PREHISTORIC NETTLE DRESS

The women’s nettle clothing is presented in two ways, primarily to make use  of a broader range of artefacts. The first way is conventionally “feminine” – it is a dress for a woman engaged in collection, agriculture and other tasks typical for the status of women in many archaic societies. The second way presents women as hunters, based especially on the increasing number of burial-site finds.

The project “Prehistoric” nettle dress focuses in particular on the usefulness of nettle textiles and their practical use in daily life and work, collection, harvest, hunting etc. For this reason, the nettle dress is chiefly functional; its purpose is to protect and ensure thermal comfort (warmth). This dress is essentially made in the same ways as the mats that were commonly used for thermal insulation of dwellings or clothing. While the dress may look contemporary in terms of its design, it essentially consists of two mats joined with two stripes of buckskin tanned with animal brains. Other accessories make use of the practical properties of the nettle bast, sometimes in combination with other materials (such as bast fibre or forest grass).

Information about the earliest European nettle textiles, which were often used as funeral textiles, may, in connection with a variety of ethnographic analogies, evoke thoughts of magical or ritual contexts, as documented in traditional European folklore. The presence of stinging nettle at borders of personal spaces within settlements where waste was stored or where fences were built, or at planned waste disposal dumps, could have sparked interest for a variety of reasons. One, because these locations with plentiful nutrients were favourable for the nettle fibre plants, or two, the aforementioned magical context could have played its part. Nettle may also have been plentiful at locations used for ritual purposes where, as a result of a variety of rituals, the soil was rich in nutrients. Either way the perception of this fibre and products made from it must have been influenced by the fact that nettle grew naturally and contact with it was problematic due to its stinging properties. Aside from the quality of the fibre in terms of strength and fineness, its white colour could have some aesthetic and symbolic significance. Indeed, the nettle fibre is bleached in daylight, and colouring may have been a key factor as well. We have acknowledged this magical aspect at least in the form of a small amulet made from fine snow-white nettle thread.