A RARE piece of Iron Age textile which lay buried in a loch for nearly 2500 years is going on public display for the first time.
The woven fabric, believed to be one of the oldest of its kind in Britain, was found in Loch Tay in Perthshire where it was naturally preserved by the silt on the bottom.
It was discovered in 1979 when an Iron Age loch dwelling house, known as the Oakbank Crannog, was excavated.
The textile was previously thought to be too fragile to go on show but it has now gone through a painstaking stabilisation and conservation process, funded by Museums Galleries Scotland.
It is on display from Wednesday and is being housed safely in a climate-controlled cabinet.
Mike Benson, director of the Scottish Crannog Centre, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be able to invite the public to come and see this amazing find.
“This piece would have been made by a whole community, from the shearing of the sheep, to the processing and dyeing of the wool, to the weaving of the textile.
“Our centre today is very much about community and the one thing that unites all of us is our common humanity through the ages.
“We’re really looking forward to finding out what people make of this rare textile, which is part of our past but also a hugely important part of our present and future.
“We hope people will be drawn to see this exhibit, and the rest of our extensive collection, for years to come.”
Dr Susanna Harris, senior lecturer in archaeology at the university, said: “There are very few early textiles of this date and we think this is the first one of this type, of 2/1 twill, in Scotland.
“Wool was such an important material in Scotland, it’s been exciting to analyse this piece.
“It’s great that the Scottish Crannog Centre has taken this step. It’s really important finds like this go on display. It may be a small piece of textile but it tells us a lot about the heritage of Scottish textiles.”
Crannogs were dwelling houses built on stilts or stone over water and usually had a bridge connecting them to the shore.
The first crannogs in Scotland were built on lochs from Neolithic times and very few are said to exist outside of Scotland and Ireland.
The centre’s reconstructed crannog was destroyed in a fire in 2021.
Last year the Scottish Crannog Centre reopened to visitors on a new and enlarged site near Kenmore and the team are well on the way to completing a new crannog using sustainable and historical construction methods.
