The Past inside the Present: Interpreting Archaeological Evidence of Weaving in Mainland Southeast Asia in the Light of Present-Day Textile Making Traditions

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Woven textiles have played an important role in Southeast Asia both as practical items and markers of status, a role that continues to this day. Many important traditions and techniques, ranging from simple to complex, have survived to the present day, or the recent past. In this paper I will review the archaeological evidence for weaving on the Southeast Asian mainland, consisting of spindle whorls and loom components from burials, and compare it with present-day looms. In particular I will compare archaeological material with a novel phylogenetic analysis of mainland loom evolution. This gives new insights into how loom technologies evolved and spread in the Asia region. I will show that a sophisticated loom with a distinctive warp beam was already present in northern Vietnam around 2,000 years ago, a point that has been overlooked in previous archaeological literature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 30936