Check(er)ed clothing in the Roman army, 1st C

[Robert Vermaat]

Sorry - the term "Celts" doesnt exist in the 3 cent. AD...

Perhaps it did - we have a late 4th c. Roman unit by the name of 'Celtae'.. so at least it was not forgotten.

[Nathan Ross]

Sorry - the term "Celts" doesnt exist in the 3 cent. AD...

Perhaps it did - we have a late 4th c. Roman unit by the name of 'Celtae'

Zosimus, for example, uses the terms celtic and celtae fairly frequently in his Historia Nova as well. It seems it was a term in common use by the Romans to refer to the native inhabitants of areas of north-west Europe throughout this period.

The accuracy of its use by historians today has been a matter of debate, of course. But I think as a term of general reference the word is widely understood.

You mean this...made from natural coloured soay sheep brown and white wool... Not exactly what I had in mind for "Tartan"...

That little scrap actually has a much closer resemblance to tartan than I'd imagined! Neither as colourful nor as complex as modern patterns, of course, but it's certainly on the way...

[scotti73]

I believe the Greeks were well aware of the "Keltoi".

[Robert Vermaat]

Zosimus, for example, uses the terms celtic and celtae fairly frequently in his Historia Nova as well. It seems it was a term in common use by the Romans to refer to the native inhabitants of areas of north-west Europe throughout this period.

Indeed, I forgot all about him: Zosimos uses the name for both the British as well as the Gauls during the early 5th c.

I believe the Greeks were well aware of the "Keltoi".

Also true: they used it to refer to the Franks.

[M. Caecilius]

[quote][quote="Robert Vermaat" post=296014]Zosimus, for example, uses the terms celtic and celtae fairly frequently in his Historia Nova as well. It seems it was a term in common use by the Romans to refer to the native inhabitants of areas of north-west Europe throughout this period.

The accuracy of its use by historians today has been a matter of debate, of course. But I think as a term of general reference the word is widely understood.[/quote]

As Robert says, the Greeks used it to refer to the Franks: As late as Anna Komnena's Alexiad, Keltoi refers (incorrectly, of course) to the members of the First Crusade.

It would be interesting to know whether there was a continuity, even after the term had ceased to be historically correct (if it ever was), whether she was simply looking for a name for the north-western Europeans without really understanding, or whether she also intended a slur against the "barbarian" armies.

[Joze Noriker]

Zosimus made a misstake, zitat: " Zos. vi. 5 : (pvXaKa rrjs airb KeXruv scribed by Jerome (ad Ageruchiam,
cttI tt]v 'Ifiripiav irapbdov. Zosimus 409 a. d. before October), who mentions
affects to speak of the Keltoi instead of that Mainz was taken by the barbarians,
the Galatai. "
Link:http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/j-b-john-bagnell-bury/a-history-of-the-later-roman-empire--from-arcadius-to-irene-395-ad-to-800-a-yru/page-16-a-history-of-the-later-roman-empire--from-arcadius-to-irene-395-ad-to-800-a-yru.shtml

The historical pre-roman continetal Celts wasn't exist in time when the Zosimus was living.
And back to the tartan: tartan is not simple "checkered-piece of textile" it is specialyzed and standardized designed and structured kind of the clothes and origin of this weaving style somes from middle age. Simple la Tenne checkered patterns are not the same with tartan-paterns and with standardized midle age tartan clothes.
The Falkirk Tartan wasn't be a garment but the bag (??)or zitat: "piece of cloth" for over 2000 silver coins, link:
http://www.almac.co.uk/falkirktcm/falkirktartan.htm

link of the zitat: http://www.falkirklocalhistorysociety.co...php?id=131

Another zitat: "The Gaelic word for tartan is breacan, meaning 'chequered', 'variegated' or 'speckled'. (Robert Louis Stevenson's hero in Kidnapped was called Allan Breck; 'Breck' meaning 'pockmarked'.)" link of this zitat:
http://www.kinnaird.net/tartan.htm
That means what i wrote here: the cloth tartan is not the same as chequered clothes on Gealic.

Joze

[Nathan Ross]

Zosimus made a misstake...The historical pre-roman continetal Celts wasn't exist in time when the Zosimus was living.

Actually Zosimus often seems to use Keltoi to refer to Germanic peoples. In his description of Aurelian's army invading Palmyra he refers to 'celtic' legions - these would not be those drawn from Gaul, Britain and the Rhine, which were not held by Aurelian at this point, but rather those from the Danube.

