Arizona Public Media :: Video Short "Kachina Imagery"
In a recent post I briefly alluded to the manufacture and use of basketry in prehistory, and having also read a report in Science Daily which discussed the possible connection between basketry and humans' ability to count, it seems worthwhile compiling a short post on the subject, prefaced by this video promoting a recent exhibition at Arizona State Museum, 'Circles of Life' in which traditional Hopi basketry is both illustrated and discussed, (there is also a book) whilst at the same time offering an insight into a practice that can be securely dated back at least 10,000 years to Spirit Cave in America, quite possibly well into the Gravettian era of the European Upper Palaeolithic, and maybe long before then.
But before heading off into the distant past, this excellent video short from Arizona Public Media offers a very good illustration of how basketry in North America continues to play an important part in the lives and economy of modern day
Hopi, who occupy an arid region of Arizona, namely the First, Second and Third Mesas, all of which extend from Black Mesa.
Third Mesa is associated with 'wicker basketry, weaving, kachina doll carving and silversmithing', Second Mesa 'coiled basketry', whilst First Mesa is renowned for its pottery.
The Hopi are described as the oldest continuously surviving indigenous people in the US. In the latter part of the 19th century, the outside world began to take an interest in acquiring kachina dolls, which might more accurately be described as religious icons, as suggested here.
The kachina doll tradition traces its roots to the idea that the kachina are supernatural beings in the guise of spirit helpers, mediating between this world and that of the spirits, bringing with them valuable gifts for the Hopi, not the least of which was considered to be rain, crucial for ensuring their survival in the barren landscapes of their domain. These icons were originally given as gifts within the communities, a process which included the passing on of knowledge regarding the numerous attributes and gifts of the numerous kachina spirits.
It was only with the advent of interest from the outside world that Hopi basketry and pottery began to incorporate kachina imagery, when it became apparent in the 1870s that there was a great deal of demand from an eager public living in the industrialised US. As a result, there has been a brisk trade ever since, and in the ensuing years there has been a marked development of style in kachina basketry production, as is made clear in the video.
Although the exhibition at Arizona State Museum has now ended, it is described as a travelling event, having been featured at the 
Grace Hudson Museum, California, back in 2006, so it's quite possible that other venues have been slated for future shows. (image: Grace Hudson Museum)
However as will presently be apparent, there's a great deal more to basketry, both in scope and application, prompting researchers elsewhere to embark on a full-scale project which seeks to examine the subject in great depth.
'Beyond Text', is an ongoing exploration into basketry from the University of East Anglia in the UK, and moves far beyond the territories of the Hopi in the Four Corners region, to consider basketry in its global context:
"Basketry has been practised for millennia and is one of the oldest human technologies. Its immediate importance lies in the provision of mats, containers, traps and barriers, all of which have been central to culture, whether nomadic or sedentary and whether based on an economy of hunting and gathering or herding and cultivation.
Beyond its practical uses, basketry has arguably been even more influential on our lives, since it relies on the relationship of number, pattern and structure. It thus provides a paradigm for disciplines such as mathematics and engineering and for the organisation of social and political life.
The research explores the development of basketry in human culture over ten thousand years, and focuses on various parts of the world both in the past but particularly on the anthropological records relating to recent and current production in Amazonia, Central Africa and Papua New Guinea." (image from 'Beyond Text')
As mentioned earlier, I think there's circumstantial evidence to suggest that this technology might extend back further than 10,000 years; as we see from this study,'Upper Paleolithic fibre Technology: Interlaced Woven Finds From Pavlo I, Czech Republic, c. 26,000 years ago.' by James Adovasio, Olga Soffer et al.
In another paper at Current Anthropology, namely 'Recovering Perishable Technologies through Use Wear on Tools: Preliminary Evidence for Upper Paleolithic Weaving and Net Making', Olga Soffer states the following:
Recent research on textile impressions conducted in collaboration with Czech, 
German, and Russian scholars has documented that a wide range of plant‐based perishable items was produced in Upper Paleolithic Europe by a number of additive methods (Adovasio et al. 1998, 1999, 2001; Soffer, Adovasio, and Hyland 2002). Similar evidence has also been recovered from Late Pleistocene sites in the New World, including both North and South America (Adovasio et al. 1998 with references).
The Eurasian inventory includes diverse cordage, knotted netting, plaited wicker‐style basketry, and textiles, including simple and diagonal twined pieces and plain woven and twilled objects. Furthermore, some of these pieces show conjoining of two pieces of fabric by a whipping stitch to produce a seam, or sewing. The widespread use of this production technology is confirmed by the appearance and proliferation of eyed needles as well as by the reconstruction of tailored clothing on the basis of evidence from funerary contexts (Soffer, Adovasio, and Hyland 2002 with references). (image from Don's Maps)
We first identified these previously unrecognized technologies in Moravia, the Czech Republic, where groups that occupied such sites as Dolní Věstonice I, II, and Pavlov I used local loess, mixed with water, to fashion animal and female figurines that they fired in hearths and kilns (Vandiver et al. 1989) and used wetted loess as daub on mammoth bones as well as to fashion what Pamela Vandiver and I have identified as “structural ceramics” (Soffer and Vandiver 1994, 1997; Soffer 2000).
