How has time been stopped for 1.800 years with pitched textiles from a roman barge?
Laure Meunier, Independant researcher, IFIRES, ARC Nucléart, Grenoble, France, laure.meunier@cea.fr, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1929-2130
Once upon a time, nearly 1.800 years ago, a barge was floating on the river Saône in France, to transport goods. After an intense life, she retired on the bank, and people removed pieces of wood, until a spate buried her for centuries. She was like a sleeping beauty, waiting for archaeologists to discover her and her hidden secrets from roman period.1 During all this time in the soil, materials have been conserved for some of them, transformed for others, but their shape remained the same as it was a long time ago (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: General map of the Lyon-Saint-Georges 4’s shipwreck remains. On the original 28m length, 14,50 m were removed and conserved, the rest was buried outside the excavation area, under Lyon old town (France). © Marc Guyon, Inrap.
Alteration processes from archaeological organic materials are well known for years.2 Water allows them to come over time, but it also changes their composition; archaeological waterlogged wood contains nearly 80% of water, meaning that without conservation the wood will lose its shape because of the departure of water and the collapse of the material. But another material used as waterproofing material succeeded in passing through centuries without damage: pitched textiles. This product, put between the planks to waterproof the barge has arrived to us in order to deliver its story (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Cross-section of the Lyon-Saint-Georges 4’s shipwreck, showing where waterproofing material has been inserted. To unfold waterproofing material, both big spaces between the bilge and the flat-bottom and small ones between the planks of the flat-bottom were chosen. © Marc Guyon, Inrap.
First, how could this material resist time and degradation while others have been affected? Its secret lies in the burial and the tar. This dark, thick flammable liquid distilled from wood was used for coating and preserving timbers for millenniums with a pretty much constant recipe, but also in this case waterproofing textiles. The tar has been poured heated once textiles have been placed between the planks. This resin allowed a perishable material as textile to last nearly forever instead of a few months when buried, because of its waterproofing and antibacterial properties, which make time stop for 1.800 years.
Once identified, an enquiry began in order to understand the gesture of the roman caulker. Two techniques are known: luting and caulking. Luting consists of inserting waterproofing material while building the barge, on a plank after its assembly and before putting the next one. Caulking consists of inserting waterproofing material after complete assembly, by forcing it in the spaces. Clues have been found through no trespassing of the material from the seals and nails jailed by the material pushed around them: this is caulking, even if the other wrecks discovered from roman period on the Rhône-Saône axis shew luting. Second step was to understand how the caulker prepared textiles to use them. For this, it was necessary to unfold the material, because it was unreadable in this state, looking like a piece of wood without visible delimitations between textiles. Trials with previous protocols based on solving tar with organic solvents in order to recover textiles failed: samples were destroyed because of the fragility of the fibres (Fig. 3). A new approach raised then, counting on the plastic properties of the tar while heated in water, supposing no new traumatism on textiles. This succeeded and allowed to recover nearly five square meters of roman textiles, one of the most important set in Western Europe. Various locations with big and littles spaces (Fig. 2) gave information on the knowledge of the roman caulker: no new fabric used, only reused ones, and an adaptation to the geometry of the space with the size and the thickness of the textiles. They are mainly made of wool, but in the largest pieces from the space between the bilge and the sides, some pieces of vegetal fabric have been discovered. They are scarce and of reduced dimension comparing to the ones of wool, but their discovery shows that vegetal fabrics had not vanished during burial. Their lack in the space between the planks of the flat-bottom could be explained with a less rigorous preparation of the caulking material destined to the largest places. Once unfolded, new information on the gesture of the roman caulker emerged, after examination the folds seemed to be organized, telling us centuries after the way they were prepared to be inserted between the planks. They were folded in two or four, and then often concertinaed. This opens a window on the daily work of the roman caulker nearly two thousand years ago.3

Figure 3: A piece of textile while unfolding in water. Its dark surface is due to the tar. © Marc Guyon, Inrap.
