This is established in the archaeological record of the site — burials were found with fabric associated with the body, suggesting that the wrapping of the dead in woven material was part of the mortuary practice.

The fabric preserved in the anoxic peat while the fabric that would have been in common daily use above water — the clothing, the containers, the nets and baskets that these people used every day — disappeared, because the conditions above the pond surface did not preserve organic material.

The 87 fragments are the survivors of what must have been a much larger textile tradition, preserved only because some of it was incorporated into the peat alongside the burials.

What the textiles reveal, beyond the technical sophistication of their production, is that the standard archaeological picture of Early Archaic peoples as “primitive” in any meaningful sense is a distortion produced by the loss of organic evidence.