Calceology
Encyclopedia
Calceology is the study of footwear
, especially historical footwear whether as archaeology
, shoe fashion history
, or otherwise. It is not yet formally recognized as a field of research. Calceology comprises the examination, registration, research and conservation of leather shoe
fragments. A wider definition includes the general study of the ancient footwear, its social and cultural history, technical aspects of pre-industrial shoemaking
and associated leather trades, as well as reconstruction of archaeological footwear.
period footwear figures prominently followed by medieval period
finds. Scientifically based research was first applied to Roman period finds and later for prehistoric
and primitive footwear. With the development of the Goubitz notation system, the technical aspects of the recovered shoe fragments could be clearly presented, allowing researchers a coherent scientific base for leather
artifact
documentation and correct interpretation. The interest in the history of ancient shoe fashion
starts in the 17th century . The interpretation of historical socio-cultural attributes shows the importance of footwear in an archaeological context. The reference book for calceological studies covers the chronological
span from European prehistory (Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages), Roman period, the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Calceological studies outside of Europe include the eastern coast and bays of North America for post 1600 sites, and the North Africa
n sites for Egypt
ian, Roman and Coptic period
s.
or frozen
sites. Peat bogs also preserve leather and skin artifacts but through a re-tanning process. Water-logged archaeological sites provide the necessary conditions for the preservation of vegetable tanned leather. As an organic material, water-logged archaeological leather needs to be stabilized by an appropriate conservation method. Dry conditions may be found in desert
s and at high altitudes but also within the walls of medieval and later period buildings where leather shoes were concealed for superstitious
reasons. Ice fields, tundra and glaciers can occasionally preserve ancient leather artifacts through constant freezing.
s used to sew the objects together does not survive humid burial
. A tracking system should be used for keeping the loose components in order throughout the analysis
and conservation processes. For wet
archaeological leather, the first step is cleaning gently in water with a small soft brush
. Conservation is preferably performed after the document
ation phase. Documentation consists of drawing
s and written notes, photograph
ic records are less useful since blackish leather does not show fine detail well. The first step for the Goubitz notation registration is an exact tracing of the fragment’s outline
, usually positioned grain side down, flesh side up. Then symbol
s that indicate the type of stitch
es and seams are drawn in their appropriate place inside the outline. Sole constructions (the way in which the upper parts of the shoe is fixed to the sole), fastening method
and ensembles of components from the same shoe as well as animal
type, leather thickness, folds and creases should be noted. If present, decoration type and technique used should also be recorded .
Most archaeological recovered leather artifacts are parts of footwear and may be combined with wood
, fibre or metal
parts. The technical details such as shoe construction technique, fastening method and fashion elements are used to establish a typology
for a specific find group. Shoe type indicates the kinds of footwear such as boot
s, shoes, pattens, overshoes, etcetera. Shoe style is the consistent combination of a fastening method, height, fashion and decoration elements on a significant quantity of recovered shoes. Style nomenclature based on find place's name has been partly established for Roman period finds. Due to changes in fashion and the fact that shoes have a limited life span
due to use, footwear is a chronologically sensitive material excavation and represents a closely dated chronological source for archeology. The find context, stratigraphic placement and other dating methods
contribute to establishing a specific chronology. Further research for comparative parallel examples among the existing archaeological archives (collections, publications, reports) helps to define a relative chronology for the shoe types and styles.
Footwear
Footwear consists of garments worn on the feet, for fashion, protection against the environment, and adornment. Being barefoot is commonly associated with poverty, but some cultures chose not to wear footwear at least in some situations....
, especially historical footwear whether as archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, shoe fashion history
History of fashion design
-Couture beginnings:The first fashion designer who was not merely a dressmaker was Charles Frederick Worth . Before the former draper set up his maison de couture in Paris, clothing design and creation was handled by largely anonymous seamstresses, and high fashion descended from styles worn at...
, or otherwise. It is not yet formally recognized as a field of research. Calceology comprises the examination, registration, research and conservation of leather shoe
Shoe
A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture to culture, with appearance originally being tied to function...
fragments. A wider definition includes the general study of the ancient footwear, its social and cultural history, technical aspects of pre-industrial shoemaking
Shoemaking
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or...
and associated leather trades, as well as reconstruction of archaeological footwear.
History of calceology
Among the early studies of footwear from European archaeological excavations, RomanRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
period footwear figures prominently followed by medieval period
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
finds. Scientifically based research was first applied to Roman period finds and later for prehistoric
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
and primitive footwear. With the development of the Goubitz notation system, the technical aspects of the recovered shoe fragments could be clearly presented, allowing researchers a coherent scientific base for leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
artifact
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
documentation and correct interpretation. The interest in the history of ancient shoe fashion
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
starts in the 17th century . The interpretation of historical socio-cultural attributes shows the importance of footwear in an archaeological context. The reference book for calceological studies covers the chronological
Chronology
Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...
span from European prehistory (Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages), Roman period, the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Calceological studies outside of Europe include the eastern coast and bays of North America for post 1600 sites, and the North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
n sites for Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian, Roman and Coptic period
Coptic Period
The "Coptic period" is an informal designation for Late Antiquity in Egypt, an era defined by the religious shifts in Egyptian culture to Coptic Christianity from paganism until the Muslim conquest of Egypt...
s.
