Height: 13.600 cm (triangular loom weight)
Gifts of Canon W. Greenwell, Sir A.W. Franks, F.J. Durban Esq.,
Lord Mulgrave, A. Dawson & Co., Burton Agnes Estate Trust
P&EE 1882 2-14 1;P&EE 1896 4-11 102;P&EE 1915 10-15 65;P&EE 1938 5-7 151;P&EE 1963 12-8 118, 125, 126;P&EE 1988 4-9 5;P&EE 1990 4-2 1;P&EE 1992 2-5 2;P&EE H H 94
Room 50: Britain and Europe
tour 6 of 7
Daily life in Iron Age Britain
Spinning and weaving tools
Most clothes in Iron Age Britain were made from
sheep's wool - sheep were kept on most farms. The clothes
themselves are almost never preserved, because cloth rots easily
and decays in the
ground.
Shown here is a
range of tools for making clothes. The small round objects are
spindle whorls. Each one would have been used to weight a spindle,
a tool used to spin wool into threads. The threads were woven into
cloth on a loom. Although wooden looms are not usually preserved,
the large weights that were used to keep the threads tight survive.
Long-handled combs made from animal bone or deer antler were used
by weavers. Other bone tools were used make holes in the finished
cloth or to sew pieces of cloth together to make
clothes.