This is a bit of a stretch for archaeology but, it's an interesting historical concept with links to the modern technological world.

When I was a librarian I saw a book in the collection, Card Weaving by Candace Crockett. I ordered a copy for myself and played around with various projects over a number of years. I bought two other books as well: Introducing Tablet Weaving, by Eileen Bird, and The Techniques of Tablet Weaving by Peter Collingwood.

A history of card weaving

There is a lot of archaeological history behind card or tablet weaving dating back at least as far as Ancient Egypt or the Bronze Age. You can do an internet search for images of some of the woven patterns, and some patterns are available to download.

Even more interesting is the link to a key idea in computing technology, i.e. punch cards which can be linked also to Joseph Marie Jacquard's brilliant concept of punched weaving cards on mechanical and then electrified looms in France. The punch card concept, based on binary 1's and 0's was used in the development of the Enigma machine. I also learned about punch cards in my librarian course because libraries previously used them too.

A couple of years ago I saw a documentary on the development of computer technology which probably owes a lot to the punch card system. Coincidentally, after emailing some information to my family about it, that very night another documentary showed the Jacquard weaving innovation and referred to the link to computer technology.

If you are wondering why I sent the info to my family, my adult nephew who has two school-age sons, was sitting at the Christmas lunch table trying to get one of those bracelet making gadgets to work, with little coloured rubber bands. It looked a bit fiddly and I was reminded of the card weaving and how easy it was, after understanding the concept and after I created the cards.

I told the family all about card weaving and offered to lend the books and cards to my nephew so that he could try it out. He is a computer engineer by trade, so it seemed like a good fit to me.