Textile manufacture in Viking-Age Ribe: between réseau opératoire, gig economy, and household industry

As a part of this semester's research presentations, the Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen would like to invite interested parties to a presentation by Sarah Croix, Institute for Culture and Society - Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, University of Aarhus.

Contrary to the other specialized crafts that characterized the economic activities of the Viking-Age emporia in Scandinavia, textile production is also abundantly documented in other contexts, such as farmsteads and coastal production sites. Therefore, its significance for the economic strategies and social relations of households and communities was probably equally varied. Through a careful analysis of the tools for textile production from Birka and Hedeby, Eva Andersson Strand has previously shown the degree of specialization of this craft in an urban context and proposed an Abstracts for lectures analytical model with four levels to characterize production: Household production; Household industry / putting out system; Attached specialist production; and Workshops. Acknowledging the importance of the social and economic settings for understanding the role(s) of textile production, I will present in this lecture a close analysis of the contexts in which this craft occurred alongside other activities in the dwellings of the emporium of Viking-Age Ribe. In this way, I will show how textile production was integrated in the urban households’ economic strategies and their everyday life. This will lead to a discussion of how fruitful the application of two additional concepts may be for understanding the significance of textile manufacture: réseau opératoire, focusing on collaboration and interrelation between textile manufacture and other crafts; gig economy, as a way of approaching the relative importance of this manufacture within the frame of the other economic strategies of these households.

The presentation will be followed by a discussion.

Zoom Link

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We expect everybody to turn on the camera and have your name as the “name tag”.

You are also more than welcome to join us at CTR, considering current covid restrictions.

It is not necessary to sign up for the presentation.