Colonial chroniclers marveled at the quality and
variety of textiles produced at the Postclassic center
of Cholula. As a principal market center, textiles were
produced for tribute and exchange, and other woven goods
were manufactured for local consumption. This paper examines
ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence to interpret
the technology, materials, scale, and social relations
of textile production. Original spindle-whorl data from
the UA-1 domestic compound is contrasted with other whorls
from Postclassic Cholula and from other sites in central
Mexico. Results of this analysis indicate the complexity
of pre-Columbian textile production and the significance
of spinning and weaving in economic and social reconstructions
of the past.
Costume is one of the most significant forms of material culture in ethnographic contexts, yet remains of cloth are extremely rare at most archaeological sites. Artifacts that typically relate to textile production include spindle whorls and bone tools. This paper summarizes results of analyses of a large corpus of whorls and a remarkably extensive assemblage of bone tools from the Early Postclassic site of Santa Isabel in Pacific Nicaragua. Ethnohistoric sources identify several Mesoamerican groups as living in the region during the Postclassic period, with the Oto-Manguean-speaking Chorotega likely candidates for the cultural group at Santa Isabel. Textiles were probably made from cotton, among other plant fibers. In addition to cloth production, we consider the importance of spinning thread for fishnets and hammocks.
Material culture studies demonstrate how objects may act to communicate information regarding social identity. In this study we consider ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence for Postclassic spinning and weaving as symbols relating to female ideology in ancient Mexico. We then relate a contextual interpretation of texts and images to contemporary symbolism, particularly associated with members of the female earth/fertility deity complex depicted and described in precolumbian and early colonial pictorial manuscripts. For our case study we analyze decorative imagery found on baked-clay spindle whorls from Postclassic Cholula, Mexico. This collection is representative of an iconographic system relating to female ideology. Whorls, as well as other spinning and weaving tools, paralleled male-oriented weapons to create a symbolic equivalence or, as we argue, a usurpation of the male symbols within a female worldview as a form of resistance to male domination. We conclude that the symbolic system used on spindle whorls and in other aspects of female practice created a communication network understood by Postclassic women.
A major problem has been to bridge the gap between the peoples who are identified by Spanish and Indian documentary records and those who are known to us only through the ruins of their buildings and the broken elements of their material culture which have survived.-Vaillant 1937:324 The would-be correlator faces the problem of a genuine "gap" between the emphasis in the native traditions on political and dynastic history and the sequent modifications in artifact form which are the chief concern of the excavator. .. The problem is to bridge this gap, to tie the two kinds of history together at key points, to integrate the two sets of data in a meaningful synthesis.-Nicholson 1955:596 Los avances que se han hecho y los que están por hacerse, descansan en la confluencia conciente y coordinadora de dos disciplinas. .. esta recreación del acercamiento antropológico unificado, que llena la brecha entre disciplinas, es la ola del futuro. En la medida en que nuestras tareas estén coordinadas, en esa medida podremos aprender.-Byland and Pohl 1990:385-386 sCoPe and definitions
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