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influenced by water and any kind of organic input that raises the acidity of that matrix. Taphonomic methods have revolutionized scientific and lay perceptions of the nature and behavior of extinct organisms, including humans and human ancestors. Establishing the agents of bone collection and modification is prerequisite to dietary analyses in the archaeology. In zooarchaeology, taphonomic data provide critical insights about the carnivorous behavior of prehistoric humans and, in the Early Pleistocene, ecological competition between extinct members of the human evolutionary tree (taxonomic tribe Hominini of the family Hominidae) and large cats and hyenas. Widespread integration of taphonomic analyses in archaeological research is also responsible for the decline of living floor or snapshot reconstructions of archaeological sites in favor of dynamic or cumulative models. Recent innovations in taphonomic methods offer numerous means for distinguishing activity areas within archaeological sites, selective transport of animal parts, and differential preservation in sediments, as well as more effective ways to investigate food-processing practices and their energetic consequences in prehistory and the recent past. Perhaps more than any other subset of archaeological research, taphonomic approaches have promoted a fundamental shift from static to dynamic conceptions about how archaeological and palaeontological records form.
See also: Archaeozoology; Behavioral Archaeology; Invertebrate Analysis; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Sites: Formation Processes; Stable Isotope Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading
Behrensmeyer AK and Kidwell SM (1985) Taphonomys contributions to paleobiology. Paleobiology 11: 105119. Binford LR (1978) Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. New York: Academic Press. Brain CK (1981) The Hunters or the Hunted? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DeNiro MJ (1985) Postmortem preservation and alteration of in vivo bone collagen isotope ratios in relation to palaeodietary reconstruction. Nature 317: 806809. Efremov IA (1940) Taphonomy: A new branch of paleontology. Pan-American Geologist 74: 8193. Gifford DP (1981) Taphonomy and paleoecology: A critical review of archeologys sister discipline. In: Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 4, p. 365438. New York: Academic Press. Haynes G (1991) Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior, and the Fossil Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kurte n B (1976) The Cave Bear Story. New York: Columbia University Press. Lyman RL (1994) Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mu ozoologie, band. I allgemeine ller AH (1963) Lehrbuch de pala grundlagen. Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Richter R (1928) Aktuopala ontologie und Pala obiologie, eine Abgrenzung. Senkenbergiana 19. Voorhies MR (1969) Contributions to Geology, Special Papers, No. 1: Taphonomy and Population Dynamics of an Early Pliocene Vertebrate Fauna, Knox County, Nebraska. Laramie, WY: University of Wyoming. Weigelt J (1927) Rezente wirbeltierleichen und ihre pala obiologische bedeutung. Leipzig: Max Weg Verlag (English translation by Schaefer J, 1989, Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and Their Paleobiological Implications. University of Chicago Press: Chicago). Weiner S, Goldberg P, and Bar-Yosef O (2002) Three-dimensional distribution of minerals in the sediments of Hayonim Cave, Israel: Diagenetic processes and archaeological implications. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 12891308.

TEXTILES
Carol Bier, The Textile Museum, Washington, DC, USA Mary M Dusenbury, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
Published by Elsevier Inc. fabrics by a process known as dyeing; dyes form a chemical bond with fibrous material (unlike pigments). embroidery Technique, or result of such technique, of embellishing cloth with accessory threads worked by a needle. felt A nonwoven fabric of amorphous structure made by the compacting of fibrous materials using heat, moisture, and pressure; as used, often implies wool, the scaled surface of which is well suited to making felt. foundation The ground weave of a fabric generally composed of one set of warps and wefts. loom A structure designed to hold warp yarns taut, often with one or more devices to raise or lower warp threads in groups. pile A loop of yarn, sometimes cut, that projects from the plane of a fabric to form a raised surface often obscuring the foundation. plain weave Most basic weave structure in which each warp and weft intersect at right angles in an over-under alternation.

