Weaving Update!
My weaving of Neolithic linen is improving. I’m gaining skills and insight into how it was done as well as facing many of the pitfalls my ancient ancestors would have overcome.
First, I have to hand span weft each night for weaving the next day. This is a significant amount of work to do as the spinning wheel isn’t invented yet. One of the major limitations to a tribe wearing all linen is the amount of time it takes to grow and then spend said flax.
The loom weights are in little linen bags, though I suspect either clay weights or leather bags with the more common. I will make some woodfired loom weights in a few weeks once my clay arrives.
Many hours are required to set up the loom. The most complicated part is ensuring that the heddle bar is properly strong to allow me to easily separate the back and front warp at will.
Kaelu, my Neolithic assistant, stands by ready to… But she doesn’t really help, but she keeps the mood decidedly Neolithic. She’s also wearing a Neolithic loincloth I wove. lol
3mm flax cord - Very course linen
~1mm flax cord - Much finer, but much more like burlap.
Making flax cord finer than 1mm, completely by hand, is quite difficult. I know that my Neolithic ancestors likely had so much more experience than me so I suspect they could get down to 0.5 mm, but I’m skeptical below that. Not only is it difficult to spin, but differences in the thickness do to the imprecision of hand spinning become much more pronounced, and the amount of string required vastly grows.
I suspect that linen was used much more sparingly in the early Neolithic, either for winter clothing, ritual, status and of course when someone needed to be in the water. Of course, I find it quite possible that a Neolithic spearfishing woman, like the one below, I simply just removed all of her clothing before doing so. I doubt anybody would have noticed or cared and we see modern tribes in the Amazon doing this. Either way, linen is a pain to make.