Perishable: Pitch Artifacts AMNH 29.0/5340

Pitch Artifacts, Accession AMNH29.0, Catalog #5340. Morris FS 90. Analyzed by Laurie Webster, 2006. Five bundles of yucca, cedar, plant fibers enclosing pitch. Images: AMNH 29.0/5340A: five pitch artifacts in box. AMNH 29.0/5340B: pine pitch, some wrapped in yucca leaves. AMNH 29.0/5340C: two chunks of pitch wrapped in remnants of juniper bark. AMNH 29.0/5340D: pitch enclosed in yucca fiber. Additional daubs of pitch on surface. AMNH 29.0/5340E: pitch enclosed in degraded bundle of yucca leaves. AMNH 29.0/5340F: large chunk of pitch enclosed in narrowleaf yucca plant, other face. AMNH 29.0/5340G: large chunk of pitch enclosed in narrowleaf yucca plant. AMNH 29.0/5340H: detail. Recovered from Earl Morris' excavation of Room122-2, Aztec West Ruin. Morris (1928:357) indicates that “Room 122-2 is situated above Room 112. Refuse, more than half of its bulk composed of vegetable and other perishable substances, had been thrown in through the door connecting with the room above Room 110, forming a fan-shaped deposit, 2 feet deep, beneath the door and dwindling out in the northeast and northwest corners. Being in an outer tier, the slope above Room 122-2, was very steep, providing excellent drainage, which condition, together with the air space beneath the floor, had excluded all moisture from the refuse. This mass, of Chaco age, contained a fine assortment of textiles and other perishable artifacts (29.0-5251-5400), such as in most places is entirely decayed. The conspicuous components of the deposit, other than manufactured articles, were shreds of cedarbark, cornhusks, and cobs, strips of yucca leaf in great abundance, excrement, ashes, and floor sweepings.”
Reference: Earl Morris, 1928, Notes on Excavations in the Aztec Ruin, Volume XXVI, Part V, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.