Glossary
carding/combing Processes of aligning fibers for spinning. carpet Large flat rug generally used as a floor cover. cloth Woven fabric, sometimes specifically to plain weave. drawloom Loom for weaving patterns by means of a series of harnesses manipulated by a person who controls each warp. dyes/dyeing Liquid containing organic or inorganic coloring matter, sometimes with a mordant, to impart to fibers, yarns, or

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plaiting Technique of interworking by deflection a set of elements fixed at one end. pseudomorph A substance or structure of definite form (e.g., a textile), the form of which is defined by another substance to which the form does not belong (i.e., a textile fossil). satin Basic binding system derived from twill, in which interlacing sequence of warp and weft has longer floats, for example, over five under one. selvedge The naturally occurring stable edges of a textile formed in weaving by the return passage of successive wefts. supplementary warp, supplementary weft Textile structure used for patterning in which there is a set of warps or wefts supplementary to the foundation. tapestry Woven textile in which the design is formed by discontinuous wefts of different colors. textile (1) Anything made of fibrous material fashioned by human hands (note: this broad definition includes nonwoven structures and unspun materials). (2) Woven fabric (note: this narrower definition, derived from Latin, textere, to weave, is restricted to materials made by the interlacing of warp and weft). twill Basic binding system in which interlacing sequence of warp and weft spans more than one element (but fewer than five), creating floats often with diagonal alignment. warp Longitudinal set of elements generally held taut by a loom. weave structure Description of relationships of warp and weft in a woven textile. weaving Process of interlacing warp and weft to create a textile. weft Transverse elements that interlace with warps to create a woven textile.

attention they deserve in relation to the roles they serve in all cultural traditions. Many approaches to the study of textiles and society can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological remains. Ethnographic documentation and analogy, art historical analysis of pictorial representations, the recognition of influences in other media, and the exploration of structures, patterns, and patternmaking as visual expressions of mathematical ideas, are among the approaches that offer great potential for understanding textiles within the study of human societies based on archaeological remains.

Textiles and Society

The role of textiles in any society is both pervasive and diverse, for textiles serve everyone in many ways. Textiles are created to serve the daily and ceremonial needs of nearly all individuals, literally from birth to death. Enfolding a newborn in cloth is usually the first act a woman does for her infant that an animal does not; being clothed or wrapped in cloth is the first mark of the infants incorporation into the human community. Most cultures also pay close attention to the garments with which they prepare their dead, a habit that has engendered preservation of extraordinary textile remains such as those excavated at Pazyryk in Siberia and at various sites along the desert coast of Peru. Intimately intertwined with human experience, textiles have served throughout history as a medium of interaction between humans and the world they inhabit. Textiles function as garments, as furnishings, as containers for storage and transport, as architecture (tents) and architectural elements (e.g., doors, walls, floors), as bearers of belief systems and cultural heritage, and in the care of domesticated animals. From cradle to grave, cloth enfolds us, protecting, defining, and embellishing our persons, the spaces we occupy, and the activities in which we engage. In all categories of the worlds populations, individuals require textiles regardless of age, sex, status, belief, or occupation. Yet textiles by their design and function also serve to distinguish among individuals and among groups of individuals, in terms of class, religion, activity, gender, stature, and respect. The basis of fashion, textiles distinguish by means of drapery, form, and cut, by color and texture, by the fibers and how they have been prepared, by processing and finishing of the fabric. Combining aesthetics and technology, the textile arts represent nearly all human activity and express much that is valued in any given society. A major component of material culture, textiles are intended to serve defined purposes. Lightweight, flexible, and sometimes worth their weight in gold, textiles have served as vehicles for commerce and communication from prehistoric times to the present. They have been used to proclaim an

Textiles and the Archaeological Record

The pervasive presence and cultural importance of textiles is not reflected in the archaeological record. As products of technology, objects of trade, markers of identity, and bearers of constructed meanings, and sometimes as works of art, textiles can convey massive amounts of information about human societies and their economies. They represent a range of forms and functions; they are expressive of cultural ideals and norms, government decrees, and human ideals, desires, and aspirations. Textiles articulate relationships among individuals, identities, and cultural groupings. Representing sophisticated understandings of materials and their properties, and manipulated through diverse technologies, textiles embody human ingenuity, creativity, and pragmatic solutions to everyday problems of the human condition. But, in spite of their profound significance, they factor minimally in the archaeological record due to a variety of factors such as their fragile nature, organic composition, patterns of use and wear, and general tendency to decompose in most environments. With few exceptions (in areas of extreme dryness, permafrost, and anaerobic or low-oxygen environments), historically, textiles have either been absent from archaeological contexts, or neglected in the course of documentation because of their scrappy condition. Today, newly developed analytical techniques permit a vast array of data to be extracted from tiny fragments, so that textiles are beginning to attract the

