A Tarahumaran woman weaves fabric on a horizontal loom (Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Bennett L. Zingg, photographer. ASM negative no. 54673).

Preservation
Most surviving Southwestern textiles are recovered from dry caves, including the knotted nets and twined bags found in Archaic levels at McEuen Cave and an elaborately patterned, interlinked fabric from fourteenth-century cliff dwellings at Tonto National Monument. A smaller number of specimens have been preserved by fire, most impressively a fine, well-wrapped carbonized fragment from the eleventh century found at Snaketown, south of Phoenix. Other situations which preserve cloth are not common in the Southwest. Airless environments, such as bogs or lake bottoms, can provide remarkable preservation - but are not typical of the region. Fabrics can be also preserved by the leaching of minerals from metal artifacts, which are quite rare in the Southwest.

Fibers and Yarns
Fibers are the basic materials from which textiles are made. Between 550 and 700 different plants have been used in the production of textiles in the Southwest. Animals have provided fur, hair, and feathers. Asbestos has been used as a fiber for special purposes. The archaeological presence of a particular type of fiber can reflect wild plant availability, the use of a new domesticate such as cotton or turkeys, the direction and intensity of interaction with distant groups, or changes in the cultural contexts in which fibers are used.

The earliest people of the Southwest created textiles from locally available fibers. Hair from humans and domesticated dogs was incorporated into yarns for fabrics, and both rabbit fur and bird feathers were used in twined robes. These materials were readily available and their insulating value and easy preparation made them ideal for use in early textile production. Fibers from wild plants were also very important. Plant leaves and stems usually contain long, coarse fibers. These fibers are held together in the leaf or stem by gums that must be removed through processing. Important plants used in prehistoric Southwestern fabrics include the leaves of yucca, agave, sotol, and beargrass, and the stems of milkweed, hemp, mesquite, cliff rose, and willow. Long fibers made it possible to spin them into yarns without tools, simply by rolling them along the thigh with the hand. "Hand spinning" is nothing more than drawing out fibers and twisting to hold them together.

After about A.D. 700, it was a seed fiber - cotton - that dominated most Southwestern textile assemblages north of what is now Mexico. Cotton has many advantages over other plant materials. Cotton fibers are not encased in gummy substances and often are only lightly attached to the accompanying seeds within the boll. Preparation is therefore easy, and the resulting yarns are both soft and strong. However, the short fibers of cotton require a tool for the preparation of yarn. In the prehistoric Southwest, as in much of the world, this tool was the hand spindle. The most widely distributed version of the spindle, and almost certainly the earliest, was similar to what was used historically in the pueblos. The spindle was a straight stick with at least one end - the one that the fiber rotated upon - shaped into a point. Whorls were fixed on the spindle shaft to maintain the rapid rotation needed to put twist into fiber. Initially in the Southwest, whorls were perforated disks made from wood, horn, gourd, or worked sherds. The spindle whorl was rotated on the thigh. Later, modeled clay whorls were introduced into the area below the Mogollon Rim from Mesoamerica; the shorter spindles on which these were mounted were supported vertically below the spinner on a firm surface, perhaps a bowl or sherd.

References Cited

• Brody, J. J. 1977 Mimbres Painted Pottery. School of American Research and University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe and Albuquerque.


• Emery, Irene 1966 The Primary Structure of Fabrics. The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.


• Kent, Kate Peck 1983 Prehistoric Textiles of the Southwest. School of American Research, Santa Fe.


• Teague, Lynn S. 1998 Textiles in Southwestern Prehistory. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

• Laurie Webster, "The Anthropology of Clothing: An Example from the Historic Pueblos."


• Elizabeth Ann Morris, "Basketmaker Sandals from the Four Corners Area."


• R. Gwinn Vivian, "Perishable Materials from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: Ritual Items from the Chetro Ketl Great House."


• Donald T. Garate, "Mission 2000: Bringing Mission Records to Life after 300 Years."


• William H. Doelle, "Back Sight."

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