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yakalskovich) wrote2009-11-27 04:23 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2009-11-27 04:23 pm
Picture Post: Road Trip Down Memory Lane, Pt. 3: Kalkriese
Kalkriese wasn't really a trip down memory lane any more as we hadn't been there before; the site wasn't know yet when we still lived not-so-far from it, and we still thought of Porta Westfalica and the Arminius monument as the site of the Varus battle.
But it was the same road trip, and it was our old stomping grounds as well -- my mother's grandmother and other relatives used to live in Bückeburg, about two to three stone's throws away. I remember going there as a kid, and coming past those monuments on the way.
Timber framed houses in the town of Bramsche nearby. Note the red art object on the tree. These Roman 'insignia' consisting of a outsize fibreglass replica of the famous and iconic cavalry mask found at Kalkriese, plus a round slice of tree trunk, plus three small boards, had been handed out in the thousands to people in the area, to be painted and put up. It was an art project -- our hotel had three of the things, too. This one was painted the traditional Bramsche red -- the town had been famous from the late middle ages on for its bright red wool cloth. There was a special exhibition about Roman and Germanic weaving in the wool-weaving museum, and an actual specialist by name of Ellen Harlizius-Klück at her working replica loom answering questions. She writes about the connections between weaving and mathematics in the ancient world, a real life scientist in a museum! Those connections continued through the rest of the museum, as they had an actual jacquard loom in working condition in the permanent exhibition, and as every geek and steam-punker knows, those looms with their punched cards are the earliest predecessors of programmable machines, and hence our computers. There was a bloke servicing that thing while we were there who we talked to as well, and between that and the mathematics necessary for hand-weaving on ancient warp-weighted loom, my mother and I had a happy afternoon of geek-out. Basically, you didn't want to weave cloth which you'd then had to cut pieces away from again, so you wove like you'd knit nowadays, making only the pieces you needed, and using all that you had made, which is why simple shapes and rich folds abounded. Only high medieval times invented the division of labour between weaver and tailor, and cuts became more complicated. You actually get the same effect still in Japan with traditional kimono silks. Anyway, I found out about card weaving (the secret I always failed to comprehend was that the cards hung sideways) and about the reason for the card-woven borders on classical and early medieval textiles: the colourful borders were something like selvage, only at the beginning of the piece, not down the sides. In card-weaving, the warp determines the colours and the weft is plain, invisible yarn. So, they would card-weave the beginning of a piece, not with a continuous weft but with many long pieces which hung free, were weighted down, and used as warp for the rest of the piece. Once I understood that, my perception shifted. I am still not going to hand-weave an entire Goth dress (unless I win a lottery and never need to work a day in my life), but I know better what they were doing. Once you have woven fabric that gets cut and sewn, you can use borders for trim, that is, hemming, as I did with my Goth costume. But I might try card-weaving after all. All the trim one can buy is either unsatisfactory, incredibly expensive, or both.
I must stop this geek-out here, though, and get on with the picture post.
The iron age house in Venne, near Kalkriese. It shows how people lived before the Romans came.
Wood stored under the eaves. Some of it is fire-darkened, and probably meant for iron smelting; they do have a little smelt there. It's not a museum as such, but a living archaeology project that a) tries out things and b) works with history classes from schools so the kids get to see how our ancestors lived.
At first, the doors were closed.
Then, we went to the nearby farm café, and the woman running it got her retired father who had a key and loved showing people round -- here he is, holding an iron age lance. He was the one who kept talking about 'Celts' and claimed there were no Germanic tribes as such. There seems to be a tradition, it seems, to call all the tribes that lived in Germany before the Romans came 'Celts' as to deter all associations with backwards oriented nationalism. As a linguist, I bridle at that in several directions over a month later, still! What a nonsensical example of pouring out the baby with the bathwater because of over-avoidance of anything remotely Nazi-tainted. I found myself forced to think and write about the whole memplex almost two years ago already, and am heartily sick of the whole argument. I fear that the old farmer, who only learned about that special flavour of political correctness from the experimental archaeologists who are renting a bit of his land for their project, got the brunt of my linguistic bristling when I asked him why he was so sure it was Celts...
Their warp-weighted loom; it is not a properly working replica like that of Dr. Ellen in the museum. Look at the poor stuff they have sort of improvised decoratively.
Phallic little deities in the house
And the little guy protecting the otherwise October-barren garden inside its fence woven from twigs.
Timber framed street in Bad Essen, a town about 20 kilometres away. We didn't feel like turning in yet after the iron age house and the coffee at the café, and just spontaneously went and took pictures. It was very pretty there.
Church and little market in Bad Essen
Now, on to the main attraction: Kalkriese, assumed site of the Varus battle. Road signs only said 'Varus battle', without adding the word 'site', so I was amused at the fact that they apparently pointed two thousand years in the past. You can't visit the battle without a time machine, you can only see the presumed site.
