Let’s talk resources for a moment. It’s all very well and good to say you’re researching something, but are you using the right peer-reviewed sources to do your research or are you flailing about on the Internet, using possibly unvetted sources?
Since I’m focusing on my wardrobe first, I am primarily using two academic resources (courtesy of my friend, Dr. M., who is a professor of archaeology and not, as you might suspect, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes) as my main sources of information. I add to my knowledge through use of academic articles, but I will save the discussion of those for another day.
1. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (2004) by Gale R. Owen-Crocker
This book focuses more on clothing than Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England does. I love the marginalia illustrations that show how a particular piece of clothing from a particular time and place might have been worn in an Anglo-Saxon context. I also like the photographs of extant examples of clothing laid out so that you can observe their design. The glossary is fantastic, and I would absolutely pass it on to anybody who is making their first foray into Anglo-Saxon costuming. The bibliography is top-notch.
I also really like the voice of the author, who does her best not to make assumptions based on the limited examples of clothing and textiles that have been found by archaeologists. Ms. Owen-Crocker is great about offering up alternative theories and explaining why a particular primary source might not be a definitive example of a particular Anglos-Saxon practice. To be honest, one of the things I really like about this book is that, in addition to providing information about what we know about Anglo-Saxon dress, it also makes clear the scope of what we really don’t know, which gives me wiggle room for a bit of creativity. Love me some creativity.
2. Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England AD 450-700 (2007) by Penelope Walton Rogers
I tend to use this resource more heavily, since it concentrates more on the time period that I’m interested in. If you want to know EVERYTHING about the minutiae of early Anglo-Saxon weaving and textile work, this is your book. Although it is incredibly comprehensive when it comes to fabrics and fabric accessories (such as brooches and buckles), it focuses less on non-woven clothing pieces and outfits. For example, there is a wonderful illustration of an early Anglo-Saxon lady, based on a lady found at Scorton YN4 G31 (an excavated grave), who is clearly wearing a fur shoulder cape that appears to be made of beaver fur. Rather than discussing the use of fur by early Anglo-Saxons, Ms. Rogers concentrates on the buckle used to hold the cape together when worn. To be fair, metal clothing fasteners are one of the biggest clues to how early Anglo-Saxon clothing was worn, as they tend to outlast actual cloth and their placement on the body can indicate how a piece might have been worn.
My only real gripe about this book is that Ms. Rogers’ voice is a bit more authoritative than I’d like. Yes, she is most definitely an authority, but when I was researching the possible use of colour patterning (stripes, checks, and warp-weft contrast), Ms. Rogers states that such patterning was rare, as there are only eight existing examples spanning a long period of time (Rogers, 2007, p. 73). She goes on to propose that perhaps the process of mineralization may have caused colourful or patterned textiles to decompose more quickly, but maintains her belief that use of colour and patterns was rare within the early and also late Anglo-Saxon period (Rogers, 2007, p. 74). As someone who is trying to break free of the notion that early period European people only dressed in boring, muted earth tones, I was gutted to read this. Then I read it again, and realized that what had come across very much as fact was, in reality, the opinion of one person. An expert, mind you, but still only one person. I was free to disagree with it if there was a more plausible theory available. Occam’s Razor to the rescue!
Still – it’s an amazing book and an absolute favourite. Ms. Rogers clearly knows her stuff backwards, forwards, and in several dimensions parallel to our own.