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Books by Warren Woodfin
From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles, 2018
Exhibition catalogue. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, in... more Exhibition catalogue. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, including works by Wells Chandler and Gail Rothschild. The Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, September 13-December 13, 2018.
Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor, 2015
Articles by Warren Woodfin
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2024
The covered cup, discovered in 1981 during the salvage excavation of a burial mound in southern U... more The covered cup, discovered in 1981 during the salvage excavation of a burial mound in southern Ukraine, is an impressive example of secular metalwork from around 1200. The cup’s interior contains a cast silver-gilt lion and a hitherto undetected siphon mechanism, making it one of the first preserved automata from Europe and the earliest known Western medieval example of this type of trick vessel. The cup from the Chungul Kurgan
helps to clarify the probable operation of the chantepleure illustrated in the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt and sheds light on possible other medieval automata. The cup’s presence in the same burial with other works from the same approximate date and region suggests historical circumstances that might have resulted in its burial with a nomadic leader in the steppe.
Μετάξι και πορφύρα: Ο κόσμος του βυζαντινού και μεταβυζαντινού υφάσματος" (Silk and Purple: The World of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Textiles), Kapon Editions, Athens, ed. N. Vryzidis, P. Androudis and M. Martiniani-Reber, 2023
English draft of the Introduction (published in Greek translation as «Θάλασσα από ύφασμα. Υφάσματ... more English draft of the Introduction (published in Greek translation as «Θάλασσα από ύφασμα. Υφάσματα της Μεσογείου από την ύστερη αρχαιότητα έως την πρώιμη νεότερη εποχή»), in Nikolaos Vryzidis, Paschalis Androudis, and Marielle Martiniani Reber's volume, Μετάξι και πορφύρα, pp. 12–17.
Autour des métiers du luxe à Byzance, ed. Marielle Martiniani-Reber, André-Louis Rey, et Gabriella Lini, avec la collaboration de Nicole Liaudet, 2022
The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture, edited by Ellen C. Schwartz, 2021
Byzantine textile arts can be grouped into Late Antique/Early Byzantine, Middle Byzantine, and L... more Byzantine textile arts can be grouped into Late Antique/Early Byzantine, Middle Byzantine, and Late Byzantine categories, dominated respectively by tapestry-woven decoration in wool, patterned silk textiles, and gold embroideries. Accidents of preservation have played a major role in determining what survives from each period and should be kept in mind when evaluating the history of Byzantine textile production. Nonetheless, these categories seem to reflect a series of real shifts in the focus of production. The first is a pivot from domestic consumption to the international mercantile context of silk production, controlled by the Byzantine court. The second, following economic and military setbacks (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), is a new emphasis on embroidered decoration, with the Orthodox Church as the dominant patron.
Cahiers Balkaniques 48, special issue, L'évolution de la broderie de tradition byzantine en Méditerranée orientale et dans le monde slave (1200-1800), 2021
It has long been a shared assumption of textile specialists that the underside couching technique... more It has long been a shared assumption of textile specialists that the underside couching technique was used exclusively in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. England is the most renowned medieval center of gold embroidery in this technique, although sporadic examples are known from other centers, particularly in Italy. Works of gold embroidery that employ underside couching, no matter how Byzantine their stylistic appearance, have been attributed to Western workshops based on the principle that the Byzantines were ignorant of the technique. New information, however, should prompt a reevaluation of this assumption. Several examples that have recently come to light from the regions north of the Black Sea suggest that the Byzantines and their Slavic neighbors may have experimented with the underside couching technique in the twel h and early thirteenth centuries.
