The Social Implications of Basketmaker Ii Cordage Design Distribution

Exceptionally preserved cordage artifacts from Basketmaker II sites offer a rare insight into social processes that persisted during the 1500-year beginnings of agricultural lifeways and village sedentism on the Colorado Plateau. Through an analysis of cordage design, I examine the process of knowledge sharing among Basketmaker II peoples. I propose that certain technical choices in raw-material selection and fiber-twisting methods result from an artisan’s enculturative knowledge and experience alone, and that spatial clustering indexes pools of shared knowledge among artisans. Data describing formal variation in Basketmaker II and non-Basketmaker II cordage show that, with respect to raw material and twist structure, Basketmaker II cordage is internally consistent but significantly different from non-Basketmaker II cordage. I propose that the observed patterns in Basketmaker II cordage design index the geographical extent of a pool of shared knowledge that circulated within a clinally-unified Basketmaker II marriage network.