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individuals age, gender, status, wealth, profession, and religious affiliation; to highlight individuality and/or foster group identity; and to support, defy, or subvert social organization and political power. An integral part of many religious and civil rituals, textiles can embody and make visible belief systems (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). Imbued with the power of the image or the authority of a ruler, textiles may serve to legitimize, to provide a blessing, or to unify people around a potent symbol such as a banner or flag. All textiles, including those that have survived only as scraps, derive from particular places at particular times. Each textile or fragment represents a complex set of human interactions between user and viewer, which implies a social response, and between user and maker, which sometimes results from an economic transaction or transactions among buyer and seller, lender, merchant, and trader. Suppliers of raw materials and market officials adjudicating fair trade and quality control may also have been involved. The quality and appearance of any given textile results from the contemporaneous conjunction of such factors as desire, taste, knowledge, technology, social traditions, aesthetic preference, style, fashion, political and economic circumstance, market conditions, organization of the household, availability of raw materials, and local ecology. In short, every textile ever produced, from oversize carpets to the tiniest shred of a fabric, is the product of its own environment, made and used in response to a particular set of historical circumstances. Analyzed with care, a great deal of information about the environment and historical circumstances that produced a textile can be deciphered from even a small, discolored fragment hundreds or even thousands of years later.

Industrial Revolution. It was created to expedite the interlacing of multiple warps and wefts and used commercially to produce complex woven structures and highly complicated designs and patterns. Its development provided crucial intellectual advances and applications that led to the invention of computers. At the other end of history, the whorled spindle, invented to twist finite elements of plant or animal fiber into a continuous strand, some consider to have served as a prototype for the invention of the wheel. Textile technologies are dependent upon local materials, human insight, and regional traditions. In the production of textiles, there are clusters of locally specific and diagnostic features, which can be identified. As with other technologies, textile processes are integral with, and inseparable from, the cultural systems within which they emerged.

Textile Structures and Patterns

Textiles are patterned with infinite variety. Patterns emerge from the structure of the fabric through the interlacing of warp and weft according to many possible sequences (plain weave is the simplest logical possibility, over-one-under-one; twill involves over-two or over-three and under-one, -two, or -three; satin has longer floats with passages over more warps or wefts, and under-one or more; tapestry uses discontinuous wefts; compound weaves utilize more than one set of warps or wefts; float patterns are derived from the basic binding systems; velvet is a pile weave with a compound weave structure). In pile carpets, the pattern is carried by the pile, which is perpendicular to the interlacings of warp and weft. Apart from weave structure, patterns can be added as surface design by painting, printing, or resist dyeing. Textiles may be embellished after weaving with stitching and with the addition of accessory materials such as beads, jewels, shells, buttons, and supplementary layers of cloth (quilting, patching, applique ). Felt is prepared as compacted fibers without the use of yarns. Color may be introduced to the fibers, the yarns, or woven fabrics through the use of dyes which chemically bond with textile materials, or pigments, which reside on the surface of the fabric and do not form a chemical bond with the fibers.

Textile Technologies
Since prehistoric times, textile production has relied upon human ingenuity and has fostered both inquiry and experimentation. It always depends upon several successive processes from the gathering or harvesting of raw materials (plant or animal) to the compacting of fibers to produce felt, or to the preparation of pliable elements (through techniques of retting, hand splitting, or joining fibers; carding, combing, spinning, and/or reeling), to the interlacing of these elements into cloth (weaving and plaiting), to the dyeing of the fibers, threads, or woven cloth and to patternmaking. Sometimes, experimentation has led to ingenious inventions and applications of technologies, contributing significantly to the breadth of human knowledge and development. Such is the case with the development of computers from programmed looms the Jacquard loom is credited with this invention, which brought on what has been called the

Archaeological Finds
As mentioned above, the prevalence and importance of textiles in human cultures is not evident from the archaeological record. Textiles, composed of organic matter, decompose naturally in a comparatively short period of time from exposure to water, air, minerals, insects, and fungi. Where they have survived in archaeological contexts, such natural agents of decay

