Cremation grave textiles Examples from Vendel upper class in the Vendel and Viking Periods

Abstract

Few are aware of the fact that organic material such as textiles and leather can survive in cremation graves. Even fewer are aware that charred textile fragments contain almost the same information as unburnt prehistoric textiles. This fact provides the opportunity for comparing textiles from different groups in society, for studying textile development, and for gaining access to a much greater textile material based on the numerous cremation graves. In this article the outfits of the men buried in the cremation graves in “Vendla’s Mound”, dated to the Vendel and Viking Periods, are compared with those buried in the contemporaneous boat-graves in Vendel.