In this video I discuss the sunken-featured buildings where Anglo-Saxons wove flax into linen. And rather often buried young children under the floor. Does this mean they were akin to the 'pit houses' known to ethnographers? And were they, like some of the pit houses, women-only spaces?
If you can add relevant information please email me: bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk
UPDATE: In Buile Suibhne (otherwise known as the 'Madness of King Sweeney') describing his defeat at the Battle of Moira (Mag Roth) in 637 CE are these two lines:
As flax is scutched by women
so was my army beaten.
Probably written around the C13th rather than the C7th, but confirmation that flax-working was strongly associated with women in Ireland.
sources
'Linen Flax - Flax plant for spinning and weaving' permies.com/t/...
'Making Linen Fabric from Flax Seed' • LINEN - Making Linen F...
'How Linen Is Made' • How Linen Is Made
'The Prehistoric Workshop - Flax' theprehistoric...
'Sweeney's Oratory' dsdnt.blogspot....
Bek-Pedersen, Karen, 2011, _The Norns in Old Norse Mythology_, Dunedin.
Enright, Michael J., 1996, _Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, prophecy and lordship in the European warband from La Tene to the Viking Age_, Four Courts Press.
Fell, Christine, 1984, _Women in Anglo-Saxon England_, British Museum Publications
Hamerow, Helena, 2006, '”Special deposits” in Anglo-Saxon settlements', _Medieval Archaeology_, vol.60 pp1-30.
Krakowka, Kathryn, 2024, 'More exciting clues uncovered at early medieval site in the Coquet Valley'; the-past.com/news/more-exciting-clues-uncovered-at-early-medieval-site-in-the-coquet-valley/
Petty, Christina, 2014, _Warp Weighted Looms: Then and Now Anglo-Saxon and Viking Archaeological Evidence and Modern Practitioners_; pure.mancheste...
Pollington, Stephen, 2000, _Leechcraft: Early English charms, plant-lore and healing_, Anglo-Saxon Books.
Speed, Gavin and Neil Finn, 2024, _The Anglo-Saxon Settlement at Eye Kettleby, Leicestershire_, University of Leicester.