The author of this archaeological analysis of medieval textiles will have to endure a review from a historian who would have been lost around a warp or weft system until reading this work. Heckett, however, writes her analysis in a way that welcomes the amateur but challenges the authorities in her field. She catalogues and analyzes artifacts from three major excavations that occurred from 1975 to 1988 beneath present-day Fishamble Street, John's Lane, and High Street. These artifacts were from the heart of Viking Dublin between Christ Church Cathedral and the River Liffey, which arguably is still the socio-cultural center of Dublin near the infamous Temple District.
Heckett provocatively challenges the traditional view of bareheaded Viking women who may have worn only Saxon or Frankish veils or wimples on occasion. Instead of an absence of or restrictions in headcoverings, she suggests a Hiberno-Nordic Dublin where women produced and wore a large variety of scarves, veils, wimples, caps, and bands of wool and silk, which required a manufacturing and trade network to extend as far as Constantinople or Baghdad. Heckett believes that the high-quality nature of these headcoverings suggests a distinction of power or high standard of living in Viking Dublin. She makes the sweeping argument that veils and wimples that appear so common in medieval illustrations in northern Europe may have been reserved for those of high station, while Dublin commoners may have had a fuller range of acceptable headcoverings. Regardless, Heckett places Dublin in the heart of the international textile trade and with the avant-garde of cloth production centers.
As with all medieval studies, the story is not only in the evidence but also in the lack thereof. Heckett demonstrates a very detailed, technical analysis of the surviving artifacts through numerous graphs that compare and contrast dimensions and composition with similar artifacts in Britain and Scandinavia. The author exhausts conversations on cloth technology, dyes, cloth production, sewing techniques, and plausible scenarios about the manner in which they were worn. At the same time, she openly and exactly identifies the remaining areas of inquiry that contain poor or no evidence. Although not always conclusive, Heckett supports her theories with references to medieval illustrations in manuscripts and tapestries, stone relief, crosses, chess sets, and grave discoveries across northern Europe and the Byzantine Empire. She augments this with an analysis of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon philology and contemporary literature, such as Njal's Saga, that contain references to clothing and textiles. She further extends a socioeconomic analysis of the dimensions and composition of the artifacts with respect to their use as common currency in trade through the form of Nordic ells or Persian-Arabic cubits.
The author does seem to argue with herself on the use of some of these headcoverings. For example, she never resolves whether the cap was used by itself or as underwear beneath other headcoverings or even as the lining of a helmet. Was it reserved for special occasions or used daily as a nightcap? The fact that textile artifacts of animal protein fibers, such as wool or silk, survive but not those of linen and cellulose fiber, does limit our knowledge on the scope of how numerous these headcoverings were. This fact alone limits any theory as to how common these headcoverings were. Heckett also explores the subject of secondary usage in which these textiles could have been originally manufactured as other clothing and then turned into headcoverings in their secondary use, which plays havoc on theories trying to discover their use by analyzing their construction. In addition, no loom from this era has been unearthed in Viking Dublin, which has added further mystery to the production of Dublin textiles. Heckett's theories on the use of Norwegian or Byzantine-style looms are simply conjecture on this point.
The reader would have benefited enormously if the Discussion section of the book, which examines the origin and trade networks of the wool and silk as well as the social and textile landscape of Dublin, would have appeared at the beginning of the work. Instead, it interrupts the effective flow of graphed data, analysis, and artifact catalogues that seem disconnected with the final Conclusions section. Also, Heckett does not prepare the reader for her conclusion that the close-fitting caps were worn mainly by women, which she emphasizes through the inclusion of modern artistic illustrations that only portray women throughout the book. More archaeological evidence and further analysis of Hiberno-Nordic culture are necessary for this conclusion.
Heckett is also enamored by the production of statistics that may be stronger in appearance than in contextual reality. In the non-random selection of 41 wool and 27 silk artifacts, which were selected "because of their similarity of structure and possible function" from over two thousand textile artifacts that were found in the three excavations, her exact computations such as 54% of the Z/Z silk pieces being fringed or 29.6% of the silk pieces being sewn, seem superfluous when the reality of those numbers represent only six fringed Z/Z silk pieces or eight sewn silk artifacts respectively. Are these detailed statistics significant?
The author intentionally challenges us with some unanswered questions. If there was common construction of the wool cloth, was it constructed in organized weaving workshops or in homes under careful regulation or disciplined convention? What is the socioeconomic or cultural importance of the silk cloth being cut to match the dimensions of standard wool construction in Dublin? Were there gender boundaries for us to consider? And what was the significance of that large purple silk veil that does not seem to match the other artifacts?
Heckett successfully uses the archaeological discoveries of Patrick Wallace and Declan Murtagh to advance our social, cultural, and economic understanding of Viking Dublin and its place in the larger medieval world.