Basketry, cordage, and perishable artifact manufacture at Bonneville Estates Rockshelter: Diachronic technological variation

Abstract

As a technologically-complex material class, perishable artifacts have the potential to address a multitude of socio-economic activities and behaviors; however, their application to these subjects are limited by poor preservation and small sample sizes. This study presents a novel approach to analysis that incorporates the chaîne opératoire of basketry and cordage, demonstrating the efficacy of applying statistics to characterize technological organization. To illustrate the utility of this approach, this study provides a diachronic analysis of basketry, cordage, and related manufacturing waste from Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (BER), a multi-layered “dry cave” archaeological site in the eastern Great Basin dating from the late Pleistocene through the Holocene. The relationship between people and the environment as well as social interaction among hunter-gatherers are addressed by considering the timing, changes, and seasonality of perishables at BER. Changes in basketry manufacture and the importance of net hunting throughout the Holocene emphasize temporal variation in community participation in subsistence activities. Debris from textile production demonstrates that BER also functioned as a multi-seasonal manufacturing and repair site. By comparing functional and technological-stylistic attributes, this study characterizes the complex ways gender influenced the manufacture and use of a material class traditionally associated with feminine work in hunter-gatherer communities.