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and deterioration are generally absent. This condition is restricted to very dry desert regions, such as Egypt, the Taklamakan Desert in China, and the coastal Central Andes in South America; areas of permafrost, such as Siberia; bogs in northern and central Europe; and other low-oxygen environments such as sealed tombs. In the Eurasian continent, major archaeological textile finds have been located in Egypt, the Caucasus, Siberia, Central Asia, and northwest China. In the Americas, the most numerous and significant finds have been in the desert of the Southwest United States and northern Mexico and along the arid Peruvian coast. Many such finds are associated with burials and often affiliated with lands beyond areas of potential cultivation. The care and rituals with which the human dead are treated, and local ecology in regions not easily adapted for agriculture or grazing, are circumstances which combined together have facilitated longterm preservation and survival of textile specimens. Archaeological textiles, like other artifacts, reveal the most when their context is fully documented. But textiles pose different sets of issues and problems than those of more durable materials. For adequate retrieval from extreme areas of dryness, processes of rehydration and stabilization have needed to be developed. And the documentation of textiles requires careful analysis of fibers, fiber and yarn preparation, and weave structure, to provide critical data for interpretation and comparative study. Excavated and recorded with care, textiles can provide information about local cultures, particularly when studied within broader cultural contexts, to determine regional patterns and inter-regional contact. The Silk Road, for example, reflects local and long-distance patterns of trade, influence, and movements of populations as well as merchants. Although the term itself is modern, the paths of human interaction and contact it signifies extend back for many centuries if not millennia. Critical analytical and comparative studies of patterns, designs, colors, materials, weave structures, accessories, and the techniques and processes they imply, can illuminate trade and tribute relationships, routes of migration and pilgrimage, even missionary activity, or relations among nomadic and settled peoples. The flexibility and mobility of textiles have served to render them particularly important as signifiers, if not themselves actual agents, of cultural exchange. As objects of material culture textiles are expressive of human interactions across time and space. Buddhist imagery, for example, was literally carried by itinerant monks from India and Central Asia east through Dunhuang to China, Korea, and Japan, as painted or patterned textiles, easily rolled or folded and transported manually from place to place. Another example is suggested by the presence of cotton, which requires intensive water for its cultivation,

and generally relies upon systems of irrigation that need to be maintained for sustained production. Wool, by contrast, is the renewable resource drawn from flocks of sheep and goat, managed through husbandry, which often depends upon migration to find suitable pastures for seasonal grazing, and is therefore associated with groups following patterns of nomadic adaptation. The presence of wool and cotton finds in an archaeological assemblage might signify trade or other relations among nomadic and settled populations; such is the case with Turkmen storage containers of different sizes for various functions (mafrash, torba, and chuval) in which the visible front face is constructed of a wool pile on a wool foundation with small bits of bright white, bleached cotton or bits of brightly colored silk dyed with cochineal (an insect dye, readily available only in certain areas). Like cotton, silk is a textile material associated with settled population groups, who engage in cultivation of mulberry trees, the leaves of which they feed to the silkworms. The cocoon is unreeled to produce the silk filaments, which are often bundled to make a yarn suitable for weaving. In the case of cochineal and other dyestuffs, the presence of a color achieved by a colorant only known from a distant source may indicate patterns of trade. Particular designs or patterns, and styles, may also be indicators of local traditions with wider application.

Significant Finds of Archaeological Textiles

Egypt and the Near East

Several sites in Egypt have yielded quantities of textile remains. For Pharaonic periods, royal tombs have produced linen textiles recently receiving attention, and textiles have been retrieved from the site of Amarna. From periods of late antiquity, early twentieth century excavations resulted in numerous textile finds executed in tapestry techniques using wool, and pattern-woven silks indicating international trade (Antinoe, Akhmim): these are today predominantly in European museums. A recent find of a carpet fragment with pile dated c. 400 CE suggests trade or tribute from Western Asia. Textile fragments of early Islamic date, from the dumps of Fustat near Cairo, include a range of materials. Among these are fragments from garments imported from Yemen (striped cotton dyed with warp-resist techniques, some embellished with inscriptions in gold foil and ink providing date and place of manufacture in Sana). Similar ikats of an earlier date (as determined by C-14 analysis) were found in Israel. From the late medieval periods there is clear indication of longdistance trade in printed cottons from India, evinced by textile finds from sites along the Red Sea coast (Quseir al-Qadim; Qasr Ibrim).

