Dig deep into the details – Clothing from Vasa analysed at The Cultural Heritage Laboratory
- Date
- 23 February 2024, 13:00–15:00
- Location
- Observatorieparken Old Observatory, Kyrkogårdsgatan 8A, seminar room Cassipeia.
- Type
- Seminar
- Lecturer
- Anna Silwerulv is a dress and textile historian at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. Sara Norrehed – PhD in organic chemistry, Heritage Science Investigator at the National Heritage Board's Cultural Heritage Laboratory in Visby.
- Organiser
- Uppsala Technical Humanities Network and CIRCUS
- Contact person
- Britt-Inger Johansson
During the Vasa ship excavation in 1628, 12,000 textile and leather fragments were found—clothing, shoes and packing from the crew's belongings. Although these finds remained untouched in storage for an extended period, since 2017, efforts have been underway to document, analyze, and reconstruct these objects. This ongoing work aims to establish a basis for further research.
In 2019, Anna Silwerulv was accepted as a guest colleague at RAÄ's Cultural Heritage Laboratory in Visby to get help investigating which natural scientific analysis methods can be useful for studying objects. Sara Norrehed and Marei Hacke at the laboratory have supervised and helped with analyses of fibres, materials and colours using various optical microscopes, SEM, XRF, MBI and FTIR.
Anna Silwerulv specialises in the study of maritime archaeological textile finds and is responsible for researching the finds of clothes and shoes from the ship Vasa from 1628. Her research interest mainly concerns aspects of textiles and clothing from the early modern period, practical knowledge and interdisciplinary methods.
Sara will talk about the Cultural Heritage Laboratory and how they work with Guest Colleague projects, and Anna will talk about her experiences as a guest colleague and present the results of the analysis of the Vasa find.