Below are photographs from recent trips, places sought out for their connection to the history of textiles as technology and expression.
 

A haptic encounter creates a felt link to deep time that no secondary research can approximate. To stand before very old objects can feel disorienting, almost vertiginous. It is a kind of Stendhal syndrome in which beauty resides less in ornament than in duration, in the knowledge that these structures still carry the trace of touch.
 

Textiles are among the earliest human technologies, predating agriculture and writing. Textile production was essential to survival. Clothing, shelter, nets, and sails made the loom as foundational as the plow or hand axe. Yet textile labor, often gendered and domestic, is frequently erased in the archaeological record. Cloth decays, and what remains is dismissed as peripheral.
 

Any archaeological interest also raises questions of access, preservation, and who gets to look. My position shapes the encounter, and I try to remain conscious of that asymmetry.