On weaving a well-basket

About two months ago we had an event-planning day in Düppel. I sat beside one of the two people who weave baskets when the group was asked if anybody could help out with the 'Tag der lebendigen Archäologie' (day of living archeology) and the activities organized in the context of the opening of a new exhibition in the Neues Museum (museum of Egyptian, Prehistory and Early History). The event centred around the opening of the new exhibition on the excavations of Biesdorf, a municipality close to Berlin that had excessive excavations for many years.
The excavations of Biesdorf not only went on for many years, but also uncovered many successive settlement periods back to Neolithic times. And each settlement period had several wells. Many of them containing basket-woven elements.

So, when on the event-planning day, the organizer asked for volunteers for the event looking specifically at the basket weaver beside me. Who then stated that she was probably on a business trip and couldn't make it. As I had woven baskets before I offered to help out if the basket weaver really couldn't make it. This led to me having the honours of doing part of the organization, helped out by our friends the 'Wilde Korbmacher' (wild Basketmakers) who sadly don't have a homepage that I have found yet - I would love to advertize their work here because  they are great!

A week in advance we soaked the willows, weighing them down so they wouldn't float up. Then, directly in dead-central Berlin, we spent the day walking around in Medieval clothes and showing following crafts:

• Cutting logs for the outer block-wood-well-frame (display only)
• Weaving the inner well-basked (fully hands on)
• Making bone harpoon tips with neolithic tools (fully hands on)
• Setting up a warp-weighted loom (display only) 
• Spinning (fully hands on) 
• Needle binding (display only)

The well- and harpoon-builders were outside the museum and had many visitors, sadly the spinning and loom volunteers indoors had far fewer visitors. But it was a fun successfull event nevertheless.

I was responsible for the well, so I would engage the visitors, trying to persuade them to join in and then showed them how to weave. And we really made good progress, by the end of the day we had perfectly finished the basket.

 

As you can see in the image, the well has two layers: an outer wooden layer and an inner basket layer. The wooden layer gives the well solidity and stops it from collapsing, the basket is intended to slow down the sand, as our ground here contains so much sand that sediment builds up very quickly.

I apologize for the uneven edge of the basket, the stakes were not ideal and I didn't try to get the visitors to counteract that while weaving - I wanted them to have fun, not be perfect.


Formalities:

• Materials: fresh and dried-then-soaked willow branches, base with pre-set stakes
• Tools: knife to cut off loose ends and sometimes cut willow branches to suitable format
• Time:  6 hrs