However, how do they look like after that from the conservation point of view? Unfolding in hot water is indisputably better in several ways: largest pieces of textiles, respect of the constituent fibres and finally the non-dissolution of the tar allow keeping its properties activated, antibacterial against fungi and moth repulsive. This latter is important because in museum conservation storage, moths are a very important damaging factor.4 On the other hand, textile pieces are rigid, and they can break while manipulating. Their very dark color and bituminous aspect make their study difficult, because technical features of the fabrics are partly hidden. So, trials were conducted to reduce the tar and have a more flatten and flexible aspect, using a mix of organic solvents. To reduce their impact on the fibres and so not to desiccate them too much, which would have made them tear, the mix of ethanol/acetone has been applied with a pencil and immediately wiped with absorbent paper. Cleaning is leaded until absorbent paper became light brown, and textile aspect looked like natural fabric without coating (Fig. 4). It quickly appeared that woolen fabrics and vegetal ones were behaving differently. Due to the strong chemical bond between wool grease and tar, it is quite impossible to completely remove the tar from the woolen textiles. On the contrary, vegetal ones can be relatively quick cleaned, with a natural beige aspect (Fig.4). This means that vegetal fabrics will be more sensitive to insect and fungi attacks than the woolen ones. This means too that the protection from degradation for these textiles due to obscurity and tar is over and that they re-entered in the textile degradation process, with high sensibility to light and handling fragility. So special care of conservation has to be sat in order to length their new life and allow researcher and public to enjoy them as long as possible.

Figure 4: Two textiles from Lyon-Saint-Georges’s 4 shipwreck after tar removal, the dark one (Calfat 54-9-3) is in wool with diamond twill weave and the black and beige/white one is a vegetal tabby (Calfat 54-7-1). © Laure Meunier, IFIRES.
The next step is to know as these textiles were reused a last time as caulking material, what can we guess from their previous life? What can they tell us? First, the various textiles are in different state of conservation. As the same protocol has been used to recover them, a question raise on their state when they have been put as water proofing material. Some looks like old rags while other are pretty large and in good state. This means it was their state at the moment they were used and thus that textiles were used until they literally disappear. This has already been imagined, but archaeological clues are inexistent, precisely because of this reuse until disappearance. Ancient textiles are rare in our lands, because our climate and their bury lead to their decomposition. The scarce pieces we mainly have are essentially from graves, and because some textile have been mineralized due to its proximity with a metallic object. They are funeral clothes or gifts and give us indications on funeral practices, limited to the mineralization area of the fabric. With the important set of Lyon Saint-Georges 4, and the possible comparison with waterproofing textiles from the Arles-Rhône 3 wreck,5 new possibilities open.
There is not a lot of different kind of textiles, around ten. And through comparison between the nearly hundred textiles from Lyon-Saint-Georges 4 with other textiles from the same origin in wrecks Arles-Rhône 3 and roman wrecks Lyon-Saint-Georges 8 (1st century AD), Lyon-Saint-Georges 2 (3rd century AD), Lyon-Saint-Georges 3 (2nd century AD), Lyon Saint-Georges 5 (2nd century AD) and Lyon-Saint-Georges 7 (3rd century AD), the textiles from waterproofing material are similar. So, they belong to the same group, but how to determine which one? An excavation in an ancient Roman harbor from Quseir-Myos Hormos in Egypt6 gave hundreds of pieces of textiles from different districts, and maybe the key lies there: the archaeologist observed that a piece of textile begins and finishes its life in the same districts, moreover she affirmed that the textiles used to repair boats belonged to the nautical area. Let us try to place ourselves from this point of view to examine the textiles found as waterproofing material. Antique sources mention linen sails but our discoveries are mainly from wool, and the linen fragments are too small to identify a possible previous use. An evocation of the absence of the vegetal sails have been given by the material’s fragility which leads to its decomposition in few months once buried.7 However, this track leads to an interesting information: linen twill is known in the third century to have been used as technical textile to sew slabs of metal in order to form roman armors in Vindolanda (personal communication with John Peter Wild, textile expert). This could fit with the hypothesis examined. Nevertheless, as wool is the main fibre used, could it be possible to have nautical textiles from wool?
