Basketry

    Basketry is one of the oldest aboriginal crafts and prehistoric technologies in North America. Basketry is still a popular craft today. It includes weaving, knotting and entwining things to make baskets, matting, bags and even prehistoric footwear. Throughout the history of archeological findings, no two populations have designed styles of basketry that are identical. Overall, basketry artifacts hold an important role in regional chronologies and interregional relationships.

    The art of basketry uses many resources to create the products. The most common materials are plant parts. These include: grasses, leaves, stems, stalks, twigs, bark, roots and corn shuck. These elements are either used by themselves or as combinations.

    The most commonly used base structure is cordage. Cordage is usually two or more elements combined. Cordage is usually bark, corn shuck, stems or grasses. Two of these elements are tightly braided or twisted together. They are then used on the different types of construction methods.

    Coiling is a form of constructing a bag or basket. When this is done one essential element is coiled around and then the different orbits are stitched together to create adhesion with the second essential element. A spiral configuration is formed when the product is finished. Bark, woody shoots and grass stems are the most common in this construction.

    Another type of basketry is labeled twining or plaiting. This technique also uses two elements. The base element is laid in rows and entwined with cordage made from the second element. This cordage is spiraled around the based rows. Twined structures are commonly used in the making of bags and mats.

    Lastly and probably the most common form of basketry is weaving or plain weaving. This type uses two elements and interlaces them at right angles. Weave base constructions are used in rectangular baskets and mats. There are other more complicated types of weaving such as, twill float weaving, even regular twill, and patterned float weaving. Individual families even have their own traditional weaving techniques.

    Basketry is not only an inventive craft but plays an important role in telling archeologists about the past. Artifacts of this craft tells us general technological level, area of community occupation, intergroup relationships and movements, degrees of conservatism, social structure and the connections between two different prehistoric populations. As you can see, the findings of basketry are very important and should not be overlooked.

References:

Hill, James N. and Joel Gunn eds. The Individual in Prehistory: Studies of Variability in Style in Prehistoric Technologies. New York: Academic, 1977.

Jennings, Jesse D. and Edward Norbeck eds. Prehistoric Man in the New World. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1964.

Scholtz, Sandra Clements. Prehistoric Piles: A Structural and Comparative Analysis of Cordage, Netting, Basketry, and Fabric from Ozark Bluff Shelters. Arkansas: Publications in Archeology, 1975.