Vitamine

Technology, Learning, and Innovation in Textile Arts: Integrating Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives

“…It does not appear that once coiling was invented it abruptly replaced twining as the preferred parching tool. To the contrary, both techniques were used side by side for several millennia before coiling attained numerical superiority over twining at Danger Cave (Rudy, 1957). Although new results may alter or improve our current understanding of coiling's origin, the present reconstruction favors an interpretation where coiling developed for alternative (and as yet unknown) reasons and only later was reconfigured or assumed greater importance in seed processing than twining.…”

“…Importantly, twined basketry was recovered in small quantities from the early DII levels (10,100-7500 B.P.) of Danger Cave that also bore the evidence of an intensive small seed adaptation (Rudy, 1957). However, coiling does not appear in the Danger Cave record until DIII levels, after 7500 B.P.…”

“…In the indigenous Americas, baskets and textiles were (and, in some areas, still remain) critical components of many societies' material culture. Abundant perishable artifacts excavated from extremely dry caves and rockshelters dotting the landscape of western North America's Great Basin and Southwest cultural provinces attest these technologies' importance in ancient and more recent times (e.g., Adovasio, 1986a;Cressman, 1942;Elsasser, 1978;Fowler and Dawson, 1986;Kent, 1983;Loud and Harrington, 1929;Morris and Burgh, 1941;Rudy, 1957;Teague, 1998). Sites in these regions have also provided some of the longest and most well-dated chronologies for textile crafts in the world, with evidence of basketry manufacture in the Great Basin more than 11,000 years ago.…”