Historical investigation allowed finding that Vikings were using wool sails, and that they went until America with them. Reconstitutions have been made of the Viking vessels in the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (Denmark), and wool sails reconstitutions as well. The technical feature for the weight of the sails was to be between 700 and 1000 g/m². Then a two-steps surface treatment permits to the material to become windproof and waterproof too.8 These sails were very lasting, investigations and reconstitutions give a lifetime between 40 and 50 years when properly maintained,9 and fishermen’s blanket in wool were made for a lifetime. Wool is not sensible to mould and is catching fire slowly, which are good properties for nautical textiles. Comparison made by the engineer of the Viking Ship Museum shows that for the same sail, linen and wool have equivalent weight (personal communication). More recent specifications to produce sailcloth from the French Royal Navy gave similar weights, even if fibres used were flax and hemp. These technical features have been used to weave the sailcloth of the replica of the French vessel L’Hermione, based in Rochefort (France). Three kind of linen sailcloth are available: 550 g/m², 750 g/m² and 950 g/m², very close from the Viking ones. This raises the question of the definition of the technical properties required for sailcloth for example, but also for other utilitarian textiles such as tarpaulin to wrap and transport goods, or awnings to protect fishermen and sailors from the sun and the rain. The quality and the durability of these technical textiles are very different from those expected from clothes. As we have very few textiles remains for Antiquity in Europe, questions stay open, because of the lack of information available. Moreover, for these scarce archaeological remains, there is no data on the relation between weight and surface available, which could allow comparison and categorize textiles, and this is not done for other antique textiles found elsewhere as well. The specificities of a textile, sailcloth for example, are not focused on a unique use. Sailcloth is also used to make hammocks for the crew, and the culture of reuse leads to make others objects with old sails, such as bags and clothes because it is a valuable textile, which is worth using as long as possible. It can also be cut in strips to be used as repair material for sails in use or as waterproofing material as we found it. Nautical world is a technical one, where traditions are vivid, and when something works, this is often used for centuries, keeping it from brutal changes, especially before industrial period. As a proof, a handbook made for sailors to learn how to repair their sails, “Sailmaker’s apprentice”10 shows sewing points already known at the Royal Navy time!
Then, thanks to their conservation in the tar, the examination of a roman nautical textile set can help us to fill a gap in the history of techniques in several ways: the way textiles were prepared to be used as waterproofing material enlightens the gesture of the roman caulker. This allowed to recognize the same skill used nowadays in traditional shipyards and enquiry showed that this knowledge is essentially transmitted from master to apprentice in an oral way for centuries, with no written testimonies. So, our civilization of digital recording should help cultures still using traditional ways of constructing ships from centuries to record their culture and memory, before it vanished, like ours.
This set of roman textiles bridges roman period used 1.800 years ago, and through these modest remains, opens a window on the technical textiles from roman time. Their presence enlightens their extraordinary journey through time to allow us to discover the ability of our ancestors to produce highly technical textiles and today to settle highly technical conditions to extend their life to make possible for most people to enjoy them. Investigations on their insertion in the history of techniques and /or technical textiles and information on everyday textiles, few documented through the ages can help us to understand our ancestors, and why not, to discover perhaps more eco-friendly ways of doing things, even if it is more time-consuming, in order to bring us closer from nature respect. Maybe our ancestors has understood how to balance time and material.
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- Historic England, Waterlogged Organic Artefacts, Guidelines on their Recovery, Analysis and Conservation, 2018, 68 p. https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/waterlogged-organic-artefacts/heag260-waterlogged-organic-artefacts/ [↩]
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- Clothes moth research | English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk) [↩]
- Médard Fabienne. Les tissus associés à la construction du chaland Arles-Rhône 3 : qualité et gestion de la matière première. In: Archaeonautica, 18, 2014. Arles-Rhône 3.Un chaland gallo-romain du Ier siècle après Jésus-Christ, sous la direction de Sabrina Marlier. p. 116-125. https://doi.org/10.3406/nauti.2014.1317 [↩]
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- Black, Eve. « Where have all the sails gone? » In Tropis IV, 4th international symposium on ship construction in Antiquity Athens 1991, Athens: Hellenistic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, 1996, p. 103-112. [↩]
- Cooke, Bill, Carol Christiansen, et Lena Hammarlund. « Viking Woollen Square-Sails and Fabric Cover Factor ». International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 31, no 2 (octobre 2002): p. 202‑210. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-9270.2002.tb01414.x [↩]
- Bender Jørgensen, Lise. « The introduction of sails to Scandinavia: Raw materials, labour and land ». In N-TAG TEN: Proceedings of the 10th Nordic TAG conference at Stiklestad, Norway 2009, édité par Ragnhild Berge, Marek E. Jasinski, et Kalle Sognnes, BAR international series. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012, p. 173-181. [↩]
- Marino, Emiliano, et Christine Erikson. The Sailmaker’s Apprentice: A Guide for the Self-Reliant Sailor. Camden, Maine: International Marine, McGraw Hill, 2001, 494 p. [↩]

