Perishable: Yucca Needle AMNH 29.0/5346

Yucca Needle, Accession AMNH29.0, Catalog #5346. Morris FS 96. Analyzed by Laurie Webster, 2006. Yucca-leaf needle with cotton fiber yarn, twisted 4Z-S. Image: AMNH 29.0/5346A: yucca-leaf needle with cotton yarn. 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.