Scotland's Oldest Tartan Rose From a Peat Bog

SOMETIME AROUND THE 1980S, MAYBE, a rough, yellow-tinged piece of fabric, slightly larger than a placemat, was pulled from a peat bog in Glen Affric, Scotland. The cloth is a swatch of tartan, the fabric associated with Scottish kilts, featuring the telltale interlocked stripes of various sizes and colors. (The term also applies to the pattern, which many know as plaid. But not all plaids are tartan, and to add to the confusion, in Scotland a plaid is a long piece of tartan that is pleated and wrapped around the body.) How and when this fabric, now known as the Glen Affric tartan, found its way into the peat is a bit of a mystery, and now, researchers are starting to unravel its checkered past, one that places it in a unique position in Scottish cultural and sartorial history.

...

While who wore it is uncertain, how it ended up in the bog—where anoxic conditions preserved it—is a bigger mystery. “The really intriguing question, apart from who it belonged to, was what were the circumstances that led to it? It wasn’t just dropped,” he says. “It’s obviously a deliberate act. Was it sacrificial? Was it murder? Was it ceremonial? All of those things are open to question because there are no other elements associated with the find that can help us with that.”