In the Museum at Devizes there are several hard pieces of perforated and fashioned chalk which offer more conclusive evidence. Of these Mrs. M. E. Cunnington, the Curator, writes me: “All the weights here have holes bored right through. Two large ones stand easily on the floor. Others are more irregular in form and will not stand upright. This latter type is, as far as I am aware, the more usual in this part of the country. They are commonly cut out of the hard chalk, and weigh about 3 or 4 lbs. (1·5-2 Kilos). We think these weights are loom weights because we find them with Romano-British remains, as at Westbury, and late Celtic remains on our chalk uplands, far from water where fishing could have been carried on. With the same remains we find weaving combs, numerous spindle whorls and other tools of bone that were also probably used in weaving operations.” The Westbury, in Wiltshire, referred to, is some thirty miles in a straight line from the mouth of the Severn, and about forty miles from the English Channel. These pieces of chalk cannot therefore have been used as net-sinkers, leaving out of consideration their composition; they were found with weaving tools and they fit the position. So far the ingenuity of our ablest archæologists at home and abroad has not succeeded in ascribing the use of these objects to anything else than net-sinking or warp tension. The adaptability of the articles for use as warp weights, the small groups in which they are found, the discovery of weaving implements in the closest proximity, our knowledge of the Greek representations of warp-weighted looms, the Olafsson illustration, and the loom in the Copenhagen Museum all tend to prove that these articles are really warp weights.
As regards the practical possibility or impossibility of working a “Greek” loom, I had a simple frame made in the Museum and showed Mr. J. Smith, a mill “Overlooker” at Messrs. Wayman and Sons, Ld., Halifax, the illustration in Montelius’ book already referred to, and asked him to weave me a small piece of cloth on it. In the course of a few hours he did the warping, beaming and weaving, making the pick with his fingers and using a ball of weft thread instead of a spool or shuttle. The result is shown in the accompanying illustration, [Fig. 36], conclusively proving that weaving on such a frame is quite feasible, and practically proving that Olafsson’s and the Copenhagen warp weighted looms are properly constructed workable looms.
Fig. 36.—A warp weighted loom made at Bankfield Museum, to show the possibility of weaving by this method. There is no heddle nor shuttle used. The weaver made the “shed” and pushed the weft through with his fingers. He naturally worked downwards.
Fig. 37.—Diagram to show how the warp is kept taut on a Syrian loom.
Finally, it may not be out of place here to point out that there are other looms, besides the Greek and Scandinavian, on which the warp is made taut by means of warp weights. The Rev. Dr. Harvey Porter, of the American College, Beyrout, Syria, writing about the year 1901, thus describes the common loom of the country. He says: “Two upright posts are fixed in the ground, which hold the roller to which the threads of the warp are fastened, and upon which the cloth is wound as it is woven. The threads of the warp are carried upward towards the ceiling at the other end of the room, and pass over rollers, and are gathered in hanks and weighted to keep them taut (Dic. of the Bible, Edinburgh, 1902, IV., p. 901).” He has kindly sent me an illustration of this loom, but unfortunately the weights are not clearly shown, and the same is the case with an illustration of a loom from Cyprus.[J] The diagram, [Fig. 37], shows the principle. In a Shan loom illustrated by Mrs. Leslie Milne, in The Shans at Home, London, 1910, p. 120, the warp makes a somewhat similar detour over the head of the weaver, it is, however, not weighted but tied to a beam. The point to be observed is that these warp-weighted looms are horizontal and not perpendicular, and also that the weaving is the reverse of that on the Greek loom but similar to that on our horizontal looms, so that the present Syrian and Cyprian looms have nothing in common with the old Greek loom.