However, the point remains - if Roman and Greek authors were using the word 'celt', it implies that they believed the word meant something and referred to somebody! Whether they were 'correct' in geographic or ethnographic terms, or whether the peoples referred to would understand themselves to be 'celts' or not is another matter.

tartan is not simple "checkered-piece of textile" it is specialyzed and standardized designed and structured kind of the clothes and origin of this weaving style somes from middle age... the cloth tartan is not the same as chequered clothes on Gealic.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting that 'celtic' people actually wore tartan. Since the subject of the thread is 'chequered' clothing I think we're safe sticking with that! But whether the Falkirk fragment is from a bag or not, it still indicates that weaving of this pattern was not unknown at the time, and so could have been used in clothing. It's also a little more complex than a simple check (by which I mean a chessboard pattern) - although still a long way from what we know today as tartan or plaid.

[Titvs Statilivs Castvs]

It's also a little more complex than a simple check (by which I mean a chessboard pattern) - although still a long way from what we know today as tartan or plaid.

Are you referring to something like the picture I added in my first post? Or something less complex?

[Joze Noriker]

Maybe in a larpic&exotic way could be used, but not by the serious roman-reenactors because we still don't know wich part of the clothes was be checkered. Maybe only the tunic, maybe only the sleeves, maybe the front part, maybe all of them, maybe the braccae, maybe the coat, maybe the birrus britanicus, etc...? But by the Germans (if i make paralele to Vindolanda's time)i don't know the evidence of the checkered tunic.
I found this text here, zitat:
"Of the several kinds of cloth manufactured in Gaul, one, according to Diodorus and Pliny, was
composed of wool dyed of various colours, which being spun into yarn was woven either into stripes
or chequers, and of this the Gauls and Britons made their summer garments. .This striped or
chequered cloth was called breach, brycan, or breacan ; breac, in Keltic, signifying anything speckled,
spotted, striped, or in any way party-coloured. The cloak or mantle called sagum, from the Keltic
word saic which, according to Varro, signified a skin or hide, such having been the material which
the invention of cloth had superseded was, in Britain, of one uniform colour, generally either blue or
black, while the predominating tint in the chequered tunic and trowsers was red. That in this
chequered cloth we see the original breacan feile, "the garb of old Gaul," still the national dress of the
Scotch Highlanders, there can be no doubt ; and that it was at this time the common habit of every
Keltic tribe, though now abandoned by all their descendants except the hardy and unsophisticated
Gaelic mountaineers, is admitted, I believe, by every antiquary who has made public his opinion on
the subject."
Link here:http://www.archive.org/stream/p1cyclopediaofco02planuoft/p1cyclopediaofco02planuoft_djvu.txt

but here are some misstakes, again - in ancient China was never existed a tartan... and by the Celts the "tartan" (checkered textiles) wasn't be so important in this matter, zitat: "This is an indication that tartans may be a much more ancient Celtic art-form than previously imagined"
Joze

[Joze Noriker]

..more misstakes, again here, zitat: "the Celts for many thousands of year....." and: "Early Romans talked of the Celts.."
Link :http://www.scotshistoryonline.co.uk/tartan-history.html

and another lapsus here:
http://www.district-tartans.com/austrian_kilt.html

The Falkirk tartan is woven in weft-woven or dog-tooth techniques:
http://www.beduinweaving.com/webarchive/weft/weft05.htm

weft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weft

dog-tooth: http://en.texsite.info/Dogtooth_checks_p...e_pattern)

shop: http://zgchem.en.alibaba.com/product/312...abric.html

Johanna of the Austrian's LH group Gentes danubi in her Urnfeld dress has a coat in this weaving-pattern, link here (foto on the right side):
http://www.gentes-danubii.at/neu/darstel...nfeld.html

and picture of our pupils at school of Johanna in UK dress (the second from the left):
http://s1084.photobucket.com/albums/j409...STELLUNG2/

Edit.:
If you have a wish to get a coat of this weaving-pattern we have in Ljubljana a coat ab. 190 cm x 230(240?) cm the textile is made from natural dyed woll but industrial weaven - looks very close to handmade textiles. It cost 260 euro.

Joze

[Nathan Ross]

Are you referring to something like the picture I added in my first post? Or something less complex?

Less complex than that - I was referring solely to the Falkirk fragment, which appears to feature a sort of basic 'sett' - stripes are woven into the plain background to form a grid, and where these stripes intersect a darker square appears. A true tartan would be a development of this, with more intersecting lines, basically. Although I confess I don't know enough about tartan to determine where the boundaries might lie!

