Oldest known Scottish tartan ‘brought back to life’ for people to wear

[OC Richard]

That's really cool.

Well done Peter!

What a contrast your process was to the secretive way Dixon Dalgliesh handled the find of the tartan fragment on Culloden Moor in 1946.

What I wonder is, is there any way to take a modern piece of tartan cloth and replicate the effect of being buried in a peat bog for 400 years? Has anyone recently buried tartan in a peat bog for any length of time to see what happens?

EDIT:

I started thinking of other tartan garments found in bogs, for example the tartan skirt of The Huldremose Woman.

She was discovered in a bog in Jutland in the 19th century. She's thought to date from between 160 BC and 340 AD.

Her clothes are exceptionally well preserved. Modern scientists who examined tartan skirt say there were three colours, dyestuffs that produce blue, that produce yellow, and the third unknown.



Her tartan scarf was dyed using unknown dyestuffs in the reds and yellows spectrums.

Here's the surviving costume (left) with two guesses as to the original colours.

BTW the capes are sheep fur.