In the summer, when there were much more visitors, this improvised Roman tavern must have done a brisk trade.
The centre piece of that art project: insignia by the museum, painted by school kids from all European countries, and then some.
Even those where Romans never set foot, like Finland.
Slovenia, though, definitely was a part of the Roman empire.
Moretum with bread and olives. Their moretum recipe, innocently listed on the menu, actually works: curd, crumbled goat cheese, salt, herbs, garlic, olive oil.
We took the guided tour with introduction. Dumping armour on an unsuspecting, eager kis until it almost collapses groaning is something living history people and museum people influenced by them like to do. It is always fun to see.
The equipment of a Germanic warrior was much lighter, in comparison. Here, the Germanic tribes were called that, again.
Little pewter legionaries, to show just how many Romans got killed there.
I liked the unintentional LOL-cat-ism.
Huge replica of the mask, at the entrance to the permanent exhibition. I took no pictures in the 2000th anniversary special exhibition -- too dark.
Small model of a Roman house.
Germanic house of the time; sorry for the reflected map. Basically, it works like the house in Venne from the day before, only less round at the ends. Viking houses work that way almost a thousand years later, too.
Compare the equipment of a Roman soldier and a Germanic tribesman, now without kids inside.
We see a legion slaughtered in a pinball model: 4 thousand orderly pinballs emerge, get into narrow terrain modelled after Kalkriese, then get swallowed by holes.
At the end, between 14 and 40 legionaries survive.
After all the countless replicas, here is the original.
The museum has a tall tower so one can look at the terrain from above. Here, the old farm that became part of the complex, and the art project.
The archaeological park with lowered terrain area, and actual working dig.
Steel plates pave the way; some have quotes from Roman authors about the battle.
Lowered terrain to show the landscape and the palisades that were discovered, at the level of 2000 years ago.
The actual working dig, closing down for the day.
Attention, biodegradable landmines! I have no ideas what they mean by that, but those signs were put up in several places of the park.
Tripods that get lit spectacularly for night events in summer.
Varus and his horse, pitifully sinking in the sad -- another modern art project.
The next day, on our way home, we visited the cathedral in Limburg as there had apparently not been enough churches on our trip yet. To be honest, we hadn't seen one from the inside for two days as we were preoccupied with pre-Christian history.
The house of the seven vices in Limburg: late medieval carvings representing some of those.
Timber framed houses in Limburg.
More timber framed houses. Shingle tiling is still possible there, too.
And then we went home.-
But it was the same road trip, and it was our old stomping grounds as well -- my mother's grandmother and other relatives used to live in Bückeburg, about two to three stone's throws away. I remember going there as a kid, and coming past those monuments on the way.
Timber framed houses in the town of Bramsche nearby. Note the red art object on the tree. These Roman 'insignia' consisting of a outsize fibreglass replica of the famous and iconic cavalry mask found at Kalkriese, plus a round slice of tree trunk, plus three small boards, had been handed out in the thousands to people in the area, to be painted and put up. It was an art project -- our hotel had three of the things, too. This one was painted the traditional Bramsche red -- the town had been famous from the late middle ages on for its bright red wool cloth. There was a special exhibition about Roman and Germanic weaving in the wool-weaving museum, and an actual specialist by name of Ellen Harlizius-Klück at her working replica loom answering questions. She writes about the connections between weaving and mathematics in the ancient world, a real life scientist in a museum! Those connections continued through the rest of the museum, as they had an actual jacquard loom in working condition in the permanent exhibition, and as every geek and steam-punker knows, those looms with their punched cards are the earliest predecessors of programmable machines, and hence our computers. There was a bloke servicing that thing while we were there who we talked to as well, and between that and the mathematics necessary for hand-weaving on ancient warp-weighted loom, my mother and I had a happy afternoon of geek-out. Basically, you didn't want to weave cloth which you'd then had to cut pieces away from again, so you wove like you'd knit nowadays, making only the pieces you needed, and using all that you had made, which is why simple shapes and rich folds abounded. Only high medieval times invented the division of labour between weaver and tailor, and cuts became more complicated. You actually get the same effect still in Japan with traditional kimono silks. Anyway, I found out about card weaving (the secret I always failed to comprehend was that the cards hung sideways) and about the reason for the card-woven borders on classical and early medieval textiles: the colourful borders were something like selvage, only at the beginning of the piece, not down the sides. In card-weaving, the warp determines the colours and the weft is plain, invisible yarn. So, they would card-weave the beginning of a piece, not with a continuous weft but with many long pieces which hung free, were weighted down, and used as warp for the rest of the piece. Once I understood that, my perception shifted. I am still not going to hand-weave an entire Goth dress (unless I win a lottery and never need to work a day in my life), but I know better what they were doing. Once you have woven fabric that gets cut and sewn, you can use borders for trim, that is, hemming, as I did with my Goth costume. But I might try card-weaving after all. All the trim one can buy is either unsatisfactory, incredibly expensive, or both.
