Research :: ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY :: Current Research :: Penelope Drooker
Drawing of an 18th century Algonquian
twined basket (Drooker and Hamell 2004).
Whole artifacts made of organic
materials, like this one, do not survive
in the archaeological record of northeastern
North America. (artist: Patricia Kernan)
Evidence of ancient fabrics sometimes
is preserved as impressions on pottery.
This sherd, shown with a cast that replicates
the twined fabric that was pressed into it,
came from an archaeological site in
northern Kentucky.
Two fragments of twined fabric from a
New York archaeological site, preserved
by proximity to metal
(NYSM A-74475)
Archaeologists working in wet, dry, and/or frozen sites around the world have found that up to 95% of the associated artifacts and architecture are constructed from perishable materials such as wood, bark, plant fiber, leather, fur, and feathers. This is corroborated by ethnohistorical data from the past few centuries and earlier. When they are available to study, such objects can yield a wealth of information beyond what can be learned from “hard” artifacts alone. When they are not immediately available, archaeologists often forget their significance and fail to search out potential secondary evidence. In temperate, humid regions such as eastern North America, where such materials rarely survive, archaeologists must use specialized techniques to decipher information from sparse, fragmentary remains.
In my own research, the fact that items such as textiles have been highly sought-after commodities in far-ranging interaction networks, and have served as important markers of social identities including wealth, rank, and gender, has spurred me to find ways to uncover and utilize the archaeological evidence that they can provide. I have sought out the widest possible range of secondary evidence that can be used together with sparse primary evidence, and am particularly pleased that the techniques I brought together for analyzing textile impressions on pottery and other materials have proved useful to many other researchers in eastern North America. Among a variety of related projects, I have applied such data to investigate the socioeconomic importance of textile production in the Midwest and Southeast over the past millennium, the exchange of certain types of fabrics among widely separated Mississippian polities in southeastern North America, and the use of textiles as symbols of power.
Selected Publications and Reports
Drooker, Penelope B.
1990 Textile Production and Use at Wickliffe Mounds (15Ba4), Kentucky. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 15(2):163-220.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1991 Cane- and Fabric-Impressed Sherds from the Salt Creek Site, Clarke County, Alabama. Ms. on file, State Museum of Natural History, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1991 Mississippian Lace: A Complex Textile Impressed on Pottery from the Stone Site, Tennessee, Southeastern Archaeology 10(2):79-97.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1991 Prehistoric Textiles at the Stone Site, Stewart County, Tennessee, Frank H. McClung Museum Research Notes, No. 4.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1992 Mississippian Village Textiles at Wickliffe. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1992 Textiles Impressed on Pottery at the Slack Farm Site, Union County, Kentucky. Ms. on file, Kentucky Heritage Foundation, Frankfort.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1993 Matting and Fabric Impressions from Bottle Creek (1Ba2), Alabama. Journal of Alabama Archaeology 39 (1&2):115-132.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1996 Mortuary Textiles from Protohistoric and Early Historical Iroquois Archaeological Sites (Boughton Hill, Dann, Geneva, Marsh, Silverheels, Tram, Van Etten). Report submitted to the New York State Museum, Albany.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1998 Cordage and Fabrics Impressed on American Bottom Ceramics, ca. 450 BC-AD 1250: Preliminary Discussion. Report on file, Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Project, Urbana.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1998 Fabrics Impressed on Pottery at Millstone Bluff (11-Pp-37) and Dillow’s Ridge (11-U-635), Illinois. On file, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Drooker, Penelope B., with contribution by Patricia Capone
1998 Makers and Markets: The William R. Wright Collection of Native American Art. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Drooker, Penelope B.
1999 Fabric Impressed Sherd from the Rose Hotel Site. Appendix D in Archaeological Investigations at the Rose Hotel (11Hn-116), Hardin County, Illinois, by Mark J. Wagner and Brian M. Butler, pp. 507-508. Technical Report 99-3. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Drooker, Penelope B., and Laurie Webster (editors)
2000 Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Webster, Laurie, and Penelope B. Drooker
2000 Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas. In Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas, edited by Penelope B. Drooker and Laurie Webster, pp. 1-24. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2001 Approaching Fabrics through Impressions on Pottery. In Approaching Textiles, Varying Viewpoints, pp. 59-68. Seventh Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, Santa Fe 2000. Textile Society of America, Earleville, Maryland.
Drooker, Penelope B. (editor)
2001 Fleeting Identities: Perishable Material Culture in Archaeological Research. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2001 Leaving No Stone Unturned: Making the Most of Secondary Evidence for Perishable Material Culture. In Fleeting Identities: Perishable Material Culture in Archaeological Research, edited by Penelope B. Drooker, pp. 170-186. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2001 Material Culture and Perishabililty. In Fleeting Identities: Perishable Material Culture in Archaeological Research, edited by Penelope B. Drooker, pp. 1-15. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Kuttruff, Jenna, and Penelope B. Drooker
2001 Textiles from the Wickliffe Mounds Site. In Excavations at Wickliffe Mounds, edited by Kit Wesler, Chapter 14. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2003 Matting and Pliable Fabrics from Bottle Creek. In Bottle Creek: A Pensacola Culture Site in South Alabama, edited by Ian W. Brown, pp. 180-193. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2004 Fabric Impressed Sherds from the Kincaid Site. Manuscript on file at the Center for Archaeological Investigations, University of Illinois Carbondale.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2004 Fabrics associated with Palettes at Etowah. Manuscript on file at the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Drooker, Penelope B. (editor)
2004 Perishable Material Culture in the Northeast. New York State Museum Bulletin 500. New York State Education Department, Albany.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2004 Perishables in the Northeast. In Perishable Material Culture in the Northeast, edited by Penelope B. Drooker, pp. 1-17. New York State Museum Bulletin 500. New York State Education Department, Albany.
Drooker, Penelope B., and George R. Hamell
2004 Susannah Swan’s Wampum Bag. In Perishable Material Culture in the Northeast, edited by Penelope B. Drooker, pp. 197-223. New York State Museum Bulletin 500. New York State Education Department, Albany.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2004 Textiles and Clothing from the Albany Almshouse Cemetery (Part 1). Manuscript on file, New York State Museum.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2005 SunWatch Cordage and Fabrics. Manuscript on file at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery/Dayton Museum of Natural History, Dayton, Ohio.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2008 Using Replication-Related Techniques To Examine the Significance of Fabrics in Mississippian Society. Chapter completed for proceedings of the conference, Weaving Together Two Ways of Knowing: Archaeological Organic Artifact Analysis and Indigenous Textile Arts, Metepenagiag Heritage Park, NB, Canada, edited by Susan Blair (under review).