Architecture and Visual Culture in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honor of Robert G. Ousterhout, edited by Vasileios Marinis, Amy Papalexandrou, and Jordan Pickett, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
The Eloquence of Art: Essays in Honour of Henry Maguire, edited by Andrea Olsen Lam and Rossitza Schroeder, 2020
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 41, 2017
The enormous prestige accorded to Byzantine cloisonné enamel seems to have continued into the Pal... more The enormous prestige accorded to Byzantine cloisonné enamel seems to have continued into the Palaiologan period, although evidence suggests that its production ceased in the decades after the Fourth Crusade. The medium of the imperial images described by Pseudo-Kodinos as ὑπὸ ὑελίου λεγομένου διαγελάστου, which was worn on the headgear of thirteen ranks of court officials, is here identified as verre églomisé, reverse painting on glass. A reading of Pseudo-Kodinos' treatise alongside surviving works of art suggests that fourteenth-century Byzantines were consciously using ersatz media in an effort to keep up the appearance of continuity with the empire's more prosperous past.
Textile Terms: A Glossary, edited by Anika Reineke, Anne Röhl, Mateusz Kapustka, and Tristan Weddigen, Mar 2017
An enameled cup from an early thirteenth-century nomad's grave in Ukraine, published here in full... more An enameled cup from an early thirteenth-century nomad's grave in Ukraine, published here in full for the first time, invites a reassessment of a group of enamels featuring allegedly “un-Byzantine” motifs and techniques. The cup, attributed to twelfth-century Constantinople, bears figures of dancing women among trees, an image paralleled in the period's secular literature. This literary context, in turn, helps clarify the iconography of works such as the Crown of Constantine Monomachos and the Innsbruck bowl. The cup from the Chungul Kurgan thus helps to correct mistaken generalizations about the sources of secular imagery in Middle Byzantine art.
Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor, ed. Mateusz Kapustka and Warren T. Woodfin (Emsdetten/Berlin: Edition Imorde, 2015), pp. 13–32
[From the Introduction by Mateusz Kapustka and Warren Woodfin] Warren Woodfin’s contribution to ... more [From the Introduction by Mateusz Kapustka and Warren Woodfin]
Warren Woodfin’s contribution to this volume explores in particular this theme of the liturgy—in this case, the Byzantine liturgy—as a historical reenactment of the life of Christ. While the mystagogical commentaries on the liturgy attribute specific meanings to the various articles of priestly vesture, the iconography of surviving liturgical vestments is surprisingly poorly matched to the symbolism encoded in the texts. Rather, the stereotyped cycle of narrative scenes from the Gospels, which appears with frequency on embroidered vestments from the late Byzantine period, helps to articulate the role of the celebrant as a stand-in for Christ himself.
Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011, ed. Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson, 2013
in Kariye Camii, Yeniden / The Kariye Camii Reconsidered, ed. H. Klein, R. Ousterhout, and B. Pitarakis, 2011
in The Byzantine World, ed. Paul Stephenson, 2010
The medieval Ḳipčaḳ burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the Southern Ukrainian steppe presents a se... more The medieval Ḳipčaḳ burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the Southern Ukrainian steppe presents a seemingly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the burial—here dated to the opening decades of the thirteenth century—is inserted into a previously extant tumulus of Bronze Age date, and the evidence of funerary ritual points towards the continuation of shamanist practices. On the other hand, the grave goods are largely composed of luxury objects associated with elite patronage among the sedentary societies of Western Europe, Rus′, and the Mediterranean zone. This juxtaposition is carried through in the partially preserved costumes excavated from the burial. These present features that recall elements of official court dress in Byzantium and in the neighboring Christian and Islamic polities. While several of the garments take the essentially Turkic form of the caftan, they incorporate in their applied decoration elements not normally associated with this particular garment.
Close examination of the textiles from the Chungul Kurgan has revealed that they almost certainly represent the reuse of imported silks, gold-woven bands, and gold embroideries that came into the possession of the nomadic Ḳipčaḳs as gifts, trade items, or spoils of their raids on their sedentary neighbors. These include a panel of figural embroidery likely cut from a liturgical textile. Another group of embroideries and appliqués once formed a loros, the ceremonial scarf of Byzantine emperors, which was widely imitated in the dress and portraiture of other rulers in the region. A range of possible degrees of intentionality can govern the use of textile spolia—from strictly utilitarian reuse to the deliberately imitative, or victorious, appropriation of the insignia of another culture. The authors conclude that the way in which the textile elements were redeployed on the preserved garments represents at least a partial understanding of their meaning within their original contexts. Their reuse for the decoration of riding caftans incorporates the symbolic language of power and prestige that these insignia conveyed among the neighboring courtly cultures while preserving a distinctive, nomadic sartorial identity.
