The lucet: historically accurate or reenactorism?
There’s a tool you can likely see during Medieval reenactments in Europe: the lucet.
It’s a usually a lyre-shaped wooden fork for making braided cords for many uses, from drawstrings to shoelaces, from clothing trims to decorations. It’s easy to use and quick to learn, requiring little to no crafting background. It can provide a basic skill for any reenactor wanting to show a not-too-hard craftsmanship.
The author, Sara, hosting a lucet workshop during a living history event in Italy
One could think at first it was inspired by some extant find now preserved in a museum. Well, it’s not so easy. The history of the lucet is still unclear, the archaeologists still debating about artifacts, shapes and sizes.
Historical reenactment has always had a significant role in the question of lucet origins. We could say that all the debates originated here, from the disputes between Viking or Medieval reenactors throughout Europe. Whatever the origins of this lyre-shaped tool are, its use during Medieval events is nowadays mostly accepted as “reenactorism”, a “poetic license” we could call it. For what we know now, it could have been or might not have been: it’s one way like another to try and reconstruct a piece of our past.
Until the debate is settled with some final word, you’ll go on finding luceteers among reenactors. We have no way to tell them whether their craft is or isn’t historically accurate. I tried tracing back the extant finds and documents about this tool to see if we can shed some light on its origins.
Here, we have a first problem: you could simply make a lucet out of any two-pronged item you have at hand, say a two-twig branch or a two-pronged animal horn, making the findings easy to misidentify. Archaeologists have cataloged as lucets only a small number of finds throughout the Middle Ages, usually hollow bones with two prongs, sometimes with also a third larger one of still uncertain use.
The Lund Artifact
Second half of the 11th century. Image from Wikimedia Commons, provided by the Swedish National Heritage Board. Photo by Bengt A Lundberg
It all started with a tool found in Lund (Sweden) in 1961: a small piece of tubular sheep bone 65mm long, 20mm in diameter, with finely carved teeth, two shorter and thinner ones aligned plus a larger one behind. It’s contextually dated to the second half of the 11th century. It’s famous for its two-word runic inscription saying tinbl bein, recently revised by Steenholt Olesen. The second part, bein, means “bone”. Tinbl is the modern form temple, a weaving tool to maintain the warp width and prevent narrowing. Consequently, the inscription designates the object as a “temple-bone” (Old Danish *timpelbēn).
Those two words give us a precious context for the use of the tool bearing them in relation to textile production. From here, the archaeologists started referring to any artifact with a similar shape to the Lund find.
The identification with the end-piece of a temple is tricky, though: you need two Lund-like items to make a temple, but in most cases those finds are unique. So, someone proposed that solitary artifacts could have another function, original or repurposed, as lucets. Experimental archaeology supports this theory: in 1968 Kerstin Petterson reproduced with a hollow teethed tool two extant braids from a woman’s burial in Gotland (Sweden). A similar experiment was conducted with a find from Oslo in 2018. More tests with artifacts from Sigtuna (Sweden), Douai (France), Tyrol (Austria), all dated between the 10th and 13th century, gave the same results. All showed the most significant problems were the shortness of the tool and the thin space between the prongs, but lucetting produced a cord quite easily, nonetheless.
Nowadays, following those studies, the word tinblbein has become a synonym for lucet.
We have several finds from Sweden, the greatest number from Sigtuna dating to the 10th-12th century and found in a context of Medieval textile crafts. In 2017 a decorated artifact was found in Oslo (Norway): a two pronged 36mm long hollow bone adorned with typical medieval dot circle décor, dated to the 13th century. It was identified as a tinblbein thanks to social media: a user commented “it’s a tinblbein” under a photo of the artifact on Instagram, so the archaeologists decided to try the experiment I mentioned earlier.
