26 January 2024

In your End of Year gift you will have received a bottle of oil derived from the plant Camelina sativa (gold of pleasure, huttentut). If you don’t know what to do with it, please bring it to colleague Carol van Driel-Murray!

'Gold of pleasure was widely cultivated in the Iron Age in northern Europe, but disappears straight after the Roman conquest. I wish to test the theory that the oil was used to treat skins before the introduction of proper tanning using vegetable tannins, such as oak bark. A while ago I had great difficulty in obtaining a small amount of camelina oil for a tanning experiment with Annelou van Geijn. Unfortunately this experiment failed and I want to repeat it, using different sorts of skins and different pre-treatments.'

So if you are not using your camelina oil, please help experimental archaeology by donating it to Carol van Driel-Murray (room B1.14)! 'Perhaps we can unravel the mystery of the sudden disappearance of camelina from the crop spectrum.'