caa a22 4500 445358947 CHVBK 20180317142909.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20111101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00334-011-0324-0 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00334-011-0324-0 Retting pits for textile fibre plants at Danish prehistoric sites dated between 800 b.c. and a.d. 1050 [Elektronische Daten] [Stina Andresen, Sabine Karg] During the last decade, a new type of structure has been found at several archaeological sites in Denmark. These structures can be interpreted as having been used for retting the stems of textile plants such as Linum usitatissimum L. (flax), Cannabis sativa L. (hemp) and Urtica dioica L. (nettle). In order to obtain fine threads for textile production, these plants need to pass through several biological and technical processes. The first process is the retting of the plant stems to dissolve the pectin which fixes the fibres to the stalk. This can either be done by water retting, where the plant stems are soaked in lakes, rivers or waterlogged pits, or by field retting, where the stems are laid out in a field in order to absorb dew. The first method is shorter in time and the process is easier to control. In this article, details of archaeological structures are presented from eight sites in southern Scandinavia that can be interpreted as textile plant retting pits. The constructions of the pits are described, as well as the archaeological contexts and the relevant associated archaeobotanical records. Some of the presented sites, of which the oldest are dated to the late Bronze Age and early pre-Roman Iron Age (800-250 b.c.) and the youngest to the Viking Age (a.d. 750-1050), indicate a large-scale production of flax that had been underestimated up to now. Springer-Verlag, 2011 Retting pits nationallicence Denmark nationallicence Linum usitatissimum nationallicence Cannabis sativa nationallicence Late Bronze Age nationallicence Viking Age nationallicence Andresen Stina Museet for Varde By og Omegn, Lundvej 4, 6800, Varde, Denmark aut Karg Sabine National Museum of Denmark, Frederiksholms Kanal 12, 1220, Copenhagen K, Denmark aut Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Springer-Verlag 20/6(2011-11-01), 517-526 0939-6314 20:6<517 2011 20 334 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0324-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0324-0 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Andresen Stina Museet for Varde By og Omegn, Lundvej 4, 6800, Varde, Denmark aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Karg Sabine National Museum of Denmark, Frederiksholms Kanal 12, 1220, Copenhagen K, Denmark aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Springer-Verlag 20/6(2011-11-01), 517-526 0939-6314 20:6<517 2011 20 334 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer