Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T11:59:43.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prehistoric string theory. How twisted fibres helped to shape the world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Karen Hardy*
Affiliation:
*BioArch, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5YW, UK (Email: [email protected])

Extract

The author reviews the role of string in early human communities, using prehistoric and ethnographic evidence. Fibres, rolled into string, offer a technical means of holding things together; but the process of manufacturing string itself inspired special roles and structures - which in turn held together the members of communities.

Type
Research article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adovasio, J. M., Soffer, O. & Klima, B.. 1996. Upper Palaeolithic fibre technology: interlaced woven finds from Pavlov I, Czech Republic. Antiquity 70: 526–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adovasio, J. M., Soffer, O. & Page, J.. 2007. The Invisible Sex: uncovering the true role of women in prehistory. New York: Smithsonian Books.Google Scholar
Albrethsen, S. E. & Brinch, E. Petersen. 1976. Excavation of a Mesolithic cemetery at Vedbeck, Denmark. Acta Archaeologica 47: 128.Google Scholar
Ambrose, S. H. 1998. Chronology of the Later Stone Age and food production in East Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 25: 377–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, E. W. 1994. Women's work: the first 20,000 years: women, cloth and society in early times. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Bednarik, R. G. 1995. Concept-mediated marking in the Lower Palaeolithic. Current Anthropology 36(4): 605–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bednarik, R. G. 1997. The role of Pleistocene beads in documenting hominid cognition. Rock Art Research 14: 2741.Google Scholar
Bednarik, R. G. 2000. Beads and the origins of symbolism. http://www.semioticon.com/frontline/bednarik.htmGoogle Scholar
Bridges, L. 1951. Uttermost Part of the Earth. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Brown, D. E. 1991. Human Universals. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Clark, D. L. 1976. Mesolithic Europe: the economic basis, in G. de Sieveking, G., Longworth, I. H. & Wilson, K. E. (ed.) Problems in Economic and Social Archaeology, Essays in honour of G. Clark: 449–81. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Costin, C. L. 1996. Exploring the relationship between gender and craft in complex societies: methodological and theoretical issues of gender attribution, in Wright, R. P. (ed.) Gender and Archaeology: 111–40. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Decker, A. M. 2000. Nalebinding. http://www.geocities.com/sigridkitty/ (Last update May 2004, accessed 2007).Google Scholar
Emmons, G. T. 1991. The Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Garth Taylor, J. 1974. Netsilik Eskimo Material Culture. The Roald Amundsen Collection from King William Island. Oslo: Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanitites.Google Scholar
Good, I. 2001. Archaeological textiles: a review of current research. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 209–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramsch, B. 1992. Friesack Mesolithic Wetlands, in Coles, B. (ed.) The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory (Proceedings of a conference held by the Prehistoric Society and WARP at the University of Exeter, April 1991): 6572. Exeter: WARP; London: The Prehistoric Society.Google Scholar
Gron, O. 1998. Neolithization in Southern Scandinavia – a Mesolithic perspective, in Zvelebil, M., Dennell, R. & Domanska, L.. (ed.) Harvesting the sea, farming the forest. The emergence of Neolithic societies in the Baltic region (Sheffield Archaeological Monographs 10): 181–91. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hampton, O. W. 1999. Culture of Stone. Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone among the Dani. Texas: A & M University Press.Google Scholar
Hardy, K. 2007a. Where would we be without string? Evidence for the use, manufacture and role of string in the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of Northern Europe, in Beugnier, V. & Crombier, P. (ed.) Plant Processing from a Prehistoric and Ethnographic Perspective (Proceedings of a workshop at Ghent University, Belgium, November 28, 2006) (British Archaeological Reports International Series 1718): 922. Oxford: John & Erica Hedges.Google Scholar
Hardy, K. 2007b. Food for thought. Starch in Mesolithic diet. Mesolithic Miscellany 18:2.Google Scholar
Hardy, K. In press a. Worked bone from Sand, in Hardy, K & Wickham-Jones, C. R. (ed.) Mesolithic and later sites around the Inner Sound, Scotland: the Scotland's First Settlers project 19982004. Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports (www.sair.org.uk).Google Scholar
Hardy, K. In press b. Worked and modified shell from Sand, in Hardy, K. & Wickham-Jones, C. R. (ed.) Mesolithic and later sites around the Inner Sound, Scotland: the Scotland's First Settlers project 19982004. Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports (www.sair.org.uk).Google Scholar
Hardy, K. & Sillitoe, P.. 2003. Material perspectives: stone tool use and material culture in Papua New Guinea. Internet Archaeology http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, K. & Wickham-Jones, C. R. (ed.). In press. Mesolithic and later sites around the Inner Sound, Scotland: the Scotland's First Settlers project 1998-2004. Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports (www.sair.org.uk).Google Scholar
Heider, K. G. 1970. The Dugum Dani (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 49). Chicago: Aldine Publishing.Google Scholar
Heider, K. G. & Gardner, R.. 1974. Gardens of war: life and death in the New Guinea Stone Age. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Henshilwood, C., D'Errico, F., Vanhaeren, M., Niekerk, K. van & Jacobs, Z.. 2004. Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa. Science 304:404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howard, M. C. (ed.) 2006. Bark-cloth in Southeast Asia (Studies in the Material Cultures of Southeast Asia 10). Bangkok: White Lotus.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2000. Of string bags and birds' nests, in Ingold, T. (ed.) The Perception of the Environment: 349–61. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
