late roman equipment

[Barbara]

Oh my godess... Do you know what work this is? I'm just working on one for female dresses. I'm still working on the Layout of the database and the more pictures I put in there the more details come to me and then I have to change the layout again, and again, and again...

Well, the best thing would be to seperate the tunicafragments after style (Maenad's tunica, David-Tunica, Joseph-Tunica etc.) and then by color (Bichrom, polychrom) the problem is where to put in the single orbiculi, because the may have been part of a tunica, a cloak or a pillow as well.

Here's a pic of the original from palmyra
sorry, photobucket did not check that i've turned it...
Well, back to the dating: The most 3rd century fragments I've seen were figural ones. There the dating is given by the quality of art: in the 3rd century the bodys look still like human corps, and later it's more an alien party...In fact, that is dependet by the origin of the textiles, too. Maybe that some weavers were more talented and some less. So it's just a hint, not an evidence.
But I've seen no example like palmyra, where an ornament is in such way out of symetry. I just had a look in the publication (A. Schmidt-Colinet et al., "Die Textilien aus Palmyra", 2000) and there are no hints for a wrong reconstruction or a mistake in conservating or things like this. It really was woven ith this pattern. Well, palmyrean people always were strange in some way, especially in art questions.
The most sticky thing I got on my mind when I saw the fragment was the pelta-like design of the clavi. The inner ends of the ornaments looks like peltas and peltas are one of the most used motives of the 2nd and 3rd century, as far as I know. Maybe that I'm wrong, I don't know exactly.