We present the largest and most wide-ranging survey to date of archaeological spindle whorls, across more than 350 sites in East Asia, including China, southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and the Silk Road routes. Hand spindles were used to produce yarn in the quantities necessary for loom-woven textiles, and they are an indicator of the emergence and spread of this technology. We demonstrate that loom weaving arose in three distinct zones in China, and that wool-spinning technology was introduced later by pastoral/nomadic peoples arriving from the West. We introduce a novel workflow for the analysis of archaeological data, based around estimated moment of inertia of whorls, and we demonstrate its application. We find that there are differences in whorl types and trends between the three zones, corresponding to differing motivations for producing yarn; for warmth and protection (in the north) and fine textiles for status (in central and southern regions). The appearance of weaving is linked in broad terms with the advent of rice and millet agriculture, but more closely with the sedentary lifestyles necessary for extended bast fiber processing and weaving sequences. We show that whorl moments of inertia are markers of Liangzhu culture sites in the lower Yangtze river, and map the emergence and collapse of this early stratified culture. We also review the usefulness of spindle whorl shapes as cultural markers and comment on the opportunities and limitations of this approach.
Buckley et al. (Fri,) studied this question.