I must stop this geek-out here, though, and get on with the picture post.
The iron age house in Venne, near Kalkriese. It shows how people lived before the Romans came.
Wood stored under the eaves. Some of it is fire-darkened, and probably meant for iron smelting; they do have a little smelt there. It's not a museum as such, but a living archaeology project that a) tries out things and b) works with history classes from schools so the kids get to see how our ancestors lived.
At first, the doors were closed.
Then, we went to the nearby farm café, and the woman running it got her retired father who had a key and loved showing people round -- here he is, holding an iron age lance. He was the one who kept talking about 'Celts' and claimed there were no Germanic tribes as such. There seems to be a tradition, it seems, to call all the tribes that lived in Germany before the Romans came 'Celts' as to deter all associations with backwards oriented nationalism. As a linguist, I bridle at that in several directions over a month later, still! What a nonsensical example of pouring out the baby with the bathwater because of over-avoidance of anything remotely Nazi-tainted. I found myself forced to think and write about the whole memplex almost two years ago already, and am heartily sick of the whole argument. I fear that the old farmer, who only learned about that special flavour of political correctness from the experimental archaeologists who are renting a bit of his land for their project, got the brunt of my linguistic bristling when I asked him why he was so sure it was Celts...
Their warp-weighted loom; it is not a properly working replica like that of Dr. Ellen in the museum. Look at the poor stuff they have sort of improvised decoratively.
Phallic little deities in the house
And the little guy protecting the otherwise October-barren garden inside its fence woven from twigs.
Timber framed street in Bad Essen, a town about 20 kilometres away. We didn't feel like turning in yet after the iron age house and the coffee at the café, and just spontaneously went and took pictures. It was very pretty there.
Church and little market in Bad Essen
Now, on to the main attraction: Kalkriese, assumed site of the Varus battle. Road signs only said 'Varus battle', without adding the word 'site', so I was amused at the fact that they apparently pointed two thousand years in the past. You can't visit the battle without a time machine, you can only see the presumed site.
In the summer, when there were much more visitors, this improvised Roman tavern must have done a brisk trade.
The centre piece of that art project: insignia by the museum, painted by school kids from all European countries, and then some.
Even those where Romans never set foot, like Finland.
Slovenia, though, definitely was a part of the Roman empire.
Moretum with bread and olives. Their moretum recipe, innocently listed on the menu, actually works: curd, crumbled goat cheese, salt, herbs, garlic, olive oil.
We took the guided tour with introduction. Dumping armour on an unsuspecting, eager kis until it almost collapses groaning is something living history people and museum people influenced by them like to do. It is always fun to see.
The equipment of a Germanic warrior was much lighter, in comparison. Here, the Germanic tribes were called that, again.
Little pewter legionaries, to show just how many Romans got killed there.
I liked the unintentional LOL-cat-ism.
Huge replica of the mask, at the entrance to the permanent exhibition. I took no pictures in the 2000th anniversary special exhibition -- too dark.
Small model of a Roman house.
Germanic house of the time; sorry for the reflected map. Basically, it works like the house in Venne from the day before, only less round at the ends. Viking houses work that way almost a thousand years later, too.
Compare the equipment of a Roman soldier and a Germanic tribesman, now without kids inside.
We see a legion slaughtered in a pinball model: 4 thousand orderly pinballs emerge, get into narrow terrain modelled after Kalkriese, then get swallowed by holes.
At the end, between 14 and 40 legionaries survive.
After all the countless replicas, here is the original.
The museum has a tall tower so one can look at the terrain from above. Here, the old farm that became part of the complex, and the art project.
The archaeological park with lowered terrain area, and actual working dig.
Steel plates pave the way; some have quotes from Roman authors about the battle.
Lowered terrain to show the landscape and the palisades that were discovered, at the level of 2000 years ago.
The actual working dig, closing down for the day.
Attention, biodegradable landmines! I have no ideas what they mean by that, but those signs were put up in several places of the park.
Tripods that get lit spectacularly for night events in summer.
Varus and his horse, pitifully sinking in the sad -- another modern art project.
The next day, on our way home, we visited the cathedral in Limburg as there had apparently not been enough churches on our trip yet. To be honest, we hadn't seen one from the inside for two days as we were preoccupied with pre-Christian history.
The house of the seven vices in Limburg: late medieval carvings representing some of those.
Timber framed houses in Limburg.
More timber framed houses. Shingle tiling is still possible there, too.
And then we went home.-