A moment in time: Cloth culture of an early medieval hoard buried in Galloway, Scotland, 900 CE

Cloth culture provides the framework to recognise the cultural significance of an assemblage of textiles and leather in a particular time and place. This paper examines the cloth culture of the textiles, skin products and braids that wrap and connect an assemblage of metal and precious objects that form the Galloway Hoard. The hoard was buried around 900 CE in the modern county of Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. To trace the cloth culture of the textiles and braids, we consider their individual object biographies, and their significance when used as layered wrappings of objects in the hoard.

Each of these organic materials had contexts and meanings in early medieval society. The textiles represent the homespun, wool, the more exclusive, linen, and the exotic, silk. A radiocarbon date (670-780 cal AD/CE) is evidence that the wool textile is possibly a century older and was therefore an heirloom with a generational story. The silk compound weave (samite) is a weaving technology from the east, of a type made in Central Asia, Syria, or Egypt. Silk textiles and braid such as these, had long, transformative histories. During their life histories, they passed through many hands, contexts and locations before arriving Galloway, then part of the Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. The yarns and structures used to create the simple weaves of wool and plant fibre demonstrate that these too had specific stories and heritage. Explored this way, the textiles of the Galloway Hoard provide new insights into the people(s) living in an area of cultural diversity at a time of change and upheaval, and their understandings of and interactions with textiles.