SPINDLE WHORL

Lead alloy weight, probably a spindle whorl dating from the 13th-15th century AD. The weight is circular in shape awith a central hole for the spindle. It is roughly rectangular in cross-section, with very worn surfaces. However, both sides are inscribed with almost floral lettering. Prof Elisabeth Okasha from University College Cork write this report on the object:

Spindle whorl

Examined 10 November 2017

Description

The circular spindle whorl is complete and undecorated except for the texts and the enclosing margins. It measures c. 3 cm in diameter, c. 0.6 cm in thickness, and the letters are c. 5 mm in height. Both faces of the whorl contain texts, referred to here as text 1 and text 2: text 2, on face 2, can be distinguished by the modern black dot it contains. Both texts are complete and are in relief lettering; they are set inside relief margins, which some letters touch. The texts appear to contain a mixture of capital and lower-case letters. In both texts the letters appear to read clockwise completely around the whorl, with the bottoms of the letters facing inwards. Text 1 is highly deteriorated though some letters can be made out; text 2 is so deteriorated as to be virtually illegible.

The possibility that the letters are retrograde (that is, a mirror-image) was investigated but in neither case did this lead to any clearer or more certain reading.

Readings

System of transliteration: the letters are transliterated into capitals where A indicates a legible letter A; A indicates a damaged letter A; [A] indicates a damaged letter probably to be read as A; [] indicates some letters totally lost; a colon indicates a deliberate dot in the text

Face 1, text 1:

+ [] D I : D H B [M]

There are c 5 letters lost from the lacuna.

The sequence DHB is quite clear but does not seem to be particularly meaningful, with or without the following possible M. The deliberate dot might be an abbreviation sign, in which case DI could be an abbreviated form of the Latin dei 'of God'.

Face 2, text 2:

+ D [I ] N D R B

There are c 3 letters lost from the lacuna.

This text is not sufficiently legible to be interpretable.

Conclusions

Both texts contain a cross as one of the letters; a cross is very common in circular inscriptions and almost always denotes the start of the text. Both the cross and the relief lettering indicate that these are primary texts, not inserted afterwards. That is, the whorl was deliberately manufactured to contain texts.

The script used suggests a date from the twelfth century onwards.

It is possible that these were 'real' texts, in the sense that they were meaningful to their composer. Indeed, it is possible that the language of text 1 was Latin and the text used a well-known religious word. However it is also possible that the texts were not 'real' but were simply sequences of letters, or of letter-like forms, used to add value to the whorl.

Professor Elisabeth Okasha
Acting Director
Language Centre
University College Cork
Cork
Ireland

Add:

Lead weights like these are common finds, but only rarely from excavated contexts which is why date and origin are difficult to pinpoint. Decorated lead-alloy weights are very rare finds in excavations, but are often found by metal detectorists. They are usually biconical or cylindrical in shape and are decorated on both faces with raised dots and radiating lines or zig-zag ribs. They have been found in ploughsoil over the site of Roman buildings, and in an excavated context dating from the 13th to the 15th century at an Austin Friary (Geake 2001). It is thus very difficult to date the decorated lead weights, and it seems that they could have been in use at any time between the Roman and Late Medieval periods. Helen Geake writes: "Dating of lead whorls is difficult. The drop spindle with which they were used continued in use until the end of the medieval period in London and Winchester (Egan 1998, "The Medieval Household: Daily Living c1150 - c1450"; and Biddle, 1990, "Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester"), and for perhaps a century longer in Norfolk (Margeson, 1993, "Norwich Households: Medieval and Post Medieval finds from Norwich Survey Excavations 1971 - 78"). The excavated assemblage from Winchester contains one lead whorl from a mid to late 10th century context." Undecorated spindle whorls can therefore date from the Roman, Early Medieval or Medieval periods. It has been pointed out that the weight of a spindle whorl is suggestive of the thickness of yarn produced, with lighter spindle whorls (3 - 5 grams) being used for spinning cotton and the heavier ones (30 - 35 grams) for spinning wool (Margeson 1993, 184).

Spindles were used to twist fabric fibres together to produce yarn. The whorls attached to the spindle acted as a weight to help to provide momentum whilst spinning and twisting the fibres together. This method of preparing yarn has been in use since prehistoric times and throughout the ages into the Roman, Medieval, Postmedieval and Modern periods. Margeson (1993, page 184)[1] has suggested that the weight of a spindle whorl is demonstrative of the thickness of yarn produced, with lighter spindle whorls (3 - 5 grams) being used for spinning cotton and the heavier ones (30 - 35 grams) for spinning wool. Since the weight of this spindle-whorl falls between these weight catagories it is remains unsure which material it would have been used with. Spindle whorls are difficult to date precisely out of their original context, since they were used through most historical and archaeological periods. Many of the later examples tend to be undecorated. Egan (1998, page 256)[2] has argued that there was an apparent lack of interest in developing decorative styles of spindle whorls during the Medieval period, compared to the decorative examples known from the Roman and Early Medieval periods. Although decorated examples are known of from Medieval and Post Medieval periods.

[1] Margeson S., 1993, Norwich Households: The Medieval and Post Medieval Finds from Norwich Survey Excavations 1971-1978; East Anglian Archaeology Report No. 58, 1993

[2] Egan, G., 1998, The Medieval Household Daily Living c.1150-c.1450; Medieval Finds from Excavations in London: 6; Museum of London