a question on backpacks and other carrying gears

[Christian Folini]

My question is on sources for medieval transporting gears.
Lucca had a wonderful basket to carry on the back with him
at Canova. There are some images of bags carried like
todays backpacks. Other pictures suggest the use of
ropes to bind the stuff in a netlike way. John Howe has some
pictures on large bags. The Ursule-Shrine by Memling has
a lovely bag with two buckles on it, carried on the shoulders.
But is this already everything?

I had a wooden construction with me at Canova. I made it
some years ago for LiveRoleplaying, when accuracy was no
real theme for me. But now I would like to see some sources
before I continue to use it. Everyone I asked at Canova
had to give up. They all thought it looked nice, but this
is certainly not enough.

The construction is as follows. In German you would use
the word 'Raeff' (if you know it, but is not very likely to be used
at all). It is a wooden construction:

                  ¦
                  ¦
this is where --> ¦   <-- this is where the stuff is loaded
your back is      ¦
                  ¦---
                  ¦

(best viewed with a ASCII-art capable font)

While it looks a bit stiff at the first glance it is actually
quite comfortable. In Switzerland these types of gears are used
for cheese transport from the Alpes to the valley up until today.
(Not too often anymore of course)

Now my question is: has anyone ever seen such a thing dated
to the medieval era? Are there carrying gears, that can be thought 
of?

with a lot of thanks for any input

christian folini

'Two plus two equals five for sufficiently large values of two.'
mailto:christian.folini-at-unifr.ch      http://www.tikon.ch/folini
Institute  for  Medieval Studies  at the University of  Fribourg

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