Preservation
Archaeological leather artifacts are preserved in stable environments, either in constantly humid, dryDry
Dry or dryness may refer to:* Lack of water* Prohibiting alcohol * Dryness , the lack of sugar in a drink, especially an alcoholic one * Dryness * Dryness...
or frozen
Frozen
Frozen may refer to:* the result of freezingIn film:* Frozen , a film by Wang Xiaoshuai* Frozen , a film by Juliet McKoen* Frozen , a film by Shivajee Chandrabhushan...
sites. Peat bogs also preserve leather and skin artifacts but through a re-tanning process. Water-logged archaeological sites provide the necessary conditions for the preservation of vegetable tanned leather. As an organic material, water-logged archaeological leather needs to be stabilized by an appropriate conservation method. Dry conditions may be found in desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
s and at high altitudes but also within the walls of medieval and later period buildings where leather shoes were concealed for superstitious
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
reasons. Ice fields, tundra and glaciers can occasionally preserve ancient leather artifacts through constant freezing.
Examination of archaeological shoe finds
Water-logged finds generally consist of loose components since the threadThread (yarn)
Thread is a kind of yarn used for sewing.-Materials:Thread is made from just about everything. Following table lists common materials, a general description and what they are supposed to be good for. If your machine will sew with the thread, any thread can used for just about any purpose. This...
s used to sew the objects together does not survive humid burial
Burial
Burial is the act of placing a person or object into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing an object in it, and covering it over.-History:...
. A tracking system should be used for keeping the loose components in order throughout the analysis
Analysis
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle , though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.The word is...
and conservation processes. For wet
Wet
Wet may refer to:* The condition of being liquid or being covered in liquid* Adequately wet, environmental term referring to asbestos-containing material that is sufficiently mixed or penetrated with liquid to prevent the release of particulates...
archaeological leather, the first step is cleaning gently in water with a small soft brush
Brush
A brush is a tool with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes. It is one of the most basic and versatile tools known to mankind, and the average household may contain several dozen varieties...
. Conservation is preferably performed after the document
Document
The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...
ation phase. Documentation consists of drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
s and written notes, photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
ic records are less useful since blackish leather does not show fine detail well. The first step for the Goubitz notation registration is an exact tracing of the fragment’s outline
Outline
An outline is a list of the main features of a given topic, often used as a rough draft or summary of the content of a document. A hierarchical outline is a list arranged to show hierarchical relationships, and is a type of tree structure....
, usually positioned grain side down, flesh side up. Then symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
s that indicate the type of stitch
Stitch (textile arts)
In the textile arts, a stitch is a single turn or loop of thread or yarn. Stitches are the fundamental elements of sewing, knitting, embroidery, crochet, and needle lace-making, whether by hand or machine...
es and seams are drawn in their appropriate place inside the outline. Sole constructions (the way in which the upper parts of the shoe is fixed to the sole), fastening method
Fastener
A fastener is a hardware device that mechanically joins or affixes two or more objects together.Fasteners can also be used to close a container such as a bag, a box, or an envelope; or they may involve keeping together the sides of an opening of flexible material, attaching a lid to a container,...
and ensembles of components from the same shoe as well as animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
type, leather thickness, folds and creases should be noted. If present, decoration type and technique used should also be recorded .
Most archaeological recovered leather artifacts are parts of footwear and may be combined with wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
, fibre or metal
Metal
A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...
parts. The technical details such as shoe construction technique, fastening method and fashion elements are used to establish a typology
Typology (archaeology)
In archaeology a typology is the result of the classification of things according to their characteristics. The products of the classification, i.e. the classes are also called types. Most archaeological typologies organize artifacts into types, but typologies of houses or roads belonging to a...
for a specific find group. Shoe type indicates the kinds of footwear such as boot
Boot
A boot is a type of footwear but they are not shoes. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle and extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly distinguishable from the rest of the sole, even if the two are made of one piece....
s, shoes, pattens, overshoes, etcetera. Shoe style is the consistent combination of a fastening method, height, fashion and decoration elements on a significant quantity of recovered shoes. Style nomenclature based on find place's name has been partly established for Roman period finds. Due to changes in fashion and the fact that shoes have a limited life span
Service life
A product's service life is its expected lifetime, or the acceptable period of use in service. It is the time that any manufactured item can be expected to be 'serviceable' or supported by its manufacturer....
due to use, footwear is a chronologically sensitive material excavation and represents a closely dated chronological source for archeology. The find context, stratigraphic placement and other dating methods
Dating methodology (archaeology)
Dating material drawn from the archaeological record can be made by a direct study of an artifact or may be deduced by association with materials found in the context the item is drawn from or inferred by its point of discovery in the sequence relative to datable contexts...
contribute to establishing a specific chronology. Further research for comparative parallel examples among the existing archaeological archives (collections, publications, reports) helps to define a relative chronology for the shoe types and styles.
See also
- TaphonomyTaphonomyTaphonomy is the study of decaying organisms over time and how they become fossilized . The term taphonomy was introduced to paleontology in 1940 by Russian scientist Ivan Efremov to describe the study of the transition of remains, parts, or products of organisms, from the biosphere, to the...
- AnthropologyAnthropologyAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
- PaleontologyPaleontologyPaleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
- Bata Shoe MuseumBata Shoe MuseumThe Bata Shoe Museum is a museum in downtown Toronto, Canada that collects, researches, preserves, and exhibits footwear from around the world. It offers four exhibitions, three of which are time-limited, as well as lectures, performances and family events....