'Chequered' cloth on the other hand, would be a simple arrangement of light and dark squares, as on a chess board.

..more misstakes, again here, zitat: "the Celts for many thousands of year....." and: "Early Romans talked of the Celts.."

The origins of tartan are, I think, a misty and hazardous subject, much cluttered with mythography and nationalistic imaginings - certainly antiquarianism has little to offer the serious student of history!

Thanks for the links about the various weaving patterns though.

[Joze Noriker]

We had te same debate in Forum Gallicum and German's textile handworkers who have knowledge about the weaving mean, that the weaving&patterns of the classical iron age textile items from continental Europe are not the same and not simmilar to that of the middle age tartans.That's why i was writing "tartan is structurised specially designed" piece of cloth and that checkered clothes are not the same with the tartans or with the iron age textiles. And i wrote that the roman textiles are not the same as the classical celtic iron age textiles of the continental Europe, too. The differences in weaving style are too big but here we don't have debate about the classical continental iron age textiles.... i know items and the reconstructions of them, too, in checkeered patterns but in different weaving techniques. That's why i say checkered goes by the Roman not; and the weaving art is different.
You wrote that many pieces of the Vindolanda textiles are in the style of the diamond-twill. But i don't know of any evidence about the diamond-twill textiles by the continental Celts - this is only one case about the differences. If you were follow to my links on the Roman textiles in GB and that means on the weaving style of the Vindolanda textiles, too, were influencess of the nordic textiles (not only of the Germans) and that textiles are different to the classical continental iron age Celtic's textiles. A diamond twill wasn't be a classical Celtic-item.

Joze

[Joze Noriker]

..but in the classical Celtic's continental Europe the differences are strong (again) in different time periods:Hallstattic textiles are not the same as the la Tenne textiles (and maybe there were the geographical-differneces, too) and the Romans comes in contact with the Celts/Gauls in la Tenne time. In la Tenne time the textiles were usually monochome (i worte 2 x this point) or made of the stipes (i wrote of the lines). If the classical chronists wrote "celtic textiles were checkered" we still don't know: in wich meaning, in wich style, wich weaving techniques, wich clothes concrete, etc ...(i wrote all this facts) and if we make a paralele to the textile items that we know of that time: than can we make more realistic understanding of that textiles. Usually the Scythian&Amasonian+s visual pictures on the Greek's ceramics are highly checkered but in fact the textiles of the Scytians were not maded by this style, their patterns were different. It was a sheme and shematic (iconografic) meaning about the barbarians.

Joze

[Crispianus]

The original Falkirk (or something close)is listed in "The Scottish Register of Tartans" also known as "Shepards Check"

http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanD...x?ref=3781

I do not believe you can make a true checkerboard board pattern by weaving but only by printing its stands to reason that a cloth woven in two coloured threads in bands vertically and horizontally will produce three different variations, two solid colours and a mix of both repeated, the Falkirk "Tartan" is exactly this and is also a 2/2 twill, a small percentage of cloth at Vindolanda took this form again with the majority being 2/2 twill but woven as a more complex diamond pattern...

Note: the small size of the falkirk pattern approx 18mm squares(estimated) original dimesion 110x70mm

Examples of both types of weaving are known to me from keltic burials in East Yorkshire as mineral replaced textiles (so no colour) from the 3rd BC(and probarbly later but pre-roman) but could likely find others elsewhere without too much difficulty... see "Iron Age Cemeteries in East Yorkshire: Excavations at Burton Fleming, Rudston, Garton-on-the-Wold and Kirkburn" page 124-5 gives a summary of samples found.

heres the NMS record doesnt say much...

http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.p...-036-743-C

The find was 400 metres north of the Antonine Wall so was probarbly native rather then roman.

[Joze Noriker]

Yes . i saw this register but my opinion is that this is a misstake.
The Falkirk tartan is made by dog teeth techniques, or weft weaving style.

Here an article about the roman textles:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...14,00.html

Sorry: he term: "celtic burials from Yorkshire?? After Alesia Celts wasn't existing .... their culture dissapeared rapidly. The Briton-tribes were mixed of more tribes .... That is the meaning of some british reenactors of late iron age-early middle age in forum Kelticos, too.


Edit.: here an article in book The world of Roman textiles: Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Color and Textiles of Roman Costumes by Judith Lynn Sebesta. On P. 72 is the text that less costly checkered cotton textiles in roman shops comes from Babylon, link:
http://books.google.si/books?id=GxGPLju4...es&f=false

Joze