Ossamenta

In this post I will put any of my articles and essays that can be downloaded. It is linked in the blog frame, so you don't need to bookmark it. There are some uni essays that I will put up here, but they need to be scanned and converted to pdf first. It may take a while, since it's not high up on my priority list.


- To eat or not to eat? The significance of the cut marks on the bones from wild canids, mustelids and felids from the Danish Ertebølle site Hjerk Nor (MA essay in osteoarchaeology, 2000).
The essay discusses the use of wild canids, mustelids and felids at Hjerk Nor, a Danish Ertebølle site with an unusually high amount of 'fur animal' bones. The bones from these species were studied in a microscope, and the placement of the cut marks were compared finds from two Neolithic sites in the Netherlands: Hazendonk and Swifterbant, and from one Neolithic and three Mesolithic sites in Denmark: Kongemose, Muldbjerg I, Præstelyng, and Tybrind Vig. All 'fur animal' species at Hjerk Nor were utilised for both skin and meat. Cutmarks deriving from dismembering and filleting were particularly plentiful on wild cat and otter.

Download as pdf.


- Identifiering av garverier i en arkeologisk kontext - metoder och möjligheter (MA essay in archaeology, 2010).
The essay deals with possibilities of identifying tanneries in archaeological excavations. The geographical and chronological emphasis is early medieval northern Europe, although the methods would apply for earlier and later periods and other regions as well. Documents, artefacts and pictorial evidence were examined to see what tannery indicators they could yield archaeologically. Crafts associated with the use of tanning products and tanning waste as raw material were also taken into consideration. As conclusion, the identification of tanneries is dependent on many different indicators, such as location, tanning vats, tools, dumps of horn cores, foot bones, lime and bark. Several of these indicators are not exclusive to tanneries, and it is therefore important to use as many indicators as possible in order to form a secure identification of tannery activity. The long association with shoemaking further complicates identification of tanneries.

Download as pdf. Note that this essay is written in Swedish, so it's of limited use for most people, but then again, there are lots of pictures of tanning tools, medieval images of tanners etc, which are less language dependent.

I realised that I haven't posted about my tanning essay for a long while now, and surely there must be some readers who wonder what's happening on that line.

The essay is finished (yay!) and has been handed in. I will present and defend it at the end of November in Visby. By then, I will also have received someone else's essay that I will be the opponent of. This is quite different from the UK system, where once your essay is handed in, you just wait for your supervisor and an external examiner to mark it, and let you know what your marks were. Some of my MA course mates in Southampton were quite surprised when I said that our undergraduate and postgraduate essays are presented like Ph.D. theses are - obviously a way of training us how it's done, in the same way that undergraduate essays prepare students for postgrad and Ph.D. writing.

It will be a rather brief visit, having one day in Visby, one in Stockholm and two in Malmö before I fly back again to London. Still, it's better than just flying in and out, and I want to save some holidays left for next year, since it's so much nicer holidaying when it's a bit warmer!

I've taken a few days off work to write the final chapter on the tanning essay. My main irritation point is that I'm writing this far from my usual discussion team - how I miss my uni days, where you could find loads of people to discuss ideas with (and go off on tangents far and wide :-) ). It's sadly no use working in archaeology if you're writing in a language none of your workmates can understand as you have to translate everything first... And asking non-archaeo Swedes is not of too much use either once you move away from "does this sentence work for you?".

I have a vague feeling that my supervisor likes archaeological theory more than I do.


At least once this is done, I only have to insert the figures, do the final check for language smoothness and spelling errors, and then I can send it off to the university.

... would probably not smell sweet at all, but nevermind that.

One of my continuous "pulling my hair out-frustrations" regarding the essay writing has been trying to find out when tanners emerge as a separate craft. According to Ælfric's Colloquy, from the 10th century, tanners not only made the leather, but also made shoes, belts, harnesses etc. Interestingly, the translator in the pdf linked above uses the word "tanner", where the original has "sceowyrhta" (shoemaker). The town law of Visby (on Gotland, present day Sweden), from 1332-1335) has a section on fees for craftsmen in order to practice their craft. Tanners are mentioned specifically, which has lead to interpretation of this as evidence for a tanners' guild. This would be quite interesting, since the earliest guild charters for tanners in Sweden and Denmark are from the 1630s.

Archaeological evidence for this shift to specialisation is scant: so far I've only heard of one site in Novgorod, which contained waste from both tanning and shoemaking, until the 12-13th centuries, when layers of animal hair and ashes disappear, suggesting that the site was now only occupied by specialised shoemakers, and that tanning occurred elsewhere (Hald 1972).

What we do have instead are written sources (not many, admittedly). Bynames could be used as craft signifiers, and hopefully we can also attach an address to that person. Well, we have to have a broad definition of "address" here. A street name if we're lucky, otherwise a parish. And coming back to the subject line: names. Specifically craft signifying bynames. Already in 1150, a Johannes coriarius witnessed a grant of land in York. Coriarius is usually translated as tanner*, except in one British dictionary, where it also is translated as currier**. Currier is the word used by Lisa Liddy, when discussing leatherworkers in Medieval York (Liddy 2003). This is rather problematic. As a currier is a specialist within the tanning craft, this would suggest that the York leather industry was highly specialised during the 12th century. As comparison, in Sweden, curriers (lädertågare) only occur in Stockholm during the 17th century. I wonder why the person writing the dictionary included currier when no other dictionary does? Other problematic definitions include pellifex/skinner, who sometimes is a whittawyer, sometimes a furrier, and sometimes a tanner.

Of course, these definitions are only properly valid for the high Middle Ages, and may have changed slightly since the Viking Age/Early Middle Ages, which is what I'm writing about. How will we ever know? Extrapolating backwards is tricky, as there are thousands of things that may have changed, most of which never occur to us when we try to set the likely variables.



*: Niermeyer's Medieval Latin dictionary (2002), Mittellateinisch Wörterbuch (1999), Woordenboek van het middeleeuws latijn van de noordelijke Nederlanden (1981). Coriarius is absent from the Danish Medieval Latin dictionary. I have not been able to find a dictionary for Medieval Latin from Swedish sources, though.
**: Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British sources (1981)



Hald, M. (1972) Primitive shoes. An archaeological-ethnological study based upon shoe finds from the Jutland peninsula. Danmarks Nationalmuseum, Köpenhamn, ISBN: 87-480-7282-6.

Liddy, L. (2003) ”Current documentary knowledge”, i Mould, Q., Carlisle, I. & Cameron, E. Leather and leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York. The archaeology of York: The small finds: 17/16. York Archaeological Trust and The Council for British Archaeology. ISBN: 1-902771-36-2. pp. 3222-3226.