Ethnographic examples of cordage use at the Pitt Rivers, 5th February

Photo credit: www.prm.ox.ac.uk

OxPalTechSoc's next event is a follow-up to our cordage making last week: an informal walk around the Pitt Rivers museum, looking at how our newly acquired skills have been applied ethnographically.  

We will be meeting at the front doors of the Natural History Museum at 2:00pm on Wednesday 5 February. 

Even if you weren't able to make it to the first session, please come along, and feel free to bring a friend!  We will have with us some of the cordage we made last week, and can give you a quick run through (and if you were there last week, bring your own cordage to show off!). The Pitt Rivers always promises to be an interesting visit so it should be fun.

If you would like to join and become a member of the OxPalTechSoc, it costs £5 for the 2014 membership - this goes towards our purchasing and acquiring of materials, and renting of equipment.  Everyone is welcome, and the drop-in fee is just £2. Just give it to any of the committee members during a session (Klint, Will, Cory or Patrick).

Please RSVP by sending a quick email to oxpalaeo@gmail.com to let us know to expect you. We hope to see you there!

Making Cordage in Port Meadow - a Beautiful Day!

The weather gods were on our side yesterday as we went out to the dry fields of Port Meadow...

Alright, that's not true.  It looked more like this:

But it was still a beautiful day if you didn't mind the spitting rain in your face! We set out to look for organic materials to gather to make cordage back in the much drier and warmer OxPalTechSoc tent.

Port Meadow is an amazing place - it has been owned by the city of Oxford since the 10th century, and has never been ploughed. Hence it is a unique little ecosystem, with its own Bronze Age round barrows (which are hard to distinguish, as they are just slight lumps on an otherwise flat field - today they were submerged under many feet of water). It is also used for grazing, so you might come across a herd of horses, cows, or the odd fat pony:

When we got to higher and drier Burgess Field, Klint showed us how to find materials with the right properties to strip long fibers:

We then hastily gathered bunches of material (dead stalks from poppy plants seemed to work best), and took them back to the tent, where we sat (steaming as we slowly dried off!), stripped the stalks and twisted the fibers together to make cordage. The cordage was twisted in two strands, which were twisted together the opposite way which meant they locked together. Here are two new professionals at work:

Ringo the OxPalTechSoc mascot was there to help anyone with any questions:

What we were creating looked something like this:

And here is the end result!  One little bundle of very very useful and surprisingly strong cordage - this can be used in trap or snare making, bow making, binding...

Thanks so everyone who was able to make it, we will be meeting next Wednesday at the Pitt Rivers Museum at 14:00, where we will be having an informal look around the collections to see ethnographic examples of cordage, and its applications.  We hope you can make it - an email will be circulating shortly detailing where to meet! Everyone welcome, free for members and £2 for drop-in guests.

See you soon!

Cordage Sourcing and Making in Port Meadow, January 31st

On January 31st (this Friday, 14:30-16:30) we will be holding OxPalTechSoc's first session of the year.

Cordage and rope making are one of the most important skills a hunter gatherer learns, and is the basis for many other organic Palaeolithic skills that we will be studying, such as traps and snares. 

We hope you can make it!

Please email oxpalaeo@gmail.com to obtain the address where we will be meeting, before heading off to Port Meadow together. Also, it's rainy and wet and flooded in Oxford at this time of year, so dress to keep warm and dry! Wellies would be a good idea, and clothes that you don't mind getting muddy.  Bring a sack to gather materials in, and a penknife if you have one. Perhaps even a thermos of tea...

Photo credit: sites.naturalsciences.org