Perishable: Cotton Cloth AMNH 29.0-7622

Cotton Cloth, Accession AMNH29.0, Catalog #7622. Morris FS 1215. Analyzed by Laurie Webster, 2006. Fragments of braided, knotted, and woven cotton. Images: AMNH 29.0-7622.1A: long strip of cotton plain-weave cloth with side selvage. AMNH 29.0-7622.2B: flat cotton braid tied in overhand knot around a yucca cord. AMNH 29.0-7622.2C: other face of flat cotton braid. Recovered from Earl Morris' excavation of Room 48, Aztec West Ruin. Earl Morris’ description of Room 48 at the time of excavation is as follows. “The floor was covered with refuse.. The greater proportion of this deposit was of vegetable substance; cornstalks, husks, tassels, and cobs, cedarbark, splinters of the same wood, as well as human excrement. This deposit of Chaco age had been completely protected from moisture and constituted, aside from some found in the caves of Del Muerto canyon, the richest repository for perishable artifacts that has come within the experience of the writer. Above this sand had worked down through the second floor before the timbers supporting the latter had failed. These had fallen in recent times, after the mound had reached its final form, as evidenced by the ragged crater left by the settling of the debris above them subsequent to their collapse” (Morris 1928:307-308).
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.