Page 47 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

On Knots and Swamps 35

1. Single Hitches as parts of lashings;
2. Overhand and Half Knots;
3. a Reef Knot;
4. an Overhand Bend (Ashley, #1410);
5. a Strap Knot (Ashley, #1491);
6. some more complex knots, probably involving Overhand Knots
in combination;
7. several kinds of plaiting and weaving;
8. some sort of net knot.
The Swiss lake dwellings form another context where large quantities of
potential knotting material have been preserved. Throughout the Neolithic
and bronze-age periods, large numbers of villages arose on the borders of the
many cold lakes of Switzerland. The word `village' is appropriate here, for
these were groups of substantial houses of wood and/or wattle-and-daub, often,
especially in the later periods, ordered in regular rows. It is still debatable
whether these villages consisted of real pile-dwellings, i.e. actually built on
the water, or whether the houses were built on the muddy, swampy shore.
The important thing is, that any organic material cast out, or lost or fallen,
quickly ended up in the cool mud and water of the lake, where they, thoroughly
water-logged and cut off from most oxygen, were preserved until the day of
their excavation, four to five thousand years later. Even pieces of fragile linen-
fabric, fishnets, carrying bags, straw hats, shoes and the like were preserved,
besides tons of wood, twigs, pottery and manure. Excavations of the different
locations started in the last century, and many publications have appeared
about them.* Unfortunately, only a few of those were available to me, and
those few didn't contain any illustrations of identifiable knots. It is clear,
however, that this material is a potential gold-mine for any dedicated knotter
who is able to gain access to it.
The third and last example consists of all those Mesolithic and Neolithic
sites known to me from Denmark where either the actual knots were preserved,
or the character of the find was such that knots must originally have been
present. Working at a Danish archaeological institute, for once the processes
of fragmentation and limited access to information mentioned above were in
my favour, and I will therefore go into more detail here.
*A long bibliography appeared in: Sakellaridis, Margaret 1979-The Mesolithic and Ne-
olithic of the Swiss area. British Archaeological Reports International Series 67. Among
those mentioned there is: Schwab , H. 1959/ 1960-Katalog der im Bernischen Historischen
Museum aufbewahrten Faden, Geflecht and Gewebefragmente aus Neolothischen (evt.
Bronzeitlichen) Seeufersiedlungen. In: Jahrbuch des Bernischen Historischen Museums in
Bern 39/40, pp. 336-366. Unfortunately, attempts to obtain this book through interlibrary
loan failed.