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Learn about clothing in the pre-Hispanic Southwest

The Journal

The public is invited to the next meeting of The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11 in the Lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. Speaker Laurie Webster will present “Clothes Make the Person: Clothing Diversity in the Pre-Hispanic Southwest.”

The program is held in collaboration with the Four Corners Lecture Series, and there will be a public reception at the Center of Southwest Studies starting at 6 p.m.

Clothing is one of the most visible ways in which people communicate their social roles and identities. In the late pre-Hispanic Southwest, someone traveling from the Four Corners area to communities in the Flagstaff, Verde Valley, Upper Gila or Sonoran Desert regions would have encountered people wearing a different style of dress. This presentation explores the regional diversity of clothing styles among pre-Hispanic societies on the Colorado Plateau and south of the Mogollon Rim.

Webster is an anthropologist and textile consultant who resides in Mancos, Colorado. She is a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Her publications include the books Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas and Collecting the Weaver’s Art, and numerous articles about Southwestern perishable technologies. Since 2011, she has served as director of the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project, which is documenting early perishable collections from southeastern Utah.

For further information, visit sjbas.org.