Bast Fiber Technology in the West Coast of South America: A Study of the Early Coastal Hunter-Gatherer's Fiber Production

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Histories of Human-Nature Interactions: Use, Management, and Consumption of Plants in Extreme Environments" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This study presents the results of an archaeobotanical analysis of the hunter-gatherer’s plant-fiber technologies of South America’s west coast. Due to the extreme aridity of the Atacama Desert, the preservation of organic technologies is exceptional. I analyze a unique assemblage of nets, looped bags, twinned mats, fiber skirts, and cordages dating to ca. 10,000–3500 BP (Preceramic period). In doing so, I identify the use of aquatic plants (Typhacea and Cyperacaea) and a dogbane plant (Apocynaceae) in the production of artifacts. I investigate loci of the fiber production, particularly wetlands and dry forest relics, which furnished critical sources of bast fibers. Furthermore, I argue that gathered wild plants underpinned the production of critical artifacts that sustained maritime subsistence strategies during the Preceramic period. Finally, I present a dance metaphor to analyze the Preceramic plant-fiber technology. In this metaphor, the seasons and the ecology of the wetlands and dry forest somewhat dictated the itinerary of the artisans’ movements. Together, temporal and spatial dimensions of the plant-fiber technology merged with marine foraging activities, turning the Pacific littoral into a social, ecological, and technological landscape of animate actions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Histories of Human-Nature Interactions: Use, Management, and Consumption of Plants in Extreme Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33050