Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Flax Fibre: Innovation And Change In The Early Neolithic A Technological And Material Perspective, Susanna Harris

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Flax (Linum sp.) was one of the first domestic plants in Neolithic Europe, providing a potential cultivable source of fibres for the first farmers. As the plant provides both oil and fibre, it is a matter of enquiry as to whether the plant was first domesticated for its seeds or stem. Through examining new data collected by the EUROEVOL Project, UCL it is possible to chart the earliest archaeobotanical evidence for flax species in Europe. This provides the basis on which to consider the origin of fibres from the flax plant (linen) as a basis for change and innovation in …

The Aegean Wool Economies Of The Bronze Age, Marie-Louise Nosch

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper will explore the importance of wool in the emergence of complex societies during the Bronze Age in the Aegean. The 2nd millennium BC Aegean witnesses the emergence of a highly particular system of wool economy, beginning with the Minoan and followed by the Mycenaean centralized palace economies with strict administration of flocks, herders, wool, and textile production by thousands of women and children. This system monitors annual production targets and surplus production, and production strategies ensuring that the palaces’ needs are met. Textile production is the largest sector of the palace economy and employs the highest number of …

Textile Materials And Techniques In Central Europe In The 2nd And 1st Millennia Bc, Karina Grömer

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

For over a millennium, the site of Hallstatt, located in the Austrian Alps, was a meeting point between north and south, east and west, serving as a melting pot of new ideas and innovations. About 300 textile units (more than 700 single fragments) from Bronze and Iron Ages are known from the prehistoric salt mines, dating from 1500-300 BC. They display a wide range of textile techniques and provide insight in different aspects of textile craft. Their outstanding preservation allows us to investigate many crucial steps in the chaîne opératoire of textile production. The 2nd millennium BC is a time, …

Movement As A Means Of Social (Re)Production: Using Gis To Measure Social Integration Across Urban Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the archaeological study of movement in urban environments where built forms and natural features worked together to play a key role in structuring human mobility.We propose an analytical method using least cost analysis in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to empirically measure social integration. The method defines mobility as the potential for pedestrian movement, and identifies locations where people were most likely to walk to or through in a landscape. The calculated mobility data are then employed to identify with whom people were most likely to interact and the degree to which they were socially connected …

Maguey Hammock: A Weaving Of Resistance And Persistence In Puerto Rico, Soraya Serra Collazo

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textiles are primary technology to almost all societies. Puerto Rico and the Caribbean are no exceptions. There is an object that has been weaved in the region since pre-Columbian times and it is still passing through the fingers of local artisans. Hamaca, an invention of the American inhabitants,² is an indigenous voice incorporated into many languages. It was in the Caribbean, where Europeans saw its utility, and it was quickly incorporated as the best way of sleeping in their transatlantic voyages. Its production has spread throughout the world and today it is made in many countries. In Puerto Rico …

Dressing The Leader, Dressing The Ancestor: The Longue Durée In The South Central Andes, Ann H. Peters

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The preservation and adornment of the dead in the South Central Andes can be traced over some twelve thousand years. The potential for preservation of human bodies and fine textiles in desert sands and high altitude caves contributed to a continuing social and political role of the dead in the lives of the living. Colonial period documents describe well-dressed mortuary bundles that participated in public ritual and could be cited as proof of heritage and validation of social leadership. However, the nature of social and political ancestry and its relationship to power change over time with the development of large-scale …

Public Buildings And Civic Benefactions In Western Rough Cilicia: Insights From Signaling Theory, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In the Hellenistic and Roman world of the eastern Mediterranean, Greek and Greco-Roman cities came to be defined by their physical cityscape. These buildings were constructed by specific city institutions, such as the council and the assembly, and financed through city funds, mass subscription and, importantly, public benefactions. Public benefactions, which also included support for festivals and competitions, were made by certain elite and usually wealthy individuals to the benefit of a defined community of citizens (and sometimes non-citizens, as in the case of fortification walls). Institutions within the benefiting community, again the council and the assembly, acknowledged these gifts …

Caving In: An Archaeology Of Historical Cave Exploration And Exploitation, Stephen Damm, Allison Young

Nebraska Anthropologist

While the archaeological investigation of caves with these dark zones has been developing for some time, this work has almost exclusively focused on prehistoric activities. This paper demonstrates the value of a historical archaeological examination of dark zone caves. Archaeology in caves with extended dark zones offers unique insight into the interaction of the natural world with the encroaching capitalist world system due both to the difficulty of access and the lack of generalized occupational sites. We propose a theoretical and methodological framework to explore how these caves have interacted with modern capitalist enterprises in the historical period