Gesta, 2008
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Jan 1, 2006
From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles, 2018
Exhibition catalogue. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, in... more Exhibition catalogue. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, including works by Wells Chandler and Gail Rothschild. The Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, September 13-December 13, 2018.
Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor, 2015
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2024
The covered cup, discovered in 1981 during the salvage excavation of a burial mound in southern U... more The covered cup, discovered in 1981 during the salvage excavation of a burial mound in southern Ukraine, is an impressive example of secular metalwork from around 1200. The cup’s interior contains a cast silver-gilt lion and a hitherto undetected siphon mechanism, making it one of the first preserved automata from Europe and the earliest known Western medieval example of this type of trick vessel. The cup from the Chungul Kurgan
helps to clarify the probable operation of the chantepleure illustrated in the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt and sheds light on possible other medieval automata. The cup’s presence in the same burial with other works from the same approximate date and region suggests historical circumstances that might have resulted in its burial with a nomadic leader in the steppe.
Μετάξι και πορφύρα: Ο κόσμος του βυζαντινού και μεταβυζαντινού υφάσματος" (Silk and Purple: The World of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Textiles), Kapon Editions, Athens, ed. N. Vryzidis, P. Androudis and M. Martiniani-Reber, 2023
English draft of the Introduction (published in Greek translation as «Θάλασσα από ύφασμα. Υφάσματ... more English draft of the Introduction (published in Greek translation as «Θάλασσα από ύφασμα. Υφάσματα της Μεσογείου από την ύστερη αρχαιότητα έως την πρώιμη νεότερη εποχή»), in Nikolaos Vryzidis, Paschalis Androudis, and Marielle Martiniani Reber's volume, Μετάξι και πορφύρα, pp. 12–17.
Autour des métiers du luxe à Byzance, ed. Marielle Martiniani-Reber, André-Louis Rey, et Gabriella Lini, avec la collaboration de Nicole Liaudet, 2022
The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture, edited by Ellen C. Schwartz, 2021
Byzantine textile arts can be grouped into Late Antique/Early Byzantine, Middle Byzantine, and L... more Byzantine textile arts can be grouped into Late Antique/Early Byzantine, Middle Byzantine, and Late Byzantine categories, dominated respectively by tapestry-woven decoration in wool, patterned silk textiles, and gold embroideries. Accidents of preservation have played a major role in determining what survives from each period and should be kept in mind when evaluating the history of Byzantine textile production. Nonetheless, these categories seem to reflect a series of real shifts in the focus of production. The first is a pivot from domestic consumption to the international mercantile context of silk production, controlled by the Byzantine court. The second, following economic and military setbacks (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), is a new emphasis on embroidered decoration, with the Orthodox Church as the dominant patron.
Cahiers Balkaniques 48, special issue, L'évolution de la broderie de tradition byzantine en Méditerranée orientale et dans le monde slave (1200-1800), 2021
It has long been a shared assumption of textile specialists that the underside couching technique... more It has long been a shared assumption of textile specialists that the underside couching technique was used exclusively in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. England is the most renowned medieval center of gold embroidery in this technique, although sporadic examples are known from other centers, particularly in Italy. Works of gold embroidery that employ underside couching, no matter how Byzantine their stylistic appearance, have been attributed to Western workshops based on the principle that the Byzantines were ignorant of the technique. New information, however, should prompt a reevaluation of this assumption. Several examples that have recently come to light from the regions north of the Black Sea suggest that the Byzantines and their Slavic neighbors may have experimented with the underside couching technique in the twel h and early thirteenth centuries.