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In the Middle East, there are fewer textile finds due to climate. Sites in Iraq (at-Tar caves) and Iran (Shahr-i Qumis) are exceptions. From the Caucasus and Central Asia, there are several sites that have yielded textiles (Moschevaya Balkha), and several sites excavated to reveal palaces with wall paintings depicting textiles (Afrasiyab, Panjikent, Lashkari Bazar). From the Roman period onward, there is clear evidence of silk from China entering the Middle East. Related to the manufacture of patterned silk textiles is the drawloom, which enabled the mechanical repetition of designs to form patterns. This technology emerged sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries, resulting in extensive commercialized production and trade, but the origins and early development have not been decisively determined. The rapid spread of luxury silk textiles in weft-patterned compound twill weaves is extraordinary and has recently been attributed to the possible role of textiles in the dissemination of newly developed mathematical knowledge. Bearing imagery related to iconography of the Sasanian court, such textiles span the globe from church treasuries in Europe to temple repositories in Japan. Two models of scholarship may be highlighted as relevant to the information offered by archaeological textiles. Vogelsang-Eastwood has analyzed plain weave fragments of linen from the perspective of seams, hems, selvedges, and cut edges so as to reconstruct the wardrobe of Tutankhamen in Egypt. Stronach relates aspects of Achaemenid court ceremonial in Iran to the representation of decorative motifs and the arrangement of design elements executed in colorful pile on the Pazyryk carpet that was excavated in the tomb of a nomadic chieftain in Siberia.
East Asia

Textile archaeology in China began in the early twentieth century when Europeans, such as Sir Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, and the Japanese Otani expedition explored the desert regions of northwest China (present-day Xinjiang) including the sites of Lop-Nor, Astana, and the cave temples at Dunhuang. Most of the textiles, documents, and many of the paintings that they found are now in European, Indian, Japanese, and Korean museums. Beginning in 1949, Chinese archaeologists began systematic excavations. One of their most important early finds was the Western Han tomb at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province, excavated in 197274, which included a finely embroidered funerary banner with elaborate imagery that contributed to knowledge of Han Dynasty religious beliefs and ideas about death and the afterlife. Since then, they have made extraordinary discoveries of textiles, many of them along the so-called Silk Road as it branched north and south of the perilous Taklamakan

desert in Xinjiang. (The Silk Road was a vast network of routes used by merchants, monks, government officials, and the military that, at its most expansive, stretched from Japan in the East to the Mediterranean in the West with branches extending south to India and Afghanistan.) Elaborately dressed corpses excavated from various sites in Xinjiang and now housed in the Xinjiang Museum in Urumqi have contributed to lively scholarly debate about the early inhabitants of the Tarim Basin and trade and migration patterns. One of the most significant finds in the recent past has been a vast complex of Tibetan tombs at Dulan in Qinghai. Although only a small number of tombs have been excavated, the textiles are remarkable for their quantity, quality, and variety. In 2000, Dulan was listed by World Monuments Watch as one of the worlds One Hundred Most Endangered Sites because of the importance of the site and vigorous activity of tomb robbers. The Dulan tombs include types of textiles known from Central and West Asia, as well as from the heartland of China, including some that are the earliest examples of a particular type to be found in China. One brocade with a Pahlavi inscription appears to be the only extant example of an eighth century Persian brocade with embroidered inscription. The textile discoveries at Dulan testify to its importance on a branch of the Silk Road hitherto considered insignificant, underscore the rich heritage and vast resources of the Tibetan rulers of the area, and also point to the probable presence of a hitherto unknown group of Persian and/or Sogdian weavers in Qinghai, possibly including weavers who had fled from the disruption associated with the collapse of the Sasanian empire. Some scholars now believe that Dulan was the source of most of the Western compound weaves found at archaeological sites along the Silk Road in China. In China, the East Asian archaeological record is expanded by a superb cache of textiles that was found in an underground repository of the Famen Temple in Qinghai in 1987 and textiles and documents preserved in Cave 17 at the temple complex of Dunhuang at the point where the Silk Road branches north and south around the Taklamakan Desert. In addition, the treasury of the Ho ryu ji Temple and the Sho so in Repository of the To daiji Temple in Nara Japan have preserved thousands of late seventh and eighth century textiles, many of them imported from China. Some were associated with the eye-opening ceremony of the Great Buddha in 752 CE; others were used in the palace and were donated to the temple after Emperor Shomus death in 756. The Ho ryu ji textile exemplified the profound cultural interactions, exchanges, and transformations that took place along the many branches of the Silk Road in the Tang dynasty (618907 CE). It is

