Plaited Sandals at Chaco Museum
Chapter nine of Crucible of Pueblos looks at perishable artifacts (i.e., those made of materials that are often not preserved in the archaeological record, such as yucca fiber, animal hair, and cotton) during the Pueblo I period. Written by Laurie Webster, one of the most prominent experts on prehistoric Southwestern perishables, this chapter functions partly as an inventory and description of all known perishables from Pueblo I sites, and as such it is highly technical in nature and not very accessible for a casual reader. For this summary, therefore, I will focus on the high-level conclusions that can be made about Pueblo I cultural dynamics and relationships from the perishable evidence, rather than the evidence itself.
Those conclusions are quite interesting, as it turns out, especially when it comes to the patterning of different types of artifacts. Webster covers several different types of artifact, but I will focus on two with the most interesting cultural implications: sandals and textiles.
First, however, a note about the data. As Webster notes, the Pueblo I period has historically been poorly represented in the perishable data compared to earlier and later period that are known for extraordinary preservation from caves and rock shelters, especially the Basketmaker II and Pueblo III periods. People made much less use of caves and rock shelters during Pueblo I, and as a result many more of their perishable artifacts have, well, perished, and those that do survive are mostly in poor condition. Indeed, most of the best-preserved Pueblo I perishables are from areas like Tsegi Canyon and Canyon del Muerto in northeastern Arizona where caves did continue to be used in Pueblo I, although the Pueblo I occupation in these areas is poorly understood and it is not always clear that artifacts assigned to Pueblo I by early excavators really do date to this period. Luckily, however, the nature of perishable artifacts means that they can be directly radiocarbon-dated, and Webster mentions several examples that have been and many more that could be.
With that caveat out of the way, sandals. These were generally made out of yucca fiber and appear to have been a key way people at the time signaled their cultural identity, based on the geographic patterning of different types, and they likely had symbolic importance as well at least for some groups, based on the elaboration of some examples, implying an immense amount of labor, as well as the depiction of sandals in rock art and the creation of clay effigies (often called “sandal lasts” although that doesn’t appear to have been their actual function). In particular, highly elaborate twined sandals were common in western areas during Pueblo I, a continuation of a tradition from Basketmaker times. Pueblo I examples are known from northeastern Arizona, the eastern slope of the Chuska Mountains in New Mexico, the Dolores area in Colorado, and Chaco Canyon. In contrast, only one example is known from the Animas River Valley, and none from further east, despite the large recent excavations in this area in conjunction with large development projects.
Animas River, Durango, Colorado
A different type of sandal dominates in these eastern areas, a twill-plaited design that appears to date back to the Basketmaker II sites near Durango, Colorado. This type dominates in the Ridges Basin and Blue Mesa area of the Eastern Mesa Verde region and is also found in the Navajo Reservoir area further south, as well as at Grass Mesa Village in the Dolores area. The last is particularly interesting given that there is other evidence that Grass Mesa was settled by people from areas further east. It is also interesting that McPhee Village, also in the Dolores area, shows mainly twined sandals, again supporting other evidence suggesting western connections for this site. Similarly, the one site in the Animas Valley showing evidence for twined sandals also has other evidence of western connections.
A third type of sandal, plain weave with a rounded or pointed toe, appears to also have a western distribution extending from southern Nevada to northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah but not into Colorado or New Mexico. Less is known about this type than the other two and its cultural significance is not clear.
While in general Webster concludes that Pueblo I perishables mostly continue Basketmaker III patterns without major innovations, she does note one major innovation by late Pueblo I: the increasing use of cotton. While many of the cotton textiles from northeastern Arizona attributed to Pueblo I have questions about their dating and associations, there is one example of a sash from Obelisk Cave in the Prayer Rock District (extreme northeastern Arizona) that has been directly dated to the AD 700s (early Pueblo I). One particularly interesting thing about this sash is that it actually consists of a mixture of cotton and dog hair, clearly showing the transition from animal hair and cotton for textiles. While the form of this item and the use of mixed materials strongly implies that it was made locally, it is not clear if the cotton was in fact grown locally or imported from the Hohokam in southern Arizona, who had a well-established tradition of cotton agriculture by this time.
By late Pueblo I, however, there is strong evidence that at least some Pueblo groups were growing their own cotton. At Antelope House in Pueblo del Muerto, cotton cloth in contexts dating to the AD 900s was found along with cotton seeds and bolls, clearly implying that cotton was being grown in this area by then, as it continued to be throughout the Pueblo period. Interestingly, there is no evidence for Pueblo I use of cotton textiles further east, again implying some sort of major cultural boundary. This is in contrast to later periods, when cotton grown in northeastern Arizona was traded to various other parts of the Pueblo world.
So anyway, those are the major points of interest about Pueblo I perishables. I find the most interesting point from the perspective of Chaco to be the fact that it patterns with the western rather than the eastern style of sandal, which reinforces other evidence for western connections for at least some of the people who came to Chaco in late Pueblo I and contributed to its rise into a dominant regional center in the northern Southwest.
Chuska Mountains from Peñasco Blanco
Gambler's House 