The Tartan Sealstone

In one of last year’s blogs (May 2017: “Where did tartan come from?” I introduced the ‘Tartan Timeline’ as my academic defence against the gainsayers who insist that it was the ‘invention’ of Sir Walter Scott, later aided and abetted by Queen Victoria and her Consort, Albert. There’s no doubt that that distinguished trio – together with the early industrial tartan weavers – have a lot to answer for in the revival, promotion and romanticism of tartan and its associated dress. However, the faintly justified scorn heaped upon them has frequently spilled over into the origins of tartan itself.

Hopefully, the Timeline and its documented evidence redressed that imbalance although I was reluctantly convinced that no earlier evidence than the 750 – 1200BC bracket, would ever come to light.

How wrong I was! In 2015 a team of archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati uncovered a Bronze Age warrior’s tomb outside the ancient Greek city of Pylos. Their painstaking work uncovered over 1500 artefacts, one of which was an insignificant, stone-encrusted little sealstone measuring only 1.4 inches (3.6cms) long. Sealstones were carved stones used to create an impression on wax or clay and after its unearthing, this one lay in a drawer, uninvestigated for over a year.

Once cleaned, the Pylos Combat Agate as it became called, showed a skill and finesse unparalleled by anything ever found from the Minoan-Mycenaean era. The thumb-sized stone depicts a battling warrior who, having already killed one opponent, is plunging his sword into the neck of another. Some of the details are so intricate that they can only be seen using a powerful camera lens or microscope. The original craftsman may have used a magnifying glass to create those details, but no type of magnifying tool from the period has ever been found.

Team Member Dr. Jack Davis said; “What is fascinating is the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later.”

Not being versed – or indeed necessarily interested – in the comparatively boring history of tartan, none of the specialist researchers attached any significance to the vanquished warriors’ ‘loin cloths’ which, in the detailed drawing, clearly showed ‘tartan’!

But . . . to a tartan ‘anorak’ like me, this was manna from heaven and so my tartan timeline has been pushed back from the imprecise 750-1200 BC bracket of the Takla Makan tartan, to a definite 1440 BC of the Pylos tomb. Undoubtedly, ‘tartan’ was well-established prior to our warrior’s gory victory, but let’s not over-gild the historical lily!

Who those unlucky tartan-clad warriors were, can only be guessed at. I would like to think that they were Celts, for whom the weaving of tartan-like fabrics was an established artform and whose central European origin was only 400 miles north of the warrior’s tomb. But that’s a very simplistic bit of wishful thinking.

The region was at one time dominated by the Minoans, whose sophisticated civilization arose on Crete, 50 miles to the southeast, and there is much evidence that the first wave of ‘conquering’ Mycenaeans embraced Minoan culture, from its religious symbols to its domestic décor. The Minoans were noted for their skilled artisans and craftsmen who traded widely in the Aegean, Mediterranean and beyond.

Perhaps they, rather than the Celts, were the originators of what we now call tartan. It may be fanciful, but I like to muse that 3,500 years later and 2,500 miles distant, I’m sitting in Perthshire following in the footsteps of those early tartan designers.

For more information on the Griffin Warrior and its fascinating historical implications, have a look at:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/golden-warrior-greek-tomb-exposes-roots-western-civilization-180961441/