 So, good morning everyone. I'm going to be talking today about a project that I'm setting up with a colleague to see if her stuff wasn't as she couldn't unfortunate to be here but We're going to be talking. Well, we're going to be investigating sheep, which is my kind of thing But we're also going to go more into textile production, which in the iron age which she is a specialist of. So And we also have a star under the project that is going to study Modern-day sheep keeping as well with an artist who's going to document that But I'm not going to be talking about that. So this is really like, you know, we don't have that much results. These are more kind of preliminary thoughts I'm going to link up quite a lot to what you said about the Sharon Potora or the wool chain as we call it so But What I thought was quite compelling about this session is that we are really interested in in those aspects that are invisible And that's what I've been working with for a long time trying to get the social Relationships between humans and animals and that's when I discovered sheep and wool textile So our so there is one factor in this process that is often rendered invisible and that is That's our starting point is that textile production is impossible without sheep But the life of sheep and their prerequisites to thrive are often invisible in textile studies We consider sheep as sentient beings with the capacity to Act as co-domestic beings and as such co-creators of shared human animal life worlds Today and in the past Sheep are important animals in terms of social life research management and transhumans And in Western Norway, whereas which is why we're working and I forgot to put a map, but you will know where that is, right? Sheep have been very important in Influencing the development of landscapes of farm life of shaping the yearly cycle providing wool for textile production and trade from the early Bronze Age onwards until present-day and In this deep time frame life and death of sheep have become Entangled with human life and human death and are inextricably bound to the development of human society So this paper considers how humans and sheep share a deep history of co-domestic Traditional ways of living in Western Norway that goes back to the introduction of sheep in the middle of the week until present-day Management practices of sheep include a wide variety of material culture, which is a result of primary and secondary product strategies and spans textiles architecture and the ecosystem of pastures Activities linked to the procurement of these products are social activities Which create not of sheep human materiality leading to embodied products and practices So our project tries to examine and document past practices of co-domestic human sheep lifeways and deathways How past satiities and past human sheep practices have interwoven sheep materiality and humans in similar and different ways So what we want to discuss here is how perspectives And might be implemented in Bronze Age and migration period studies incorporating grazing regimes and textile work since the early Bronze Age, which is about 1700-1800 Before Common Era in Norway sheep have been vital to herding and farming communities in Western Norway Not only because of the precious wool that they give but also because activities linked to wool procurement are social events Although a large number of studies of wool textiles have been done These have traditionally focused on technological aspects of textile production and The associated knowledge systems held and performed by human agents Lately the potential wool fibres is a source of knowledge of mobility and trade patterns is calling to the fore However, missing from these studies and the interpretation of their results for society at large is a consideration of the sheep From whom the wool fibres have come So We wish to go beyond traditional textile archaeology and look at what Serena was also introducing in beginning by giving grace or importance to sheep and focusing and Introducing a stronger focus on wool as a product of a living sheep given again and again through their lifespan We acknowledge that wool quality is determined by the life history of the sheep such as their age and sex their breed and feed Therefore we wish to explore knowledge systems which incorporate an agency perspective that links human sheep and technology This perspective entails that animals are recognized as sentient beings and sheep have the capacity to act as co-domestic beings Rather than as passive entities Thereby sheep partake in shaping human sheep practices such as penning, lambing, shearing, marooing and transhumans So our project is centered around two overarching research questions And that is how does the ontological status of sheep and wool develop and change through the ages? And then we're talking about from the early Bronze Age until present day And how does the procurement of sheep will create a complex system of knowledge from breeding, lambing, transhumans, flock management, procurement practices to textile Implicitly knowledge systems are investigated both as a production of human society and as a production of sheep society So what is a sheep society? This perspective is informed by Dimitri Neckis that holds that by the use of soft tools like bodily performance Intelligence and history their social skills and strategies form complex societies that depend upon the social transference of knowledge and tradition from one generation to the next Such societies differ from human societies and that they are not fixed stable and durable Nonetheless by use of their social skills sheep live in a society with their own kin and sometimes also with other species such as us and herding dogs So Specializable production is a long and complex process with many stages as they're saying And these each stage