Architecture and Visual Culture in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honor of Robert G. Ousterhout, edited by Vasileios Marinis, Amy Papalexandrou, and Jordan Pickett, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
The Eloquence of Art: Essays in Honour of Henry Maguire, edited by Andrea Olsen Lam and Rossitza Schroeder, 2020
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 41, 2017
The enormous prestige accorded to Byzantine cloisonné enamel seems to have continued into the Pal... more The enormous prestige accorded to Byzantine cloisonné enamel seems to have continued into the Palaiologan period, although evidence suggests that its production ceased in the decades after the Fourth Crusade. The medium of the imperial images described by Pseudo-Kodinos as ὑπὸ ὑελίου λεγομένου διαγελάστου, which was worn on the headgear of thirteen ranks of court officials, is here identified as verre églomisé, reverse painting on glass. A reading of Pseudo-Kodinos' treatise alongside surviving works of art suggests that fourteenth-century Byzantines were consciously using ersatz media in an effort to keep up the appearance of continuity with the empire's more prosperous past.
Textile Terms: A Glossary, edited by Anika Reineke, Anne Röhl, Mateusz Kapustka, and Tristan Weddigen, Mar 2017
An enameled cup from an early thirteenth-century nomad's grave in Ukraine, published here in full... more An enameled cup from an early thirteenth-century nomad's grave in Ukraine, published here in full for the first time, invites a reassessment of a group of enamels featuring allegedly “un-Byzantine” motifs and techniques. The cup, attributed to twelfth-century Constantinople, bears figures of dancing women among trees, an image paralleled in the period's secular literature. This literary context, in turn, helps clarify the iconography of works such as the Crown of Constantine Monomachos and the Innsbruck bowl. The cup from the Chungul Kurgan thus helps to correct mistaken generalizations about the sources of secular imagery in Middle Byzantine art.
Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form, and Metaphor, ed. Mateusz Kapustka and Warren T. Woodfin (Emsdetten/Berlin: Edition Imorde, 2015), pp. 13–32
[From the Introduction by Mateusz Kapustka and Warren Woodfin] Warren Woodfin’s contribution to ... more [From the Introduction by Mateusz Kapustka and Warren Woodfin]
Warren Woodfin’s contribution to this volume explores in particular this theme of the liturgy—in this case, the Byzantine liturgy—as a historical reenactment of the life of Christ. While the mystagogical commentaries on the liturgy attribute specific meanings to the various articles of priestly vesture, the iconography of surviving liturgical vestments is surprisingly poorly matched to the symbolism encoded in the texts. Rather, the stereotyped cycle of narrative scenes from the Gospels, which appears with frequency on embroidered vestments from the late Byzantine period, helps to articulate the role of the celebrant as a stand-in for Christ himself.
Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011, ed. Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson, 2013
in Kariye Camii, Yeniden / The Kariye Camii Reconsidered, ed. H. Klein, R. Ousterhout, and B. Pitarakis, 2011
in The Byzantine World, ed. Paul Stephenson, 2010
The medieval Ḳipčaḳ burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the Southern Ukrainian steppe presents a se... more The medieval Ḳipčaḳ burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the Southern Ukrainian steppe presents a seemingly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the burial—here dated to the opening decades of the thirteenth century—is inserted into a previously extant tumulus of Bronze Age date, and the evidence of funerary ritual points towards the continuation of shamanist practices. On the other hand, the grave goods are largely composed of luxury objects associated with elite patronage among the sedentary societies of Western Europe, Rus′, and the Mediterranean zone. This juxtaposition is carried through in the partially preserved costumes excavated from the burial. These present features that recall elements of official court dress in Byzantium and in the neighboring Christian and Islamic polities. While several of the garments take the essentially Turkic form of the caftan, they incorporate in their applied decoration elements not normally associated with this particular garment.
Close examination of the textiles from the Chungul Kurgan has revealed that they almost certainly represent the reuse of imported silks, gold-woven bands, and gold embroideries that came into the possession of the nomadic Ḳipčaḳs as gifts, trade items, or spoils of their raids on their sedentary neighbors. These include a panel of figural embroidery likely cut from a liturgical textile. Another group of embroideries and appliqués once formed a loros, the ceremonial scarf of Byzantine emperors, which was widely imitated in the dress and portraiture of other rulers in the region. A range of possible degrees of intentionality can govern the use of textile spolia—from strictly utilitarian reuse to the deliberately imitative, or victorious, appropriation of the insignia of another culture. The authors conclude that the way in which the textile elements were redeployed on the preserved garments represents at least a partial understanding of their meaning within their original contexts. Their reuse for the decoration of riding caftans incorporates the symbolic language of power and prestige that these insignia conveyed among the neighboring courtly cultures while preserving a distinctive, nomadic sartorial identity.
