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The Gunnister Man Project I: The Wools and Knitting

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 Johanna Banck-Burgess and Carla Nübold (Eds.)

In Cooperation with
Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege

NESAT XI
The North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles XI
10-13 May 2011 in Esslingen am Neckar

Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH . Rahden/Westf.

2013
 264 Seiten mit 243 Abbildungen und 14 Tabellen zzgl. 1 CD-ROM (Posterpräsentation)

GEFÖRDERT VOM MINISTERIUM FÜR FINANZEN

UND WIRTSCHAFT BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG – OBERSTE DENKMALSCHUTZBEHÖRDE
UND DER DEUTSCHEN FORSCHUNGSGEMEINSCHAFT (DFG)

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Banck-Burgess, Johanna / Nübold, Carla (Eds.):

NESAT XI ; The North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles XI ;
10-13 May 2011 in Esslingen am Neckar / hrsg. von Johanna Banck-Burgess ... .
Rahden/Westf. : Leidorf, 2013
ISBN 978-3-86757-002-7

Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie.

Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar.

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© 2013

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ISBN 978-3-86757-002-7

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Beitrags angegeben sind, zeichnen sich die einzelnen Autoren/innen selbst verantwortlich.

Umschlagentwurf und Frontispiz: Ronald Kolb & Volker Schartner (Biotop 3000), Stuttgart, Berlin
Titelfotos: Textile Archaeology – Seidensäckchen mit Samen (Maik in diesem Band, S. 232, Abb. 18);
Experimental Archaeology – Button detail (Christiansen / Hammarlund this volume, p. 72, fig. 2);
Natural Science – Untersuchung archäologischer Textilien im Auflicht (Mitschke in diesem Band, S. 50, Abb. 6);
Conservation – Detail of embroidered cross on hood (Bravermanová this volume, p. 200, fig. 5)
Redaktion: ARCHÆOLOGICALsmallFINDS – Jörn Schuster, GB-Salisbury
Satz und Layout (Posterpräsentation): Cornelia Frank Design, Kirchheim unter Teck
Satz und Layout: Enns Schrift & Bild, Bielefeld
Druck und Produktion: druckhaus köthen GmbH & Co. KG, Köthen
The Gunnister Man Project I: The Wools and Knitting
Carol Christiansen, Lena Hammarlund
1. Introduction
On the 12th of May 1951, two men digging peat for fuel near
Gunnister in North Shetland, U.K., discovered woollen cloth-
ing and other objects about 75 cm below ground surface.
The remains were laid out like a burial, and although the
woollen clothing was very well preserved, only hair, finger-
nails and a few bone fragments remained of the person
wearing them. A knitted purse (NA 1045) was found con-
taining one Swedish (C9678) and two Dutch coins dated
Fig. 1: Gunnister finds at Lerwick Police Station, Shetland, 1951.
between 1681 (C9668) and 1690 (C9666) (Fig. 1). Later that
year, the finds went to the (then) National Museum of Antiq-
uities in Edinburgh where they were studied, conserved and
displayed in various contexts over the following decades.
The Gunnister Man find was significant for Shetland because
it dates to the late 17th century when the era of Dutch and
German traders was coming to an end, and when Scottish
lairds began to dominate local agriculture, fishing, and poli-
tics. During planning of the new Shetland Museum and
72 Carol Christiansen, Lena Hammarlund

Archives in 2006, a project was developed to make replicas

of the Gunnister finds for permanent display.

The display would show Gunnister Man as he was alive, in

the environment where he was found. The reconstruction
project would explore questions generated by the original
report on the finds (Henshall / Maxwell 1954) and take the
analysis further to expand our knowledge of 17th-century tex-
tiles and the person whose belongings we were studying.

The reconstruction project was led by certain parameters:

• To make replicas as close to the original garments as pos-

sible, as they were in use, pre-burial.
• To use similar materials, historic tools and processes, as
were used on the originals, where this was possible and
feasible.
• To include missing parts of the costume lost through
degradation, where it could be determined these existed.
• To initially use wool sourced in Shetland for each gar-
ment, and only use non-Shetland wool where local types
could not give a satisfactory result.

Fig. 2: Wools in original coat, button detail.