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executed in weft compound weave, a technique that moved from Persia and Central Asia to China and allowed larger and more complex imagery. As noted above, it was often accompanied, as here, by elements of Sasanian and post-Sasanian iconography such as the beaded roundel, mounted lion hunter and symmetrical format. The characters (mountain and felicity) are a Chinese addition and are one indication that the textile was woven in China. The textile may have been brought to Japan with an expedition returning from China in 702, at a point when the Tang court was protecting the displaced heir to the Sasanian throne and enthralled with Persian material culture. By the Kamakura period (11851336), the lion hunters were tentatively identified in Japan as the four Buddhist Guardian Kings, protectors of the four directions, a transformation of identification that served to embed the textile within a meaningful cultural matrix in Japan.
Europe

that employed most textile techniques ever invented, including at least one (interlocking warp and weft) that, so far, has been found nowhere else. These nonliterate civilizations appear to have used the complex structures, patterns, and color sequences of their textiles and even the direction of twist of a single element as important repositories of cultural information, belief systems, ideas about the conceptualization of space (and perhaps time), as well as mnemonic devices and markers of identity, social status and power. Major sites extend from Sipan in the north to Paracas and Nazca in the south and date, variously, from c. 3500 BCE to the Spanish conquest in CE 1532. Few textiles have survived in the Andean highlands but the appearance of animal fiber, such as alpaca, in textiles found in coastal burials, and iconographic relationships between coastal textiles and highland imagery on durable surfaces, such as stone and ceramics, suggest significant contact between highland and coastal peoples.
North America

Textile traditions in Europe evolved at a later stage than those of Egypt and the Middle East; from medieval times onward there was a heavy dependence upon designs and technologies developed in Byzantine and Islamic domains. Europes chief contribution to the history of textile technologies comes with the rapid industrialization of cloth production beginning in the eighteenth century. Archaeological efforts in Europe have been devoted to Roman settlements, Iron Age sites, and the recovery of Viking materials. Generally, the humid and temperate climate has precluded the survival of textiles in archaeological contexts; textiles have been recovered, however, in bogs, waterlogged sites, shipwrecks, and barrows. Research efforts have focused on tools and implements, textile conservation of recovered artifacts, and attempts at reconstructing ancient technologies. Analytical studies have evolved dramatically in recent decades, yielding new kinds of data sets from the study of archaeological textiles, often reported in the biannual Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, and in a succession of annual publications of the North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles (NESAT).
South America

Several of the richest deposits of archaeological textiles in the world are from burials in the arid terrain along the Central Andes coastal region in what is now Peru. In the large cemetery at Paracas (c. 200 BCE c. CE 200), multiple layers of finely woven, painted, and embroidered textiles were wrapped around corpses bound in fetal position, an assemblage known as a mummy bundle. Textile makers exhibited extraordinary skill with few tools, creating textiles

Textile finds in the arid regions of the American Southwest and northern Mexico date back 10 000 years and include fur and feather blankets, mats, nets, baskets, woven and painted cotton and plant fiber cloth, and intricately plaited yucca-fiber sandals. Some sandals, particularly from the Basketmaker III period (c. CE 500700), have patterns so distinctive that their imprint could have served to identify their owner as clearly as a signature identifies a member of a literate society. One of the most distinctive finds is a threecolored cotton blanket fragment with a complex step and diamond pattern woven in diamond twill tapestry with interlocking wefts, a particularly difficult, and unusual, variation of tapestry weave (Grand Gulch, Anasazi culture, twelfth century CE). Until recently, textile finds in central and eastern North America were generally dismissed as too fragmentary and discolored to yield much information. Recently, however, powerful microscopy and a number of new methods of chemical analysis have enabled researchers to glean information from even the tiniest, charred scraps. New data suggest that the Hopewell and Mississippian civilizations that extended from Florida to New York in the east and Wisconsin in the northwest from c. CE 100 to the early 1500s produced locally distinctive patterned textiles.