Gesta, 2008
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Jan 1, 2006
In Byzantium: Faith & Power (1261-1557), ed. Helen C. Evans / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, , 2004
Cahiers Archeologiques, 2003
![Research paper thumbnail of Трофеї половецького вождя з Чунгульського кургану: переужиток, ритуальні функції та символіка [A Cuman Chief’s Trophy from Chunhul Barrow: Reuse, Ritual Functions, and Symbolism]Part 2](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/51322279/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Arkheolohiia, 2016
This article consists of two parts, summarizing the authors’ findings from the past decade of res... more This article consists of two parts, summarizing the authors’ findings from the past decade of research on the well-known and partially published complex of the Chungul Kurgan.
The present article lays out the phases of the ritual of the burial of the Polovtsian leader as reconstructed by the authors on the basis of the detailed documentation made at the time of the excavation in 1981. Six phases of the burial process can be identified from archaeological evidence. These are as follows. (1) The digging of a ditch that encircles the sacred space for the burial around the perimeter of the previous Bronze Age kurgan. (2) The raising of earthen ramparts in a circle within this ditch, with a bowl-like contour sloping gently toward the center. As soon as the construction of the ramparts was completed, phase (3), the digging of the burial pit began in the center of this enclosed space. This pit, containing the wooden coffin of the deceased as well as supplies of meat and drink, was oriented east-west and closed with a wooden cover. Around the perimeter of the pit, five sacrificial horses were laid out and subsequently sealed within a layer of clay. (4) The erection of a small ritual platform over the level of the horse burials. (5) The erection of a larger ritual platform within the ramparts, which also entailed the construction of a paved floor and an apse with white limestone brought from afar. Probable remains of sacrifices, including a horse skull, the skeleton of a large dog, and a human skeleton, are associated with this phase. (6) The filling and sealing of the kurgan into its final, truncated-cone shape. The second part of the article, which will appear in the next issue, will treat individual imported artifacts and the nature of their reuse in the context of the burial.
This article interprets as trophies many of the grave goods excavated from the burial of a steppe leader — likely a Polovtsian ‘prince’ — within the Chungul kurgan in southern Ukraine. The current study focuses on three kinds of objects: those embellishing horses, embroideries on vestments, and belts. Written sources about the culture of the Eurasian steppe of the 11th —13th centuries CE, comparative study of items in European collections, and the archaeological details of the exact manner of deposition have allowed reconstructions of the meanings of these finds in daily life. Moreover, it is now possible to propose their distinctive role in the burial ritual.
Two items found among the horse trappings can be shown to have originated as disassembled parts of objects made in northwest Europe for Christian ritual use. A similar re-purposing can be observed in the embroidery on one of the caftans. Originally embroidered as part of church furnishings, a fragmentary Deesis scene showing an archangel with a donor figure was attached to a caftan — cutting off the hands of the donor — and was rearranged into a new composition that presented the originally secondary winged figure as a victory or a Turkic divinity. Finally, three of the five belts found in the burial can be definitively attributed to northwestern European production. Their dispositions on and around the body allow them to be interpreted as symbols of Turkic charisma in their new location. The electrum belt around the neck, likely of Anatolian manufacture, marks the submission of the deceased before the divinities and spirits of the Turkic afterlife.
The grave goods discussed here, as well as the total burial inventory, allow us to propose a possible identity for the deceased. He could likely have been a Polovtsian leader allied to the Bulgarian tsar Kaloyan. The joint Polovtsian and Bulgarian forces defeated the Crusader army at Adrianople in 1205, and led Baldwin I of Flanders, first emperor of Constantinople, into captivity.
