Spindle Whorls (Other Keyword)
1-8 (8 Records)
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Beyond the Utilitarian: Spindle Whorls from Burials and Caches in the Maya Area (2016)
Technologies for spinning fibers into thread by hand have changed little in Mesoamerica since they were first introduced. Made primarily of perishable materials, however, the wooden spindle and the fibers themselves are generally no longer present in the archaeological record. What does survive, however, are spindle whorls – spherical artifacts used to weigh down the spindle to keep it anchored during the process of spinning. In the Maya area, these artifacts are rarely found in primary...
Spinning in the Middle Horizon: Spindle Whorls from the Site of Uraca in the Majas Valley (2015)
Textiles were a major economic component in the prehistoric Andes. Mortuary evidence indicates an association between women and textile production. While spinning may have been an activity undertaken by both men and women, women dominated the produced domestic textiles and therefore were often buried with textile related tools. Spindle whorls from mortuary contexts can be used to determine the quality of the final cloth. Smaller spindle whorls produce a finer quality of yarn for elite products...
Spinning Makes the World Go Round: Spindle Whorls from Nohcacab, Q. Roo, Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A spindle whorl was an integral tool in textile production, it had social, religious, political, and economic significance for the ancient Maya. The spindle whorls carried many roles such as functional tools, symbolic displays, gender, and status representations while interconnecting traditions, mastery, and the artistic expression of a weaver.
A Technological Approach of Textile Production in Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan (2018)
Textile production had a pivotal role among Late Postclassic societies including ancient Tlaxcallan, a prominent altepetl of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. Several scholars have studied prehispanic cloth and garments production based on 16th century historical sources, but using little archaeological evidence. In particular, poor attention has been paid on the technology of textile production based on archaeological artifacts, especially in relation to spinning techniques and the different fibers...
Thread production in Late Postclassic Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala: a technological and experimental study of archaeological spindle whorls. (2017)
Textile production was one of the most valuable social and economic activities in prehispanic Mesoamerica. In this study, we inquire into thread production in the site of Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, one of the main altepemeh of Late Postclassic Tlaxcallan, using a technological, ethnoarchaeological and experimental analysis. In particular, we evaluate key attributes of archaeological spindle whorls in the spinning process, including weight, shape and moment of inertia. With the collaboration of three...
Thread Production in Ocotelulco, Tlaxcallan, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Tlaxcallan: Mesoamerica's Bizarro World" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations undertaken by the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project have recovered an important sample of spindle whorls from Late Postclassic – Early Colonial (1420 -1540 A.D.) domestic contexts in Ocotelulco, a subsection of the urban site of Tlaxcallan, Mexico. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of identified whorl...
Three collections of spindle whorls from Calixtlahuaca, Mexico (2013)
This dataset consists of a single spreadsheet of standard metric and non-metric data for three collections of spindle whorls from the Postclassic site of Calixtlahuaca, Toluca Valley (State of Mexico), Mexico. The collections are from the 2007 Calixtlahuaca Archaeological Project excavations, the Museo de Antropología y Historia in Toluca Mexico, and the Yale Peabody. This dataset accompanies the following article: Huster, Angela C. 2013 Assessing Systematic Bias in Museum Collections: A...