requires complex knowledge systems that result from hands-on experience In which key members of a community must hold maintain Control and distribute this tacit knowledge The knowledge systems create products as well as Practices and include a number of stakeholders beyond the sheep and the farmers that come together to create different knots of human sheep into reality And these can manifest sheep dog trials autumn gatherings a cheaper put down from pasture championships and sheep Shearing for example as well as nesting wool cardigans and so on And the architecture of sheep housing and the ecosystem of pastures So the production of high-quality wool textiles is then a long and complicated process with many stages and each stage requires specialized knowledge and experience and It starts really with the sheep and sheep breeding the lambing as you can see here, which is a particularly vulnerable phase that requires Particular knowledge as well and I can easily go wrong So in the words of Alexandra Lanyon's production starts with selecting the right brand for the use And there are different strategies also for grazing sheep One that has come in today and has a deep time depth in Western Norway is transhumans mountain grazing But another strategy is their role say Sheep that you can see here that only eats seaweed and that greatly influences the quality of their wool and Another aspect of grazing strategies, of course, it's herding sheep protecting them when they're out there in The wild landscapes and in Western Norway inaccessible topography is in the mountains Create fringes in the landscape where it can be difficult and dangerous for humans to follow the domestic animals particularly sheep And this kind of transhuman setups So in this situation then in herding This is something I've worked a lot on sheep dogs are vital to herding sheep So there are three kinds of beings. It's the human shepherd that acts as a Self-proclaimed main agent. It's the flock of sheep that are by category the animal others And then it is the sheep dogs that are kind of in between beings have to do complex and autonomous problem-solving and can be both necessary tools but also partners to the shepherd and This often happens in kind of dangerous hilly fringe landscapes and Sheep dogs are thus beings on the fringe. They're kind of hybrid in between status of hybrid Not quite human obviously not quite animal in a way either And operates in fringe landscapes as well So then it's the room in plucking a shearing of the wool the sorting and cleaning preparation For spinning and we have a lot of evidence from us to know I have spinning from our nature graves female graves with lots of spindles worlds, but also other finds I will hear about later for surveys and song Dying of course is an important part of process and I was thinking that that's also something that might feed back into the grazing Rishis because it requires knowledge of plants and where to find them in the landscape And then the finished threads is used for making textiles in a variety of techniques and This is the the light this last stage of the wool chain is what is best known to us due to extensive studies and Analysis of textile production and also experimental work. Of course, it's just what you can see here tablet woven bands from Migration theory western Norway, so we're going to just briefly bring up a case study from western Norway, which is dated to the migration period 400 to 550 common era Which is a period that's really rich in more female graves, but also in textile tools and and textiles So the textiles from this period are very very high quality And we regularly find spindles weaving bathrooms and so on in areas so we're going to talk a little bit about that this deposition from a place called tegla in team a municipality and in this One find There was an unspun wool fleece wool. There was spun yarn There was like yarn real a ball of yarn there was a War with tablet woven Salvage or unfinished wrap There was woven fabric There was also from breeches actually and there's also twisted human hair that was included in and this and everything was put together to in a sack of left that was made from leftover textiles and What's interesting about this is that all of this stuff is kind of unfinished it's it represents different stages of a process so someone I work with this Sunivan Halvosson emphasise that it has a temporary quality to the deposited items and She says that these are the subsequent tasks in the textile process focusing on the transition from spinning to weaving and Describes them as being a very high quality But so there's very fine span yarn, but there's also kind of more rough yarn So she has interpreted is as both made by a master spinner and also by an apprentice and that Therefore it could be young woman's kind of coming of age ritual deposition So we understand this deposit in terms of Alexander Langdon's idea that power or skill in the context of knowledge ability And kind of learning is a mental skill in addition to the more physical one Form of knowledge not just of making laws of being Is something that must be learned in depth and takes time? This is a hand-eye head-heart body coordination that furnishes us with a meaningful understanding and materiality of our world Unbroken chain of bodily movements and actions interacting physically with the material requirements Okay, I think I'll just stop there since I'm out of time Yeah, but the main part thing about our project is that we want to kind of bring in the social dynamics of working with sheep into Into the life world of humans as well and especially these women who were the ones that were controlling and Kind of the knowledge bears and creating knowledge systems together with the knowledge systems of the sheep So kind of yeah Becoming with women and sheep. Okay. Thank you