Textiles of Ireland: Archaeology, craft, art

by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, Mary Ann Williams (Editor)

Overview

Spanning the life’s work of archaeologist Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, Textiles of Ireland: Archaeology, craft, art is the first wide-ranging book on the archaeological textiles of Ireland published since 1989. The volume includes studies of cloth found in bogs, burials, hoards, sacked castles, docklands and fallen city walls. These include a mysterious weaving of horsehair, dating from before 800 BC; imprints of cloth wrappings on the weapons of a buried Viking warrior, and the exquisite liturgical textiles, inspired by the Book of Kells, embroidered in 1916 for the Honan Chapel at University College Cork. Including an overview of best practice used by archaeologists encountering textiles in the field, accompanying illustrations and imagery, glossary and charts, this book is essential reading for archaeologists, historians and anyone intrigued by the threads that bind Ireland’s past to its present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782055716
Publisher:	Cork University Press
Publication date:	11/28/2024
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	7.11(w) x 9.69(h) x 1.53(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Wincott Heckett was an archaeologist who specialised in the study of the archaeological textiles of Ireland for more than thirty years. Shortly after receiving her MA from University College Cork, she published her research into a group of headcoverings worn by tenth-century women in Viking Dublin, which were found in the Wood Quay excavations. Wincott Heckett gained worldwide recognition for this style of headcovering, which became known as the ‘Dublin Cap’. Over her long career, she researched and wrote about the earliest textiles of Ireland, from artefacts long held in museum collections to finds that surfaced during recent roadworks. She consulted with leading archaeologists throughout Ireland, including Raghnall Ó Floinn, former director of the National Museum of Ireland, Maurice F. Hurley, Conleth Manning, Alan Hayden, Sheila Lane and Claire Walsh. She was a part-time faculty member in the Archaeology Department of University College Cork. Her skill as a teacher and her gift for public speaking inspired students and wider audiences alike.

Mary Ann Williams is a writer and editor who specialises in writing about heritage. She has a lifelong interest in textiles, archaeology and textile history.

 
In Ireland her clients have included St Patrick’s Cathedral, the County Museum, Dundalk, the Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre and the Heritage Officers of Counties Laois and Offaly. She edited and shaped the text of Stories from a Sacred Landscape:Croghan Hill to Clonmacnoise (Caimin O’Brien, Mercier 2005), a book about monastic sites in Offaly. In the United States, her clients have included the Field Museum of Natural History, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Shedd Aquarium.

 
She met Wincott Heckett while doing research on an historical novel about spinning, set in Early Christian Ireland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 

Foreword by Frances Pritchard 

Introduction by Frances Pritchard  

Elizabeth Wincott Heckett by Mary Ann Williams   

Chart of Time Periods  

  

Ancient Textiles and Patterns  

Chapter 1        Textiles in Archaeology 

Chapter 2        Clothing Patterns as Constructs of the Human Mind: Establishment and continuity  

Prehistoric Finds   

Chapter 3        Early Textile Finds in Ireland and Scotland 

Chapter 4        Late Bronze Age Textiles, Hair and Fibre Remains, and Spindle Whorls from Killymoon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland 

Chapter 5        A Late Bronze Age Horsehair Ornament from Cromaghs, Armoy  

Early Medieval Ireland 

Chapter 6        Beyond the Empire: An Irish mantle and cloak 

Chapter 7        Irish Medieval Textiles AD 600–1200: ‘The slender thread over the hand of a skilled woman’  

Chapter 8        The Lady of Cloonshannagh Bog: An Irish seventh-century AD bog body and the related textiles  

Chapter 9        An Elusive Cloth: Aspects of the archaeology of linen in northern Europe in the medieval and post-medieval period  

Chapter 10      The Textiles Recovered from a Corn-Drying Kiln in Ballyvass, County Kildare 

Chapter 11      Textiles from the Viking Warrior Grave in Woodstown, County Waterford 

Chapter 12      A Tenth-Century Cloth from Bogstown, County Meath  

Chapter 13      Some Silk and Wool Head-Coverings from Viking Dublin: Uses and origins – an enquiry  

Chapter 14      Irish Viking Age Silks and Their Place in Hiberno-Norse Society 

Chapter 15      Fragments of Nålebinding from a Site Associated with St Audoen’s Church, Cornmarket, Dublin 

Medieval Ireland  

Chapter 16      Cloth, Clothmakers and Trade: A European overview  

Chapter 17      Élite and Military Scandinavian Dress as Portrayed in the Lewis Chess Pieces 

Chapter 18      Medieval Textiles from Waterford City  

Chapter 19      Textiles, Animal Hair and Fibres from Skiddy’s Castle, Christ Church, Cork 

Chapter 20      Textiles from the Excavation of the Cork City Wall at Grand Parade  

Chapter 21      The Buttons from Barrack Street, Cork  

Chapter 22      A Narrow Silk Band from Chancery Lane, Dublin  

Early Modern Ireland  

Chapter 23      An Irish ‘Shaggy Pile’ Fabric of the Sixteenth Century: An insular survival?  

Chapter 24      The Margaret Fitzgerald Tomb Effigy: A late medieval headdress and gown in St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny 

Post-Medieval Ireland  

Chapter 25      Rural Clothing of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A catalogue of bog finds 

Chapter 26      ‘The apparel oft proclaims the man’: Late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century textiles from Bridge Street Upper, Dublin  

Chapter 27      The Textiles from Kilcoe Castle, County Cork  

Chapter 28      Gold and Silver Decorative Metal Laces in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries in Ireland and Europe  

Chapter 29      Finds of Seventeenth-Century Silk and Knitting  

Chapter 30      Four Sixteenth-/Seventeenth-Century Textiles from Chancery Lane, Dublin 

Chapter 31      The Textiles from Mackney Ringfort, County Galway  

Chapter 32      ‘Heavens’ embroidered cloths’: Textiles from the Honan Chapel, University College Cork  

Coda by Mary Ann Williams 

Glossary 

Notes 

Bibliography  

Index 

 

Editorial Reviews

It is a handsome, scholarly, authoritative, lavishly illustrated volume covering textile finds in Irish archaeology from the Mesolithic period... to the modern era

Sunday Independent - Niall MacMonagle

The book, rich in detail across 500 pages is painstaking in its analysis of textile composition, has an extensive bibliography, index and many charts and illustrations...It will be invaluable reading for historians, archaeologists and others interested in Irish material culture for a long time to come. 

The Irish Times - Deirdre McQuillan