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 24:2 — Spring 2012, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America Newsletters

Textiles and Politics: Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium, September 19-22, 2012, Washington, DC
From the President
TSA Member News
Textiles and Cultural Context: Ecuadorian Artesanía Vendors and Transnational Markets
The Mola: Imagery of Culture and Politics
Taiwan Aboriginal Textiles: Translations and Transformations: Background of Yushan Tsai's Exhibition
Book Reviews
Textile Community News
Featured Collection: Denver Art Museum Textile Art Department Expansion
Call for Papers
Calendar: Conferences & Symposia
Exhibitions: United States
Exhibitions: International
Lectures, Workshops, Tours

The Archaeology Of The Caddo, Chester P. Walker, Timothy K. Perttula

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

This landmark volume provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the prehistory and archaeology of the Caddo peoples. The Caddos lived in the Southeastern Woodlands for more than 900 years beginning around A.D. 800–900, before being forced to relocate to Oklahoma in 1859. They left behind a spectacular archaeological record, including the famous Spiro Mound site in Oklahoma as well as many other mound centers, plazas, farmsteads, villages, and cemeteries. The Archaeology of the Caddo examines new advances in studying the history of the Caddo peoples, including ceramic analysis, reconstructions of settlement and regional histories of different Caddo communities, …

On Records, Andrew Newman

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Bridging the fields of indigenous, early American, memory, and media studies, On Records illuminates the problems of communication between cultures and across generations. Andrew Newman examines several controversial episodes in the historical narrative of the Delaware (Lenape) Indians, including the stories of their primordial migration to settle a homeland spanning the Delaware and Hudson Rivers, the arrival of the Dutch and the first colonial land fraud, William Penn’s founding of Pennsylvania with a Great Treaty of Peace, and the “infamous” 1737 Pennsylvania Walking Purchase.

As Newman demonstrates, the quest for ideal records—authentic, authoritative, and objective, anchored in the past yet …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 24:1 — Winter 2012, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America Newsletters

Provocative Speakers Set for Symposium 2012
From the President
TSA News
TSA Member News
In Memoriam: Mary Hunt Kallenberg, 1940–2011
Textile Community News
Conference Reviews
Ceremonial Tai Textiles and Their Uses
Publication News
Featured Collection: Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa
Exhibition Reviews
Book Reviews
Calendar-Conferences & Symposia, Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops, Tours

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 23:3 — Fall 2011, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America Newsletters

A Weaver Looks at Tinguian Blankets
Symposium 2012 News [Textiles & Politics: Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium, Washington, DC, September 19–22, 2012]
From the President
TSA News
TSA Member News
Conference Reviews
Textile Community News
In Memoriam: Ardis James, 1926–2011
Book Reviews
Exhibition Reviews
Calls for Papers
Calendar-Conferences & Symposia, Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops,
Tinguian Blanket Analysis (threading, treadling, pattern draw-down)

Review Of Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes At Waconda Lake, Kansas. By Donald J. Blakeslee., Lauren W. Ritterbush

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

In Holy Ground, Healing Water readers are treated to a historical journey through the changing cultural landscapes of the Waconda Lake area, northcentral Kansas. This region provides the setting for discussion of unique and representative Native American and EuroAmerican cultural developments in the Great Plains. Don Blakeslee, anthropologist with Wichita State University, briefly reviews roughly 13,000 years ofNative traditions, based on archaeological investigations in the region, then discusses the Pawnee Trail, early European and Euro-American expeditions, complex Native-Native and Native-Euro-American interactions during the 19th century, sacred and secular perceptions and uses of Waconda Spring, and Lincoln Park, a local example …

Review Of Arch Lake Woman: Physical Anthropology And Geoarchaeology. By Douglas W. Owsley, Margaret A. Jodry, Thomas W. Stafford, Jr., C. Vance Haynes, Jr., And Dennis J. Stanford., Daniel J. Wescott

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Approximately 10,000 radiocarbon years before present, the body ofa 17- to 19-year-old female, probably associated with the Plainview Culture, was buried on the south side of Arch Lake, located near the present-day border of New Mexico and Texas. The young woman was interred in an extended supine position with a necklace of talc beads low on her neck, a bag containing red pigment and a unifacial stone tool on her left hip, and a bone tool placed on her chest. Her grave remained relatively undisturbed until 1967 when it was exposed, discovered, and carefully excavated by archaeologists. The Arch Lake …

