Textile

Item number Sf837 from the MOA: University of British Columbia.

Public

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Data
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Description

Piece of a narrow, dark brown openwork textile with profile standing birds arranged along serrated diagonal lines. The ground cloth is 1:1 gauze in vertical alignment. The birds are worked with discontinuous supplementary brown wefts with accents in gold, grey and light green. One warp selvedge and two weft selvedges are present; the other end is cut. The weave is consistently distorted along the sides about 1cm. in from the selvedges. Z-spun, 2 plied s yarns.

History Of Use

Probably a border from a poncho shirt. The distortion along the edges indicates this fabric was sewn to other fabrics, probably horizontally along the lower edge. The yarn spin, the gauze type and the patterning are all consistent with central coast fabrics. The use of gauze weave as a foundation for supplementary weft additions is most common in the Late Intermediate Period when entire poncho shirts, as well as borders were made this way.

Iconographic Meaning

The motif appears most like a bird (pelican ?) but the curling tail suggests it is a composite of a bird, feline and /or monkey. The serrated lines probably refer to serpent bodies.