Combs and Communities
Description
This project builds upon recent work on Viking-Age comb manufacture and use, in considering the experience of comb production and consumption. However, the aim of this project is not to write a detailed monograph on combs, but rather to produce an engaging exercise in early-medieval artefact biography (something that has rarely been successfully achieved), taking the comb as the subject. It is intended that the project's output will function both as an introduction to bone/antlerworking, and as a catalyst for people to start thinking about other medieval artefacts in the same way.
The overall approach is one of biography. It will first consider the ecologies of the human-deer relationship, and the collection of raw materials, and will then progress to discuss the experience of production and shaping the object, and the means of distribution. This will then lead into considerations of the varied modes of comb use in different social contexts, and the diverse ways in whioch combs have been disposed of, repaired, or meaningfully deposited. The biography incorporates narratives based on archaeological examples, but also makes use of anthropological studies and analogies taken from documentary, literary and other artistic sources. Throughout, the significance of material and form are central to the study, such that the biography is truly social and ecological. The comb is thus situated as a part of the world in which it is created.
The project's ultimate output is a volume for a general audience, to be published by Amberley in 2014. This volume will synthesise and rearticulates work published in more traditional scholarly fora. It is also anticipated that the project will open up new avenues of research, into areas such as :
- Viking-Age craft, technology, and identity
- Hair and personal appearance in the early medieval world
- Medieval Trade and economics in the North and Baltic Seas