2. The Wools

The foremost challenge of the project was the number of
textiles to be reproduced. In all, there were 14 different wool-
len garments or pieces, comprising 20 different fabrics. The
fabrics were made of different wools or wool blends. Micros-
copy was not allowed, so analysis was limited to hand lenses
and high-quality photography. This limitation became fortui-
tous, since it required us to approach the work in another
way, by paying close attention to wool and fabric behaviour.
We used standard quantitative methods of recording textiles,
but we also looked at the qualitative aspects of the fabrics,
influenced by the Pentagon Model (Hammarlund 2005;
Hammarlund / Vestergård Pedersen 2007; Hammarlund et al.
2008). By looking at quantitative aspects of structure as well
as qualitative aspects of quality, we were better able to
understand fabric construction and how the choice of differ-
ent wools affected the characteristics of each textile.
In examining the fabrics, we discussed what human and
natural processes were used to make, finish and affect each
one. We worked backward, beginning with post-excavation
handling, excavation, burial, and wear, and then to the gar-
ment’s construction methods of finishing, weaving or knit-
ting, plying, spinning, and fibre preparation. We looked
closely at fibre behaviour within the fabric, and discussed
what wool qualities would have made such behaviour pos-
sible. We concentrated on several main features of fibres in
woollen textiles:
• Fibre dimension: Are there fine, medium, or coarse fibres,
or a mixture of different qualities? Slubs in the purse yarn
indicate it was made with a mixture of qualities, in which
the finer fibres balled up during fibre processing and
spinning.
• Fibre length: Does it behave like a short, medium or long
fibre? Or is there a possible mixture of fibre lengths?
• Lustre: Does the fibre or yarn still reflect light, suggesting
a smooth, coarse or medium-coarse fibre.
• Fabric depth: Does the fabric show more than one quali-
ty of fibre in its depth, i.e. does the wool in the base of
the fabric look or behave differently than the wool on
the surface of the fabric?
• Colour: Is there any variation in fibre colour and is this
related to fibre dimension? (Fig. 2). If there is a blend of
colour, to what degree: occasional fibres or a thorough
blend? Do fibres of different colours have different behav-
iours?
After we had thoroughly studied the wools for each fabric,
it was time to choose wool based on our observations and
begin testing for wool behaviour.
We began a two-year dialogue with the local wool broker
on Shetland, Oliver Henry of Jamieson and Smith, and given
freedom to search for raw wools from their stores. Follow-
ing the completion of test pieces, qualities were discussed
with the woolmen to choose the correct fleeces. Often this
involved blending wools of different fleeces, or parts of
fleeces (Fig. 3). Due to the recently reduced number of col-
oured sheep in Shetland, we struggled to get enough grey-
brown wool of the right quality for the suit. In the end, we
were able to use primitive Shetland breed wool for many of
the garments, but in some cases we also used Shetland x
Cheviot, where this provided a better fabric. Interestingly,
Audrey Henshall, in her original report, suggested the wool
for the shirt was ‘Cheviot-like’, and we found Shetland x
Cheviot the best wool for the shirt fabric. We also incorpo-

