Perishable: Plaited Yucca AMNH 29.0/5250

Plaited Yucca, Accession AMNH29.0, Catalog #5250. Morris FS 250. Analyzed by Laurie Webster, 2006. Plaited object, 1/1 Plaiting. Images: AMNH 29.0/5250A: bundle of loosely plaited yucca leaves with remnants of pitch, one face. AMNH 29.0/5250B: other face. AMNH 29.0/5250C: close-up of bundle, one face. AMNH 29.0/5250D: close-up of bundle, other face. Recovered from Earl Morris' excavation of Room 76 (EV), Aztec West Ruin. Morris (1928:315) indicates that “The ceiling of Room 76 had not altogether collapsed. The three cedar logs running east and west beneath its center had broken near the middle and sagged downward (Fig. 6), but previously debris had run in to within 2 feet of the beam insertions, and upon its surface the ends of the stringers came to rest. The cottonwood poles lying above the supports were so badly decayed that, to facilitate excavation, all the ceiling but the west ends of the large timbers were removed. The room yielded a black-on-white bowl, a bird bone awl, a mammal bone scraper, worked horn, worked mammal bone, a fragment of yucca sandal, and plaited strips of yucca daubed with pitch (29.0-5244-5250, inclusive), a crude stone ax, and a few sherds. The eastern two-thirds of the north wall had bulged inward to the extent that it had to be rebuilt. Ventilator openings remained in the west end of the north wall, and the south end of the east wall, and probably were once present near the corner where these walls meet. In the west wall, 3 feet 1 inch from the floor, is a single horizontal course, 2 ½ to 3 inches in width, of black green stone set in to form an ornamental band.”
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.