Woven Traces: Evidence of Basketry from Masis Blur (Armenia)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Evidence of woven materials such as baskets, mats, cordage, string, and rope rarely preserve in archaeological contexts, but when these plant-based artifacts do preserve, they provide important insight into the social, technological, and environmental practices involved in the creation and use of such objects. At many Neolithic sites of the Near East evidence of plant-based woven materials has preserved as impressions in clay, charred or desiccated remains, phytoliths, pseudomorphs in corroded metal, and more rarely as calcified remains. To date, in the Southern Caucasus, the Neolithic evidence of basketry has come from negative impressions left on pottery bases. In this paper, we report the first calcified evidence of a coiled basket from Masis Blur, a Neolithic farming community located in the Ararat Plain of Armenia. Review of the evidence of woven materials at Masis Blur suggests that these artifacts played an important role in the daily activities of the inhabitants of Masis Blur.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36277.0