More from Lengberg

Just when you thought the finds from Lengberg couldn't get more revolutionary... well, they've done it again. Beatrix Nutz has recently posted an article on academia.edu describing several wrapped-thread buttons which have been dated to the 15th Century. This pushes back the dating for this sort of buttons from the 17th Century to the 15th Century, although there is one other previously described 15th Century wrapped-thread button.

Many thanks to Cathy Raymond at Loose Threads for bringing my attention to this article.

The missing 14th C sleeveless shift

I'm afraid work and hot weather mean no actual interesting things of my own to report on.

However, in more Lengberg-related news, Cathy Raymond has written an interesting blog post about late medieval underwear, specifically the Lengberg pants and whether they are a male or female garment.

She also links to a recent PDF by Rebecca Lucas, who has hunted through the literature to answer one of the great mysteries of late medieval underwear. Namely, the source of the sleeveless "chemise of the fourteenth century" shown in a black-and-white photograph in Kohler's "A History of Costume":

It is from a cash of objects found during building work in 1867 in Burg Rahnis, Thuringia, Germany. It is described as being made of coarse linen, not silk as has been previously speculated, with "inserted wedges on both sides" (translation by Rebecca Lucas). It was kept in a private collection, possibly the museum at Burg Rahnis - however, this museum was sacked in World War II and its contents stolen. The whereabouts of the shift is currently unknown.

However, that's a lot more information than I previously had - simply that it was lost in World War II.

Lengberg underwear: thoughts on the pants

Just pondering on the Lengberg underwear some more...

I am curious as to why some people (often re-enactors, or SCA) are so adamant that the bikini-like pants must be a female garment. The argument of "women must have worn pants" doesn't make much sense to me. We know that in many later eras women did not routinely wear pants (or wore crotchless ones), making that argument (at least in its most blanket form) false.

I can certainly understand the argument that "women must have done something at that time of the month" - but why does it have to be pants (a la mens'), and why does wearing something for one's period automatically equate to wearing something for the rest of the month too? This argument seems particularly nonsensical to me when it comes to the mid-1300s and before, when mens' braies were huge baggy things that would not be able to hold any conjectural medieval sanitary pad close against the crotch.

In any case, the argument I've been reading about the Lengberg pants in particular is that they look nothing like the mens' braies seen in 14th C and 15th C manuscript illustrations. True. However, a lot of those illustrations are French or English. Also, may I direct you to a woodcut and a sketch by Albrecht Durer: The Men's Bathhouse (c. 1498) and Self Portrait as an Act (c. 1507). Yes, these are at the very end of the 15th C / very beginning of the 16th C. However, I don't know how precise the Lengberg radiocarbon date of "15th C" is. Also, the images are from the correct country. In any case, they definitively show men wearing bikini-style pants.

Lengburg underwear: more articles

Seeing as I know there are a few of us out there who are waiting with baited breath for any fresh details regarding the Lengberg underwear finds, I thought I would share these two articles from medievalists.net. The latter article is particularly interesting as it describes the four 'bras'/'corslettes', including the placement of the sprang which had been mentioned previously. Apparently it is between the cups on at least one of the 'bras'.

And, of course, now that I go look there appears to be several new articles that have popped up over the last few months, which I have not noticed before: