Cotton as Commodity in the Prehispanic Southwest

Summary

With its strong symbolic reference to moisture and clouds, cotton has long been considered a precious textile fiber in the Americas. Adopted from Mexico as a tropical crop, it was well-established in the Salt-Gila drainage by 500 A.D., and by 1000-1100 A.D. it was adapted to the wetter microenvironments of the Colorado Plateau. Because cotton could not be grown everywhere, it became a prized element of trade and craft specialization. In this paper I examine the agricultural intensification, commodity production, and exchange of cotton and cotton textiles in the prehispanic Southwest with a focus on the Western Pueblos, including the important Homol’ovi villages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20014