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Experimental Archeology & Textile Design
Each workshop is designed to stand alone. Registration is on first come first served basis. Scroll down for more.
Between
2006 and 2011, 863 textile artifacts were recovered from excavations at Huaca
Prieta in Peru. One fragment from this cache was dated to 6200 years and is now
known as the earliest known use of indigo dye in the world. In January 2021, Karthika
organized a lecture by Dr. Jeffrey Splitstoser,
assistant research professor of Anthropology, GW University who studied and
documented these textiles with an audience of approximately 400 people. He
analyzed woven, twined, looped, and knotted structures with yarns made of
cotton, cotton plied with milkweed, as well as cotton colored with yellow and
red ochres and blue indigotin with multiple patterns and variations. The lecture led to the idea of experimental archeology to understand these textiles in depth. We are now ready to share our findings. Join us to go beyond theory and learn by doing.
Note: Spinning is not as difficult as it may look. It is a wonderfully addictive skill like everything else in textile making.
Want to know more?
Some of the floral / botanical remains found at the site include Gossypium Barbadense (cotton), gourds of Lagenaria Siceraria and Cucurbita Moschata, Asclepias SP (milkweed), Equisetum and Juncus used for fuel and matting respectively. Several gourds of Lagenaria Siceraria were found with decorations and may have been used as containers and/or floats for fish nets. 80 kilometers away from the site, in the Jequetepeque Valley, iron-based earth pigments in red and yellow were probably sourced. Regarding the indigo, for lack of clear evidence of a plant yielding indigo dye we surmised that it could have been the naturally occurring Indigofera Suffruticosa that grows wild in several parts of Latin America.
Catharine
Ellis experimented staining yarn with ochres and Indigofera Suffruticosa and has achieved results that are close to
some of the colored yarns used in fragments from Huaca Prieta. She has devised
a simple method that she believes may have been what she imagines
could have been used. Karthika has been growing
three plants (Gossypium Hirsutum in natural green and beige, Indigofera
Suffruticosa and Asclepias Syriaca). Louise Wheatley, and Karthika have begun
experiments in spinning cotton and milkweed. Karthika has begun twining on
trial warps, and processing milkweed bast fiber. Dr. Splitstoser is closely involved and his availability for the
project will depend on the next excavation at Huaca Prieta.
Goals of this project:
- Learn more about the processes and
techniques that might have been used in pre-ceramic Huaca Prieta by replicating
some of the fibers, yarns, techniques, and structures.
Dr. Jeffrey Splitstoser is a researcher, professor and editor affiliated with the George Washington University.
He has studied Andean textiles for over 20 years. His Ph.D.
dissertation is a study of the Paracas textiles (ca. 850‒300 BCE) from
Cerrillos, Ica Valley, Peru. An authority on
khipus-colored-and-knotted-string devices that allowed Andean people to
record information without writing, he co-curated the exhibition, "Written in Knots: Undeciphered Records of Andean Life" 2019, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.
Louise B. Wheatley is a textile conservator, spinner and weaver who started her career at the Textile Museum. Her tapestry weave textiles inspired by Coptic textiles from Egypt were displayed in the exhibition entitled, "Ancient Tapestries and The Art of Louise B. Wheatley", at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2017. As a conservator, she has worked at Yale at Peabody in New Haven, the Walters Art Museum, the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood House and Evergreen House and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Read more about Karthika here.