This two-part presentation, morning and afternoon) will ask, and attempt to answer, the question “What (and how and why) were Iron Age weavers producing the amazing woven cloth and bands they left behind? We will examine the textiles they made, the tools and technology they used, and other cultural artifacts found with those textiles which help shed light on their meaning and status. We’ll also look at how these revelations from the past encourage us to re-evaluate the limits of our modern understanding of the craft of weaving.

Kris Leet has been tablet weaving and teaching for over 40 years. Her current weaving and research obsession is Iron Age and Medieval tablet woven bands and techniques, especially those created using less than four threads per tablet. She is co-author, with Linda Malan, of The Willful Pursuit of Complexity, focusing on the Icelandic Vacant-Hole technique, and author of articles and papers, including “Tablet Weaving at the Dawn of the Iron Age: The Verucchio Twist Patterned Bands,” “In Praise of Complexity: A Comparison of Modern and Medieval Tablet Weaving,” “Decoding Archaeological Textiles,” “One Loom or Two: A Foundational Myth Explored,” “Reconstructing the Thorsberg Cloak: Preliminary Considerations.”