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| Yucca utahensis (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) |
The finds were made in Arizona about a century ago and date to about 1100-1300 C.E. They are from the Anazazi or Pueblo culture. They are a kind of sock made from two fibers; the main weave is an open-mesh cotton, to which animal hair was originally fastened, though little animal hair remains on the surviving socks. The socks, in turn, were originally twined onto sandal soles, which provided better durability. The animal hair made the shoe/sock/sandal combination warmer, which matters at night in the desert. The sandal sole part is made from braided yucca leaves; Yucca
is now, as it must have been then, a plant easily available in and about the American southwestern desert.
According to the Museum's description, the mesh part of the socks was made by a "looping" or "knotless netting" process that sounds a lot like what is called nalbinding with regard to ancient European finds, though to my inexpert eye the pattern of mesh looks rather different from the nalbinding patterns with which I am familiar. No attempt to identify the type of animal hair used to cover the mesh is made in the museum write-up. It does not look like any kind of wool, but is fine and fairly short, like the hairs of a dog's coat, which makes me wonder whether it's coyote hair; coyotes are also native to the area. The result is a very practical piece of footwear for an arid desert environment such as the American southwest.
These finds show that the fact that, even with limited technologies, people can devise, and have devised, items of apparel that are attractive and provide the kind of function required by the climate of the area in which they live. Although I typically find European costume history more interesting, the ingenuity of these shoe-socks (as the Museum calls them) is impressive and should not be ignored by people interested in the history of clothing.
According to the Museum's description, the mesh part of the socks was made by a "looping" or "knotless netting" process that sounds a lot like what is called nalbinding with regard to ancient European finds, though to my inexpert eye the pattern of mesh looks rather different from the nalbinding patterns with which I am familiar. No attempt to identify the type of animal hair used to cover the mesh is made in the museum write-up. It does not look like any kind of wool, but is fine and fairly short, like the hairs of a dog's coat, which makes me wonder whether it's coyote hair; coyotes are also native to the area. The result is a very practical piece of footwear for an arid desert environment such as the American southwest.
These finds show that the fact that, even with limited technologies, people can devise, and have devised, items of apparel that are attractive and provide the kind of function required by the climate of the area in which they live. Although I typically find European costume history more interesting, the ingenuity of these shoe-socks (as the Museum calls them) is impressive and should not be ignored by people interested in the history of clothing.
The nalebinding stitch used on those pieces is the same as was used on the Coptic toe socks as well as earlier (even Bronze Age) work. It's sort of the lowest common denominator of nalebinding, not nearly as complicated as the Scandinavian Iron Age stitches or the Yemeni stitch in Collingwood's book The Maker's Hand.
ReplyDeleteThat shows you how poor an eye I have for detecting weave and looping patterns. Thanks for the information, Carolyn!
DeleteWow! They're just fascinating and it's lovely to see something with zoomable hi-def photos. I suppose the netting would stretch a bit, making them easier to get on and off.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you'd need something with some stretch to make the idea work. What fascinates me about them is the animal hair pile.
DeleteOooh yes - this is probably the most interesting example of a piled textile I've ever seen. I wonder how they got the hair incorporated into the cotton yarn.
DeleteHi Cathy, I've nominated you for a Liebster award. Accepting it of course is voluntary; details on my blog: http://hvitr.blogspot.com/2015/07/liebster-award.html
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Stella! I'll be posting about it later this weekend.
DeleteI was doing fieldwork all summer (nothing super interesting, just survey, but I'm catching up with my readings), but I have some notes for you from the region.
ReplyDelete-There's a lot of yucca and similar fiber sandals all over the southwest (there are stacks of them by the doors in some Anasazi cliff houses). The fibers are extracted by chewing the leaves (ethnographically, and some archaeologically, always women) until the fibers separate. Then they can be wrapped into cordage. So much was made that many women lost most to all of their molars by their mid-30s.
-a lot of the southwest has big areas of alkaline soil, and no amount of callous will help with that, not really. It might be part of why shoes are so common.
-despite the hot summers, it can get super cold, so yeah, socks! I've seen fibers mixed into weaving across north america; in the east you often see feathers, especially turkey.
-I've seen some finds from dry caves in West Texas, and the ways to get a lot of coverage is amazingly varied and brilliant. One I saw was what may be a single or maybe two rabbit skins treated to be big enough to swaddle a small child (about 2/3 yrs old). Have you ever made leather cording, where you make a 1-2mm strip around the outside and spiral it in? It was like that but with fur on rabbit skin. The cording was then loosely woven and may have had additional fluff stuffed in (at the time I saw it minimal work had been done). Another is taking prickly pear pads, burning off the spines and gutting the innards, and using it as a bag (some quite big, these things are super common where the cacti grow)
Hi, synj-munki! Thanks for all the observations!
DeleteI was aware that yucca grows all over the Southwest US so I'm not surprised to hear that there are other yucca fiber sandal finds. I wasn't aware that processing yucca leaves into fibers caused such dramatic tooth damage, though. The leather cording and prickly pear finds are phenomenal; that really shows off the human capacity for invention in response to a need. Are there on-line photographs of these types of finds?
I can't link burial finds, out of respect. But I have seen the mandibles in person. But I can link some cave finds-
DeleteA woven jackrabbit fur-on skin blanket-
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/hinds/images/rabbitfur2.html
A prickly pear canteen-
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/nature/images/p-pear-conejo.html
(they also show up as shaman bags, both in burial contexts and on rock art in the Pecos area)
Very interesting! Thanks.
Delete