This extensive manipulation of plastic materials inevitably, intentionally or otherwise, led to the clay body’s coming in contact with cordage and textile items, which became impressed on the clay and preserved through firing. Subsequent research extended the evidence for these perishable technologies to France, Germany, and Russia (Soffer et al. 2000). The diversity and sophistication of the documented weaving led us to argue that the evidence we saw for it at Upper Paleolithic sites dating as far back as some 27,000 b.p. (at Dolní Věstonice I, for example) was clearly not its point of origin and to hypothesize that these technologies went considerably farther back in time. The textiles, basketry, and cordage specimens represented in the impressions were clearly made of plant rather than animal fibers, though at present an explicit identification of the species used is impossible.
Pollen analyses from the sites indicate a predominantly open landscape with bast‐bearing and other plants (Adovasio et al. 1998, 1999, 2001). A number of these, such as the alder (Alnus sp.) and yew (Taxus sp.), with their fibrous bark, were suitable for construction material. The herbaceous flora at the Moravian and Russian sites also included both milkweed (Asclepias sp.) and nettle (Urtica sp.). All of these have well‐documented ethnographic and prehistoric uses as perishable production media.
If it seems likely that people in the mid Upper Palaeolithic era of the Gravettian had the cognitive capacity and manual dexterity to weave textiles, and as we have seen recently from sites like Hohle Fels, Aurignacian people living a good 10,000 years before that had the wherewithal to design and construct figurines and flutes from difficult materials like mammoth ivory. Whereas it had previously been thought that such artefacts were first made in the Gravettian, it now appears that Aurignacian people might have been the originators of these traditions in Upper Palaeolithic Europe.
Obviously, the ability to construct flutes and carve figurines nearly 40,000 years ago doesn't exactly equate to creating textiles at 26 kya BP, or to manufacturing items of basketry in the terms referred to in 'Beyond Text', but I think it's worth at least considering that basketry may represent a type of invisible archaeology which masks the true abilities of early AMH.
At the top of this post I referred to a news item at Science Daily, and next I'll refer back to that, and specifically to project leader Professor Sandy Heslop of the School of World Art and Museology at UEA, who states:
“Basketry is a worldwide technology and is the interaction between human ingenuity and the environment. It tends to make use of, and therefore has to be adapted to, local conditions in terms of resources and environment.
“Without basketry there would be no civilisations. You can’t bring thousands of people together unless you can supply them, you can’t bring in supplies to feed populations without containers. In the early days of civilisations these containers were basketry.
“We may think of baskets as humble, but other people and cultures don’t. They have been used for storage, for important religious and ceremonial processes, even for bodies in the form of coffins.”
The emphasis here is clearly more on the Neolithic and the origins of agriculture, commonly held
to have begun around 11,000-12,000 years ago, but as we know from Ohalo II on Lake Galilee, people were cultivating foods as far back as 22,000 years ago, and moreover living in huts, which I would assume would have required that the builders had at least some basketry skills. Again, this episode took place in the Upper Palaeolithic, just a few thousand years later than putative textile makers of Pavlo 1, referred to above. (image from Hecht Museum)
A final and even wilder speculation tempts me to suggest that although current opinion holds that Upper Palaeolithic symbolic creativity was expressed mainly in cave painting and portable art such as figurines, or engraved bone and antler, beads and pendants, there may have been people back then who not only made basketry items for practical and cultural reasons, but who on occasion also wove in their own chosen colours or patterns as a way of enhancing the results of their precocious ingenuity.
Naturally, the availability or absence of suitable plant materials in a deteriorating Eurasian climate would dictate whether this suggested ability could have existed, but as there is good evidence from Algeria and Israel dating back at least 100,000 years that coloured ochres were used, and finely produced shell beads manufactured, there seems little doubt that humans were exhibiting technical and cultural attributes that might easily have allowed for the production of basketry, in the form of mats or containers, on a practical level at the very least.Whether it's feasible to imply that archaic forebears like the Neanderthals or their predecessors were similarly enabled is more uncertain still - but if we further consider that Neanderthals may have been wearing tailored clothing, albeit without the aid of an eyed needle, at 125,000 years ago, it seems reasonable to assume that they too might have been able to come to grips with the fundamentals of weaving and twining plant materials, perhaps in ways similar to Ötzi, whose 5,300 year-old frozen corpse was wearing a cloak made from woven grass. 
If it seems like a simple enough process, and given available resources and materials in suitable climates, combined with the practical benefits that basketry would have offered, there could be a case for asking whether there is an entire technological and cultural episode in human creativity that has become all but invisible in the archaeological record, as organic materials from which such items could have been made, would long ago have withered and disintegrated, leaving no direct evidence that they ever existed.
This post was made possible by whoever re-posted the video at the top of this article - it briefly disappeared as the exhibition at Arizona State Museum ended, leaving me in the temporary position of being unable to post this article with the good illustrative film I wanted to use as the introduction, so my grateful thanks go to that person.
N.B. This post was originally intended for Anthropology.net, but as I was unable to embed the video with Wordpress, I've published it here at remote central, in amongst the cycling news from this year's TdF.
References:
Recovering Perishable Technologies through Use Wear on Tools: Preliminary Evidence for Upper Paleolithic Weaving and Net Making' by Olga Soffer, Current Anthropology Volume 45, Number 3, June 2004.
Upper Paleolithic Fibre Technology: Interlaced Woven Finds From Pavlo I, Czech Republic, c. 26,000 years ago, by James M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, Bohuslav Klima, Antiquity, 09/01/96
UFOMystic: Remembering Mac
Posts
