Ancient Technology

On the 10 May 2020, Mr. Hugh Farey sent me an email. He introduced himself as “a researcher into the weaving of the linen cloth known as the Shroud of Turin”. Then he described the size of the Shroud and how it looked. His question to me was this: “If you had a piece of cloth as described and looked at it closely, could you tell if it was made by a warp-weighted or treadle loom, or would there be no difference?”...

In July 2019 a group of students from the UK participating in the Placements in Environmental, Archaeological, and Traditional Skills (PEATS) Erasmus + Work Placement, attended the Kierikki Stone Age Centre, Pahkalantie, Finland. Group projects included experimental / experiential projects producing willow fish traps, pottery, and tanning, coordinated by Dr. Peter Groom of the Mesolithic Resource Group...

11th EAC Trento 2019
***This paper aims to present a techno-functional study of lignite ornamental objects found during the Fedele excavations (1977-1980) in the Boira Fusca Cave (Cuorgnè, Salto-Turin, Italy). The site demonstrates a chrono-cultural sequence which extends from the late Palaeolithic to the Modern era...

When Le Ménagier de Paris (1393), a medieval household manual detailing a woman's proper behavior in marriage and running a household, was newly translated and republished as The Good Wife’s Guide: a Medieval Household Book by the Cornell University Press in 2009, its collection of recipes – including one for bochet – became easily available to the general public...

The vertical crushing mill turns the olives into pulp by combining the rotational and rolling motion of a heavy upright stone wheel that moves with continuous contact along a circular horizontal trajectory on a stationary base which forms the system's frame of reference. It was devised during the Hellenistic period and served as one of the most important and impressive means of production in the pre-industrial...

Bottle gourds, which are thought to have originated in Africa, have been collected and cultivated in Italy since antiquity for the making of vessels and utensils, as well as food, musical instruments, and fishing buoys. Columella and Pliny the Elder both write extensively about the uses of bottle gourds, yet the importance of this vegetable in antiquity is notably absent from modern scholarship...

Most of the population of Roman Italy was poor, whether they were the poor who were constantly in search for food and shelter, or the temporarily poor who were artisans or shopkeepers but could fall into poverty at times. In classical literature, pleasures of the mind were favoured over pleasures of the body. Epictetus wrote that only stupid men spent time dwelling on matters of the body such as eating...

Little is known about the process of the invention of the prehistoric spear thrower which appeared around 25,000 years ago in Europe, although it may have emerged earlier on other continents. This innovative weapon had a late arrival in Australia from Papua New Guinea at the end of the late glacial maximum, and probably induced an adaptation in hand throwing spear technology used by local people...

On its surface, linen production research is simple as there is a large corpus of books available; however, the majority of these date to the last three centuries. Older texts, while available, tend to concentrate on the textiles themselves and their trade. As a result, I had to collect the information on medieval tools and manufacturing process myself. I have grown and processed flax ...

11th EAC Trento 2019
***The purpose of this paper is to explain our experience with the process of experimental archaeology, involving the reproduction and field testing of embossed decorations, inspired to archaeological finds. As a re-enactment group focused on Celts and Ligurians of III – II century BC we reproduce items and/or ornaments...