Research published in 2022 on “Strands” by Beatrix Nutz gives highlights on finds from Tyrol (Austria), from a context going from the Late Antiquity to the 14th century: they are comparable to the Swedish artifacts and to interesting “tricotins” preserved at the Arkéos Musée in Douai (France). More from Germany, Switzerland and Italy are under study now.
Two of the Sigtuna artifacts, 10th – 12th century
Image from Sigtuna Museum (CC BY 4.0)
With all this information, though, we still can’t say for sure that the Middle Ages knew a two-pronged braiding tool that we nowadays call lucet. But we can’t conclude it didn’t exist, either. Finds comparable to the Lund artifact by shape and date, like the ones from Sigtuna or Douai, can be related to a textile production context or come from a place where such manufacturing was prominent.
What’s sure is that there is no evidence during the Middle Ages of the lyre-shaped lucets we encounter nowadays in Medieval reenactments.
Reenactors usually braid cords with lyre-shaped wooden tools that were in use in modern times. Of this shape, we don’t have any archaeological evidence before the 18th century: no way to tell what happened from the 15th to the 18th century nor what the evolution could have been from hollow tube to flat lyre. If we look for written records, the earliest one comes from the 17th century, from a manuscript called Percy Folio, in which the ballad Sittinge Late cites a woman’s tools: needle, thread and the lucet.
The use of this kind of tool is mostly accepted as a “reenactorism”. It’s a way to show how people in the past could have made something that’s delegated to machinery in our modern times, a technique that’s easy to learn and effective during crafts demonstrations. Even though the tool’s shape isn’t likely Medieval, the technique could indeed exist in the Middle Ages, as experimental archaeology showed.
"Tricotins" from the Arkéos Musée in Douai (France). Photo from Wikimedia Commons
What’s to be noted is the boost given to the research by the revisions of the Lund inscription: archaeologists have gained greater attention on this topic, giving us more finds and more contexts related to textile production. Papers and books will be published soon presenting more extant finds, as archaeologists revised several dubious or uncatalogued finds and were able to link them to the Lund tool or other comparable artifacts. Beatrix Nutz is studying the topic intensively and I’m publishing a book about old and new research, to dive deeper into the matter.
I hope in the next future we’ll know more about those so-called lucets and their original purpose.
Written By Sara Rossi
You can find more of Sara’s work on her Instagram - @lrcrafts.it
Check our Sara’s LR Crafts blog where you will find her meticulous research into the lucet and many useful resources: LR Crafts blog *HERE*
Later this year, Sara is publishing a book about the history and crafting techniques of the lucet with co-author Daniel Phelps, to be published in the Compleat Anachronist by the Society for Creative Anachronism under the title “The Lucet Compendium: A Historical Exploration and Practical Guide”.
References
Hales John W. and Furnivall Frederick J, Percy's Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances. Vol. II, London, 1868, pp.400-403
Louis Étienne, Les indices d’artisanat dans et autour du monastère de Hamage (Nord), in Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre | BUCEMA, Hors-série n° 8, 2015
Nutz Beatrix, Cords, Braids and Bands in Archaeology – Finds from Tyrol, in Strands, 2022, pp. 3-9 • Pettersson Kerstin, En gotländsk kvinnas dräkt. Kring ett textilfynd från vikingatiden, in Tor 12, Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, Uppsala, 1967-1968, pp. 174 – 200
Steenholt Olesen Rikke, Et tinbl:bein fra middelalderens Lund: Et tekstilredskab – men hvilket?, Danske Studier, 2021, pp. 5–24
Wikström Anders (red), Fem Stadsgårdar. Arkeologisk undersökning i kv. Trädgårdsmästaren 9 & 10 i Sigtuna 1988-90, MORR 52, 2011, Sigtuna
https://arkeologibloggen.niku.no/et-tinbl-bein/ (last access: June 2023)
https://www.lrcrafts.it/lucet-cordmaking-history for deeper bibliography, links, list and map of extant finds
The LR Crafts Blog: https://www.lrcrafts.it/lucet-cordmaking-history/