'One Knot at a Time: experiments in the small-scale analysis of knotted carpets'

Victoria Sluka recently completed her doctoral degree in archaeology at the University of Wisconsin. Her research focuses on the application of small-scale measurements, large sample sizes, and descriptive statistics in providing new insight into knotted carpet structure and manufacturing processes. She has collaborated with traditional handweavers in Central Asia to better understand the technological, social, and idiosyncratic pressures that affect carpet structures, with a long-term interest in understanding the technological evolution of knotted pile in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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In this lecture, Victoria will briefly discuss two experiments devised over the course of her doctoral work. First, she applies methods used in geology and machining to extract aesthetic information from ceramic impressions of early textiles. Widespread study of textile impressions left in ceramics, plasters, or mud has provided a wealth of information about textile structures, fibre technologies and weaving quality around the ancient world. Unfortunately, these impressions are only a shadow of the textile, and not generally able to comment on decorations and designs produced solely through a change in yarn colour. Victoria uses micro-scale measurements of knotted carpet impressions to reveal how imperceptible changes in hand-spun yarns can encode designs and motifs in apparently bland impressions.

Victoria follows this experiment into aesthetics and design with one focused on production technologies and pressures. Drawing techniques from geospatial projects and wildlife ecology, her primary doctoral work explores how different production characteristics create a consistent change in knot shape and size. Through collaboration with Central Asian carpet-weavers and measurement of nearly one million individual knots, these production ‘signatures’ are traced and evaluated. Although only a preliminary study, the results give encouraging new insights into both the individuality and shared tradition of Eurasian carpet-weaving.

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