Tools for Textile Production from Birka and Hedeby: Excavations in the Black Earth 1990-1995

In connection with the excavations of the Black Earth at Birka in 1990-1995, tools for textile manufacture were found in many houses and in the waste layers around them. When a doctoral student at the Department of Archaeology at Lund University, Eva Andersson, began to take an interest in these types of tools, she naturally came to examine Hjalmar Stolpe's finds and to look at the Birka excavation, where there was a large new body of material of this kind, and for a change it was well stratified. Collaboration developed quickly, later leading to Evas presentation in autumn 1999 of her dissertation, a comparison of the textile tools found at Birka, Hedeby, Åhus, and Kaupang. The Swedish text of the dissertation, slightly revised, has now been translated into English by Alan Crozier. It is a pleasure for the Project to be able to present the result as a volume in Birka Studies. The Project also wishes to thank the author and the translator for the efforts they have expended to make this into an important contribution to our understanding of the complex stratigraphical, chronological, and social patterns found in the Birka material.