Review Of Light From Ancient Campfires: Archaeological Evidence For Native Lifeways On The Northern Plains. By Trevor R. Peck., Matthew Boyd

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Despite the relatively long legacy of professional archaeological research in the northern Great Plains, few comprehensive syntheses of the region's 13,000- year human history have been produced in recent years. This is particularly the case for the Canadian side of the region, which has tended to be overlooked in most scholarly summaries of Great Plains prehistory. The shadowy nature of the Canadian prairies to the wider community of Plains archaeologists is not due to a lack of archaeological research in the region-Alberta, alone, has over 35,000 registered sites-but instead reflects the poor dissemination ofCRM (Culture Resource Management) reports and other …

Archaeoparasitology Of Chaco Canyon, Rachel Paseka

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Ancient cultures of the Colorado Plateau have been a focus of archaeoparasitology since its inception, and a vast parasitological history is recorded in coprolites preserved in this arid region. The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon dominated Ancestral Puebloan culture between 1050 and 1120 AD and were responsible for the construction of great towns, road systems, and early agriculture. Analysis of the parasites preserved in fecal remains contributes to an increased knowledge of ancient Chacoan health and culture. Nineteen coprolites from four sites in Chaco Canyon were rehydrated and analyzed microscopically for parasite remains. Rhabditiform and filariform nematode larvae were found from …

Excavating Nauvoo, Benjamin C. Pykles

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

This detailed study of the excavation and restoration of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, reveals the roots of historical archaeology. In the late 1960s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored an archaeology program to authentically restore the city of Nauvoo, which was founded along the Mississippi River in the 1840s by the Mormons as they moved west. Non-Mormon scholars were also interested in Nauvoo because it was representative of several western frontier towns in this era. As the archaeology and restoration of Nauvoo progressed, however, conflicts arose, particularly regarding control of the site and its interpretation for …

Tracing Cochineal Through The Collection Of The Metropolitan Museum, Elena Phipps, Nobuko Shibayama

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Cochineal, with its origin in the Americas, by the 16th century was exported throughout the world. From the time of the Spanish encounter with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th century, a dyestuff for a strong, fast, red color was in high demand. While many archival documents and scholarly writing exist on the use and shipment of cochineal throughout the world, and on its impact on the textile industry, this paper traces the pathway of its use through an examination of artworks in the Metropolitan Museum. Scientific analysis aids the study in the identification of cochineal (and …

Chapter 4 Hopi Kachinas: A Life Force, Barton Wright

Hopi Nation: Essays on Indigenous Art, Culture, History, and Law

“Everything has an essence or life force, and humans must interact with these or fail to survive.”


It is not known where the Kachina Cult originated, but some evidence points to a Meso-American origin, brought possibly with the clans which migrated from north to south and north again. There are a few archaeological hints which indicate that there was a viable Kachina Cult by the time the Hopi settled at the center of their world in 1100. The Kachina Cult is shared with all the other Pueblo peoples who live to the east, from Zuni to Taos and formerly Pecos …

The String Or Grass Skirt; An Ancient Garment In The Southern Andes, Amy Oakland

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The string or grass skirt appears among the earliest known garments in the Southern Andes. Archaeologists discovered the skirts wrapped around Chinchorro ancestor figures in burials near the Pacific coast of North Chile dating to 8000 B.C. The Chinchorro people’s mummified ancestors included specific gender traits so it is clear that they wanted to identify the skirts as a female garment. Chinchorro men were equipped with leather loincloths and both apparently used twinned grass mantles, blankets, or mats.

Through time, these coastal Andeans developed an elaborate dress with enormous string turbans and pelican-skin capes, however the string skirt remained the …

The String Or Grass Skirt; An Ancient Garment In The Southern Andes, Amy Oakland

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction to Session and South America

The regions of South America specific to our session concerning extraordinary textiles from the Southern Andes include the dry Pacific coast of southern Peru and northern Chile. Among the earliest inhabited sites of South America are those from the coast near Arica, Chile and the interior desert of the Pampa de Tamarugal. It is here that Chinchorro (9000-3000 B.P.) burials and later Formative (3000-1,500 B.P.) cemeteries of closely related coastal people known as Quiani and Fladas del Morro have been excavated (Fig. 1).