Fig. 3: Sorting wool for suit reconstruction.
rated small amounts of wool from a number of Scandinavi-
an primitive breeds, including Swedish Finullsfår, Värm-
landsfår, Gotlandsfår, Ryafår, and Norwegian Spelsau.
3. The Knitwear
Gunnister Man had in his possession a number of knitted
textiles at the time of his death. These included two caps
(NA 1041-2), a pair of gloves (NA 1044), a purse (NA 1045), a
pair of stockings (NA 1043), a fragment (NA 1046), a re-used
stocking used to repair one of his stockings, and two patch-
es sewn into the inside of the jacket. There have been many
successful reconstructions of woven garments but few stud-
ies on reproducing knitwear from archaeological sources.
The methodology for tackling this varied group of knitted
garments included close analysis of the fabrics to determine
manufacturing processes, reproduction of the processes to
create test pieces, and comparison of test pieces to the
original garments. The methodology was repeated until
fabrics with matching measurements, look, and behaviour
were successfully made.
The Gunnister Man Project I: The Wools and Knitting 73
Our analysis of the original knitted garments showed they
all had a degree of wear and many were fulled as a finishing
process. These two factors affected how well we could see
some of the stitch patterns and determine the original knit-
ting gauge. Our success rested on making test after test, to
see how the fibre and fabric responded to each successive
process. These were compared to photographs of the origi-
nal finished garments, taken during analysis.
The two caps are the coarsest knitted items and both have
been fulled hard. It is not possible to say whether the fibres
were combed or carded before spinning. There are no irreg-
ularities in fibres and spinning, like those that can be seen in
the purse. The cap without the brim (NA 1042) has been
knitted rather open, as slightly ‘disturbed’ stitches can be
seen, which occurs when loosely knit stitches bunch and
settle during fulling. It had long, smooth fibres, which creat-
ed loops on the purl side of the fabric when fulled (Fig. 4).
The cap with the brim was made with different wool than
the other cap. This wool had coarse, shorter fibres which
created a hairy surface on the inside of the cap, instead of
loops.
74 Carol Christiansen, Lena Hammarlund
Fig. 4: Loops inside original cap (a) and test piece (b).
Fig. 5: Original stocking, along back calf.
The pair of stockings and the re-used stocking were made
of the finest yarns of all of the knitted pieces. They were
very evenly made, and do not show traces of fulling (Fig. 5).
The yarns appear very even and the knitting is dense. They
are the finest of the knitted fabrics, with the repair stocking
being made of finer and softer wool than the pair of stock-
ings. There is a high probability that the wool in all the
stockings was combed.
The pair of stockings is generally dark brown, but is a mix
of darker and slightly lighter fibres. We chose parts of
fleeces with long, soft outer hair and combed the wool.
The roving was taken off the combs carefully, stopping
short of the shortest fibres near the tines, as including
them would cause the yarn to have a fluffier surface than
the originals.
The single stocking used as a repair to the foot of one of the
stockings is brownish black, but some lighter fibres can be
seen. To get the right quality of fine, even, smooth and not
too bulky yarn, the wool had to be combed. Combing also
was used to remove outer hair fibres, so that the recon-
struction could be made from pure-bred Shetland wool of a
soft quality, like the original.
The purse is also made of a fine yarn, but it has an uneven
texture. We used primitive Shetland grey wool with very
soft white underwool. The wool was carded, which created
small lumps of the finest wool, as is in the original purse
fabric (Fig. 6). The white and red yarns used in the patterns
were more even and slightly thicker than the main yarn.
The two patches sewn into the inside of the jacket are from
the same knitted fabric and are made of a fine yarn. In fibre
and yarn quality they are similar to the stockings, but light
in colour, probably the wool containing white underwool
and some slightly coarser, dark outer hair (Fig. 7). The wool
was probably combed, but it could also have been very
carefully carded, with most of the longer outer hair picked
out by hand. When looking closely at the purl stitch pattern
on one of the patches where the cast-on can be seen, the
pattern looks very similar to the purl stitch pattern on the
gloves.
The gloves are not as coarse as the caps; they are in-
between the finest and the coarsest knitwear. They have
been fulled, and are now worn. It is impossible to say how
the fibres were prepared before spinning. The gloves have
not been made with a pure white yarn. Slightly coarser
darker fibres can be seen. The suggestion is that the wool is
from a fleece with light underwool and coarser outer hair of
light and a few dark fibres.

Fig. 6: Original purse, ribbed top (a) and replicated (b).
Fig. 7: Original jacket patch.
The wool in the fragment looks similar to the wool in the
gloves with both unpigmented and pigmented fibres. The
openwork pattern in the fragment uses a technique of cross-
ing stitches to create the pattern. It is now very dense, and
must have been densely knitted.
The project faced many challenges in recreating the woven
and knitted textiles from the Gunnister Man find. The larg-
est challenge was the number of different wool qualities
we analysed and then had to reconstruct from sources
available today. We leant toward primitive wools of the
North Atlantic and Scandinavian regions, since these
breeds most likely mirrored the sources of wools in the
originals. We were also challenged with a large number of
knitted items, most of which had been heavily fulled or
worn, making accurate recreations, stitch by stitch, quite
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The Gunnister Man Project I: The Wools and Knitting 75
difficult. In the end, we were very satisfied with our results
when we saw the original garments again after two years.
In 2009 they were brought back to Shetland for temporary
exhibition, their first return to the islands since their discov-
ery in 1951.
4. Acknowledgements
Shetland Museum’s partnership with National Museums
Scotland made this project possible, and we are grateful to
NMS staff for their advice and support throughout.
5. Bibliography
Hammarlund 2005
L. Hammarlund, Handicraft Knowledge Applied to Archaeological
Textiles. The Nordic Textile Journal, 2005, 86-119.
Hammarlund / Vestergård Pedersen 2007
L. Hammarlund / K. Vestergård Pedersen, Textile appearance and
visual impression – craft knowledge applied to archaeological tex-
tiles. In: A. Rast-Eicher / R. Windler (eds.), NESAT IX (Enneda 2007)
213-219.
Hammarlund et al. 2008
L. Hammarlund, L / H. Kirjavainen / K. Vestergård Pedersen /
M. Vedeler, Visual Textiles: A Study of Appearance and Visual
Impression in Archaeological Textiles. In: R. Netherton / G. Owen-
Crocker (eds), Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4, 2008, 69-98.
Henshall / Maxwell 1954
A.S. Henshall / S. Maxwell, Clothing and other articles from a late
17th-century grave at Gunnister, Shetland. Proceedings of the Soci-
ety of Antiquaries of Scotland 86, 1954, 30-42.