Amplifying the Archaeological Record

Historical textiles have survived in nonarchaeological contexts, which can contribute to the interpretation of archaeological finds. Among the most significant groups are the church and temple crypts and treasuries. In East Asia, these include the recently

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discovered crypt of the Famensi in China of Tang date, and the treasuries of temples in Nara, Japan, especially the seventh century Ho ryu ji and the eighth century Sho so in Repository of the To daiji Temple. Church treasuries throughout Europe preserve medieval textiles that were used to wrap saints relics. Each of these preserved archives of ancient textiles offers a range of comparative materials for the interpretation of excavated fragments, such as those from Egypt, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and China. Contemporary textual records may also provide contextual understanding. Such records include inventories, trade documents, bills of lading, receipts, wills, travel accounts, sumptuary laws and regulatory codes, legal documents, letters, poetry and literature. Extensive documentation on Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets beginning in the third millennium BCE reveals that the production of textiles was a major industry in which state-controlled mills employed thousands of workers, overseers, and supervisors. Textiles were Mesopotamias leading commercial export commodity, and although the textiles themselves have not survived, some idea of what they were like can be gleaned from textual descriptions, as well as from depictions of clothing in ancient Mesopotamian art. By the third millennium, however, it is clear that textiles were the major economic generator, involving social and administrative hierarchies and a local bureaucracy. Representations of textiles provide valuable information about the use of textiles in context, and sometimes document traditions not reflected in the archaeological record. Outstanding sources include the wall paintings at the cave temple complexes in Dunhuang and Qizil, China, paintings in the caves at Ajanta, India, rock reliefs at Taq-i Bustan, Iran, and wall paintings in palaces at Panjikent and Afrasiyab, Uzbekistan, and Lashkari Bazaar, Afghanistan. When the Spaniards conquered the Americas, artists documented local costume, providing invaluable information about local traditions and pre-Hispanic textiles. Contemporary practices often reflect historical traditions, so ethnographic documentation, used cautiously and critically, may provide parallels or analogies for understanding indigenous traditions of technological process, functions, and meanings. Ethnographic research in Iraq and Iran in rural areas accompanying archaeological excavation has yielded parallel sets of information to augment the archaeological record and lend significance to local practice. Considering textiles in the colonial world, the presence of Chinese silks in Spain and Portugal, Javanese batiks in Holland, Kashmir shawls and Oriental carpets in Europe and America, all emphasize passions for luxury and exotic goods expressed through textiles. Such historical evidence clearly reinforces

the profound impact of textiles throughout the world, a perspective that current practice extends to everyday wear and household decor.
See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Americas,

South: Historical Archaeology; Animal Domestication; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Caves and Rockshelters; Europe, Northern and Western: Medieval; Exchange Systems; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Plant Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Siberia, Peopling of; Sites: Waterlogged.

Further Reading
Barnes R (1997) Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt.The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bier C (1995) Textile arts in ancient Western Asia. In: Sasson J and Rubinson K (eds.) Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, pp. 15671588. New York: Charles Scribners Sons. Bier C (2005) Pattern power: Textiles and the transmission of mathematical knowledge. In: Bier C (ed.) Appropriation, Acculturation, Transformation: Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Symposium 2004, pp. 144153. Madison: Textile Society of America. Dusenbury MM (2004) Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art. New York and Manchester: Hudson Hills Press. Eastwood GV (1993) Pharaonic Egyptian Clothing: Studies in Textile and Costume History, vol. 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill. Eastwood GV (1999) Tutankhamuns Wardrobe: Garments from the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Rotterdam: Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doon & Co. Emery I (1966) The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification (reprinted 1980). Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Frame M (1986) The visual images of fabric structures in ancient Peruvian art. In: Rowe AP (ed.) The Junius B. Bird Conference onAndean Textiles, pp. 4780. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Gunzburger C (ed.) (2005) The Textile Museum Thesaurus. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum. Kent KP (1983) School of American Research Southwest Indian Arts Series: Prehistoric Textiles of the Southwest. Santa Fe, NM, and Albuquerque, NM: School of American Research and University of New Mexico Press. Matsumoto K (1984) Jo daigire: 7th and 8th Century Textiles in Japan from the Sho so -in and Ho ryu -ji. Kyoto: Shikosha. Schorta R (ed.) (2006) Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages. Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung. Spanier E (ed.) (1987) The Royal Purple and the Biblical Blue: The Study of Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog and Recent Scientific Contributions. Jerusalem: Keter. Stronach D (1993) Patterns of prestige in the Pazyryk carpet: Notes on the representational role of textiles in the first millennium BC. In: Eiland ML, Jr., Pinner R, and Denny WB (eds.) Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, vol. iv, pp. 2540. Berkeley: San Francisco Bay Area Rug Society and OCTS Ltd. Wild JP (ed.) Archaeological Textiles Newsletter (published serially). Manchester, UK. Zhao Feng (ed.) (2002) Recent Excavations of Textiles in China. Hong Kong: ISAT/Costume Squad.