Originally shared by Caleb Creel
If this is true and that is what these were used for, and if my memories of the history of costume Served me properly then this would be a very significant overthrow of what is currently known regarding the development of modern woven vs knitted textiles. It would seem to put the date for the first use of true knitting back roughly a millennia further than is currently believed…
(That’s right, boys and girls, knittted clothing did not appear until between the 11th and 14th centuries AD!!!)
For what my opinion is worth, I applaud you! You are almost certainly in my opinion correct. That is undoubtedly the intended use for those particular artifacts; with one fairly minor detail needing reworked - they were used to make socks not gloves.
Some scraps of garments resembling modern toe-socks have been found using just that sort of knitted stitch in sites as early as the 3rd or 4th AD and have been something of an unexplainable phenomena in the history of costume as they predated the known origin of modern knitting, invention of the knitting needles and the knit and purl stitch by some 800 years or more.
It Is remarkable to me and does you great credit that it was the artifact itself which suggested the technique and the intended to garment to you, especially if you had no knowledge of either the history of knitting or the until now unexplainable toe-socks!
Remarkable, truly remarkable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poGapxsanaI