Friday 30 January 2009

Saxon loom weights?


These fragments of grass-tempered loom weights come from the settlement activity in the area of the hillfort entrance, and look to me suspiciously like the Saxon examples from Bourton.

This of course alters the interpretation of activity within that particular area - particularly as sporadic middle Saxon metal work has been found on site

Or maybe the Crickley locals were so enthused by immigrant weaving techniques that they undertook a little industrial espionage?!

Does anyone know of other local parallels?

Sunday 11 January 2009

Volunteer update

Welcome aboard Henry & Amanda!

Henry has already dispensed some good IT advice. We now have a Google Group - this provides greater storage capacity to make data more easily accessible to volunteers etc.

Pete is presently grappling with recreating the matrices in a readable format (I remember dealing with the matrices as a pretty intense job!)

Thanks to Steve for his recent proof-reading, and for trying to keep me on the grammatical straight & narrow!

I'm currently trying to convince Tom to do a reconstruction of the Dark Age village in oils, before he goes off to Ruskin - he's still reluctant (being a portrait, rather than landscape, man!). Maybe he thinks it'll be worth too much in a few years time?! ; )

Thanks again to all!

PS. from next week I'll be teaching for a few months, so may not be able to respond as rapidly as usual to enquiries, though will respond ASAP