James, H.V.A. & Petraglia, M. D.. 2005. Modern human origins and the evolution of behaviour in the Later Pleistocene record of south Asia. Current Anthropology 46 (Supplement): 1-16, 1718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, K. & Nelson, S. M.. 1976. Net sinkers or weft weights? Current Anthropology 17(1):152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khabir, A. M. 1987. New radiocarbon dates for Sarurab 2 and the age of the Early Khartoum tradition. Current Anthropology 28(3):377–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kharakwal, J. S., Yano, A., Yasuda, Y., Shinde, V. S. & Osada, T.. 2004. Cord impressed ware and rice cultivation in south Asia, China and Japan: possibilities of inter-links. Quaternary International 123-5: 105–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimura, D. 1996. Sex, sexual orientation and sex hormones influence human cognitive function. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 6: 259–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhn, S. L., Stiner, M. C., Reese, D. S. & G¨le¸, E.. 2001. Ornaments of the earliest Upper Paleolithic: new insights from the Levant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 7641–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuzmin, Y. V. 2006. Chronology of the earliest pottery in East Asia: progress and pitfalls. Antiquity 80:362–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. B. 1979. The ! Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leroi Gourhan, A. 1982. The archaeology of Lascaux cave. Scientific American 246(6):80–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebenberg, L. 2002. The Art of Tracking: the Origins of Science. Cape Town: David Philip.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, M. 1991. Androgynous Objects: String Bags and Gender in Central New Guinea. Philadelphia: Harwood Academic.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mazza, P.P.A., Martini, F., Sala, B., Magi, M., Colombini, M. P., Giachi, G., Landucci, F., Lemorini, C., Modugno, F. & Ribechini, E.. 2006. A new Palaeolithic discovery: tar-hafted stone tools in a European Mid-Pleistocene bone-bearing bed. Journal of Archaeological Science 33:1310–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellars, P. 1987. Excavations on Oronsay. Prehistoric human ecology on a small island. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Mellars, P. 2006. Going East: new genetic and archaeological perspectives on the modern human colonisation of Eurasia. Science 313:796800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minar, J. 2001. Motor skills and the learning process: the conservation of cordage final twist direction in communities of practice. Journal of Anthropological Research. 57(4):381405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S. (ed.) 2000. Hunter-gatherer landscape archaeology: the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-98 (McDonald Institute Monographs). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Mordant, D. & Mordant, C.. 1992. Noyen-sur-Seine: a Mesolithic waterside settlement, in Coles, B. (ed.) The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory (Proceedings of a conference held by the Prehistoric Society and WARP at the University of Exeter, April 1991): 5564. Exeter: WARP; London: The Prehistoric Society.Google Scholar
Myking, T., Hertzberg, A. & Skrøppa, T.. 2005. History, manufacture and properties of lime bast cordage in northern Europe. Forestry 78(1):6571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, D., Danin, A., Werker, E., Schick, T., Kislev, M. E. & Stewart, K.. 1994. 19,000 year-old twisted fibers from Ohalo II. Current Anthropology 35(4):451–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paijmans, K. (ed.) 1976. New Guinea Vegetation. Canberra: Australia National University Press.Google Scholar
Parks, R. L. & Barrett, J. H.. In press. The zooarchaeology of Sand, in Hardy, K. & Wickham-Jones, C. R. (ed.) Mesolithic and later sites around the Inner Sound, Scotland: the Scotland's First Settlers project 1998–2004. Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports (www.sair.org.uk).Google Scholar
Pashler, H. 2000. Task switching and multitask performance, in Monsell, S. & Driver, J. (ed.) Attention and Performance XVIII: Control of mental processes: 277307. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ruthruff, E., Pashler, H. & Hazeltine, E.. 2003. Dual-task interference with equal task emphasis: graded capacity sharing or central postponement? Perception & Psychophysics 65:801–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sillitoe, P. 1988. Made in Niugini. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
Soffer, O. 2004. Recovering perishable technologies through use-wear on tools: preliminary evidence for Upper Palaeolithic weaving and net-making. Current Anthropology 45(3):407–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soffer, O., Adovasio, J. M. & Hyland, D. C.. 2000. The ‘Venus’ figurines: textiles, basketry, gender and status in the Upper Palaeolithic. Current Anthropology 41(4):511–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soffer, O. 2001. Perishable technologies and invisible people: nets, baskets and & ‘Venus’ wear ca. 26,000 BP, in Purdy, B. (ed.) Enduring Records: the Environmental and Cultural Heritage: 233–45. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Steel, T. 1994. The Life and Death of St Kilda. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Vanhaeren, M., D'Errico, F., Stringer, C., James, S. L., Todd, J. A. & Mienis, H. K.. 2006. Middle Paleolithic shell beads in Israel and Algeria. Science 312: 1785–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, C. & Bednarik, R.. 1996. Pleistocene knotting, in Turner, J. C. & Griend, P. van de (ed.) History and Science of Knots: 318. Singapore: World Scientific.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zvelebil, M. 1994. Plant use in the Mesolithic and its role in the transition to farming. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 60: 3574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar