitant in making the first cut, not wanting to squander my precious single piece of antler by breaking it right off the bat. Instead, I sawed and chiseled off the very tip of the horn as practice before getting to work on the much thicker area towards its middle. That cut took some time, and I had to use a variety of saws and chisels accomplish it. As soon as I had finished, however, I realized that there was an odd slant to the cut and I was forced to take another slice off of my future stamp, which took equally as long and was just as difficult as the first time. Additionally, in the process, I accidentally chipped the top of the future stamp, which later informed my decision on how I would position the cross design.

Because the bottom half of the antler would become the true stamp, I used the other half of the antler to practice my method for forming the cross. The natural taper and smooth finish of the fragment made it exceedingly difficult to secure in such a way that would let me carve it, and so I quickly moved on to the real piece after deducing that the file shaped like a triangular prism would be my best bet for roughly forming the arms of the cross.

I had more success stabilizing the bottom half of the antler, so I knew that creating the rough shape of the cross would be relatively easier. However, I wasn’t sure if the beveling that appeared on the original stamp was created before or after the cross itself. Did it somehow facilitate the shaping of the cross, or was it added later as an design feature? How was I to even go about carving it, given the toughness of the cortical exterior of the horn? Eventually, I decided that since I had been able to create the shapes that I needed with the triangular file on my trial piece, I would forgo the beveling for the moment and carry on forming the cross.

As planned, I used the file for the cross shape and a chisel to carve the furrows in the center of the cross. I chose the site of the accidental chip to begin and worked from there to create four approximately even furrows as the spaces between the arms of the cross. With that, I had finished the rough stamp– all that remained was to refine it a bit, as much as I could.

For refining my work, I went to a ceramics studio to get a bit of a taste of the environment in which the stamp would have been used. With a knife and file, I once again tried to tackle the beveling problem, but no luck. I resigned myself to a completely rounded stamp with none of the carved planes that give the West Stow stamp its intriguing prismatic character. I spent a good hour whittling away at the arms of the cross with a knife, narrowing them down bit by bit, though they never reached the desired narrowness. I also took a stab at widening the grooves in the center of the cross, but the awkward angle of the knife seemed unsafe, so I abandoned the attempt. A few more shavings carved off here and there, and I had my stamp. I tested it on some wet clay (not leather hard, unfortunately, which is when the design would have been implemented), and it left a satisfying impression of a cross with thin ridges down the center, just as the original would have. Even if my stamp looks nothing like something the Anglo-Saxons produced, at least it works the same.

 

Insights

Overall, I enjoyed the process of creating this stamp, though it was more difficult than I had anticipated. Having worked with wood before, I was expecting the horn to be easier to carve and mold into a shape that I wanted. From the start, however, there were indicators that my copy could not be identical to the original. Firstly, the antler was shaped differently: mine was much thinner and less tapered from the get-go, and in order to achieve the appropriate proportions I had to make it shorter as well. Additionally, I believe that the spongy cancellous tissue at the center of the antler extended farther up the horn, and as a result the cross shape and grooves were muddied and rough, rather than clearly defined. Otherwise, the best explanation for the difference would be that I am a college undergraduate with no experience working with bone but armed with modern tools, whereas the original maker was presumably an experienced Anglo-Saxon craftsman using tools that may have been prone to warping or breaking. The unpredictability of his tools would have almost certainly informed how he went about carving his piece.

In my own attempts to carve a stamp from antler, I was able to feel and manipulate the material myself, giving me a greater appreciation for the craftsmanship and the purpose of the object. If a person was willing to spend the time and effort to gather the antler, soak it, and spend hours carving and refining it, then using the stamp must have been important. Recreation, though relatively novel and sometimes difficult to accomplish, is a fascinating and engaging way of understanding the past, one that we should continue exploring alongside more traditional techniques.

 

For Further Reading

Fleming, Robin. Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise. London: Penguin Group, 2011.

 

Leahy, Kevin. “Animal Skeletal Materials.” In Anglo-Saxon Crafts, 53-60. N.p.: Tempus, 2003.

 

Magnusson, Halldor. “Basic Boneworking 101: The Toolkit.” Halldor the Viking: The Adventures of an Early Medieval Re-enactor (blog). Entry posted March 20, 2014. Accessed May 12, 2018. https://halldorviking.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/basic-bone-working-101-the-toolkit/.

 

———“How to Make a Composite Antler Comb.” Halldor the Viking: The Adventures of an Early Medieval Re-enactor (blog). Entry posted April 4, 2014. Accessed May 12, 2018. https://halldorviking.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/how-to-make-a-composite-antler-comb/.

 

Welton, Andrew J. “Encounters with Iron: An Archaeometallurgical Reassessment of Early Anglo-Saxon Spearheads and Knives.” The Archaeological Journal, 2016, 1-39. doi:10.1080/00665983.2016.1175891.

 

West, Stanley, ed. West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village. Research report no. 24. East Anglian Archaeology. Ipswich, United Kingdom: Suffolk County Planning Department, 1985.

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