Although humans inhabited the coast and highlands of South America for …

Representation And Self-Presentation In Late Antique Egypt: ‘Coptic’ Textiles In The British Museum, Elisabeth R. O'Connell

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Among late antique textiles in the British Museum Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan (hereafter, AES), nearly half (c. 135) are said to have come from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim. If the attribution to the site is correct, the textiles provide the Museum with an excellent opportunity to discuss the transformation of Egypt in Late Antiquity through the lens of death and burial.

The late antique site is well represented in Greek and Coptic literature and by the material culture of the city and its cemeteries. The modern name Akhmim holds a vestige of the name Min, the …

Representation And Self-Presentation In Late Antique Egypt: ‘Coptic’ Textiles In The British Museum, Elisabeth R. O'Connell

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Modern Akhmim was a productive source of “Coptic” textiles entering international collections in the late nineteenth century. Fragments said to have come from the site constitute the majority of registered textiles held by the Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department, The British Museum. In Late Antiquity, Akhmim was the location of Panopolis/Shmin, one of about forty metropoleis and a city relatively well documented in contemporary textual and other archaeological sources. This is precisely the period in which most of Egypt’s residents became Christian. The abundance of material culture representing Panopolis/Shmin provides an opportunity to explore and challenge the categories scholars have …

Ethnicity Mobility And Status – Textiles From The Taklamakan Desert, Helen Persson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Central Asia was a rich cultural melting pot in the first millennium. Textiles provide a unique opportunity to discover more about its diverse population, different faiths and extensive trade networks. In the early 20th century, Sir Aurel Stein travelled along the Eastern Silk Road, now within the boundaries of the Peoples’ Republic of China, collecting a wealth of materials from various remote sites.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is the custodian of nearly 600 textile fragments from Stein’s unique collection and this paper will discuss the variety of materials and techniques held by the Asian Department. This paper will offer …

Ethnicity Mobility And Status – Textiles From The Taklamakan Desert, Helen Persson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin is now within the boundaries of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Taklamakan is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world and covers an area of 270,000 km2. It is bounded by Kunlun Mountains to the south, Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan to the west and north. Life-giving water from the mountains forms rivers and lakes and hence creating lush oasis on the borders of the desert. Neolithic stone tools show that humans have long been present in the area. Branches of trade routes, later known …

About The Authors

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

About the Authors

A-Z

Nettie Adams

Monisha Ahmed

...

Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Stephen Wagner

Solving The Puzzle Of The Archaeological Labyrinth: Time Perspectivism In Mediterranean Surface Archaeology, Luann Wandsnider

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This chapter critiques the currently embraced paradigm in Mediterranean surface archaeology of regional/settlement pattern studies – seated in flat-time functional metaphysic. As shown by Mediterranean archaeologists, that chronotype does not deal well with either complexity or history. And, attending methods, also as demonstrated by Mediterranean archaeologists, do not consistently accommodate or satisfactorily assign meaning to the varied archaeological landscape. But another formational metaphysic exists and seems better to comprehend the complex, historical world and to acknowledge landscape variation.This chapter argues for approaches to the Mediterranean landscape that accept and embrace a time perspectivism.

Clothing Styles From A Provincial Inca Outpost, Grace Katterman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

My recent study of Inca Period clothing has involved textile collections from three south coastal areas of Peru (Figure 1): Pachacamac, a large Inca center and temple complex just south of Lima (Uhle 1903/1991: Ch XXI:89-96); Rodadero, a storage facility overlooking the Inca center of Tambo Viejo in the Acari Valley (Katterman and Riddell (1992:141-167); and Burial House #2, the western hillside cemetery affiliated with the Inca outpost of Quebrada de La Vaca in the Chala Drainage (Katterman 2003b). From the burial house (Figure 6), Dorothy Menzel and Francis Riddell collected and documented 120 burials plus an additional 140 items …

The Archaeology Of Early Silk, Irene Good

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Centuries before the initiation of formal silk trade with Han China ca. 2oo BC, silk appeared as far west as the Baden-Würtemberg region of Germany. The use of wild (Antheraea sp.) silks has also been documented for western Asia and the Mediterranean region since early medieval times, but the extent and antiquity of this fiber technology is presently unclear. The domesticated silkworm Bombyx mori is derived from a species native to northern India, Assam and Bengal, known as Bombyx mandarina Moore. It was in China that this moth was domesticated, and the process of de-gumming developed at some point during …