Page 45 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

On Knots and Swamps 33

of seas and lakes. This means that only that part of the total knot repertoire
which was connected with the activities performed at those sites will be pre-
served . Thus one can, for example, expect an over-abundance of knots used
for fishing-gear, lost or thrown out on or near the site. Any discussion of
the repertoire of knots from stone-age Europe and their use must take this
inherent bias into account.
Another problem facing the knotter interested in prehistoric knotting is
the difficulty of collecting information about what little material has survived.
This is due to three main factors: the enormous increase in the amount of
archaeological material the present generation of archaeologists has to cope
with; the gross underfunding of the archaeological discipline as a whole, and
individual archaeological institutions in particular ; the fact that electronic
aids, such as computerised information exchange networks and open -access
databases are only slowly beginning to be introduced into archaeology.
The first factor has forced archaeologists to become specialists in selected
periods and regions only. Those who still possess a working knowledge of all of
European prehistory are members of a dying race, and those who could claim
to be familiar with world pre-history have long since died out, if ever they
existed at all. Thus archaeological knowledge has become very fragmented.
This situation is made worse by the second factor, underfunding. Most ar-
chaeological institutions cannot possibly cope with the wealth of information
coming in, because both th - number of trained staff members to process and
publish the material, and the facilities to do so are lacking. The result is that
the greatest part of all archaeological material at any given point in time is
not published , and therefore is only known by those who excavated it, or who
have free access to the storerooms and archives . The third factor, the lack of
an easily accessible communication network, means that tracking down this
fragmented unpublished information, if at all possible, becomes cumbersome
and time-consuming in the extreme.
What this unfortunate situation means for the prehistory of knotting,
I will illustrate through three examples, each taken from the Mesolithic or
Neolithic period* of European prehistory. This choice was to some extent
determined by the limitations described above, to which the author as an
archaeologist is also subjected . These examples are the so-called Ice Man from
Tyrol and his equipment , found in 1991 ; the Swiss Neolithic lake dwellings;
and finally Danish and Neolithic sites with knots or would-be knots.
The Ice Man (or Similaun man, or even `Oetzi' as he is affectionately

*Mesolithic-the period of nomadic to semi-sedentary gatherer-hunters/fishermen, from the
end of the last ice age (around 12 000 B .P.) to the first known introduction of an agricultural
component into the local economy. Neolithic-the period from that transition (southern-
Europe, about 9000 B.P.; northern Europe, about 6000 B .P.) to the large-scale introduction
of bronze (south, about 4500 B.P.; north, about 3800 B.P.)