![Research paper thumbnail of Трофеї половецкого вождя з Чунгульского кургану: переужиток, ритуальні функції, та символіка» [Cuman Chief’s Trophy from Chynhul Barrow: Reuse, Ritual Functions, and Symbolism], Part 1](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/50643367/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This article consists of two parts, summarizing the authors’ findings from the past decade of res... more This article consists of two parts, summarizing the authors’ findings from the past decade of research on the well-known and partially published complex of the Chungul Kurgan.
The present article lays out the phases of the ritual of the burial of the Polovtsian leader as reconstructed by the authors on the basis of the detailed documentation made at the time of the excavation in 1981. Six phases of the burial process can be identified from archaeological evidence. These are as follows. (1) The digging of a ditch that encircles the sacred space for the burial around the perimeter of the previous Bronze Age kurgan. (2) The raising of earthen ramparts in a circle within this ditch, with a bowl-like contour sloping gently toward the center. As soon as the construction of the ramparts was completed, phase (3), the digging of the burial pit began in the center of this enclosed space. This pit, containing the wooden coffin of the deceased as well as supplies of meat and drink, was oriented east-west and closed with a wooden cover. Around the perimeter of the pit, five sacrificial horses were laid out and subsequently sealed within a layer of clay. (4) The erection of a small ritual platform over the level of the horse burials. (5) The erection of a larger ritual platform within the ramparts, which also entailed the construction of a paved floor and an apse with white limestone brought from afar. Probable remains of sacrifices, including a horse skull, the skeleton of a large dog, and a human skeleton, are associated with this phase. (6) The filling and sealing of the kurgan into its final, truncated-cone shape.
The second part of the article, which will appear in the next issue, will treat individual imported artifacts and the nature of their reuse in the context of the burial.
The present work introduces the first architectural energetics analysis of a medieval tumulus fro... more The present work introduces the first architectural energetics analysis of a medieval tumulus from the Eurasian / Pontic steppe. In contrast to New World earthworks, tumuli on the steppe were constructed 1) with sod taken from the environment immediately surrounding the construction site, 2) with the use of draft animals and metal tools, and 3) in identifiable phases as part of funerary rituals over a period of weeks or months. These variables introduce problems which are confronted through 1) the application of novel historically attested rates for construction and 2) the creation of new, replicable mathematical methods for modeling materials transport.
Abstract The medieval Kipčak burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the southern Ukrainian steppe prese... more Abstract
The medieval Kipčak burial at the Chungul Kurgan in the southern Ukrainian steppe presents a seemingly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the burial—here dated to the opening decades of the thirteenth century—is inserted into a previously extant tumulus of Bronze Age date, and the evidence of funerary ritual points towards the continuation of shamanist practices. On the other hand, the grave goods are largely composed of luxury objects associated with elite patronage among the sedentary societies of Western Europe, Rus’, and the Mediterranean zone. This juxtaposition is carried through in the partially preserved costumes
excavated from the burial. These present features that recall elements of official court dress in Byzantium and in the neighboring Christian and Islamic polities. While several of the garments take the essentially Turkic form of the caftan, they
incorporate in their applied decoration elements not normally associated with this particular garment.
Close examination of the textiles from the Chungul Kurgan has revealed that they almost certainly represent the reuse of imported silks, gold-woven bands, and gold embroideries that came into the possession of the nomadic Kipčaks as gifts,
trade items, or spoils of their raids on their sedentary neighbors. These include a panel of figural embroidery likely cut from a liturgical textile. Another group of embroideries and appliqués once formed a loros, the ceremonial scarf of Byzantine
emperors, which was widely imitated in the dress and portraiture of other rulers in the region. A range of possible degrees of intentionality can govern the use of textile spolia—from strictly utilitarian reuse to the deliberately imitative, or victorious,
appropriation of the insignia of another culture. The authors conclude that the way in which the textile elements were redeployed on the preserved garments represents at least a partial understanding of their meaning within their original contexts.
Their reuse for the decoration of riding caftans incorporates the symbolic language of power and prestige that these insignia conveyed among the neighboring courtly cultures while preserving a distinctive, nomadic sartorial identity.
