“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” But if they break, you simply go without breakfast. What if you up the ante? “Don’t put all your water in one basket.” Surely, you risk dying of thirst.
I have never thought to pour water into a basket. The baskets I have known are for fruits and laundry, picnics and bicycle handlebars. The gaps between woven wicker are no-brainers for liquids. More tightly woven specimens are pliable and porous like cloth. It seems to me baskets are not made for water.
Yet, for many peoples of the American Southwest, baskets were the primary receptacle of water. Dozens of different tribes had expert weavers who used native materials to weave demijohn-shaped baskets which they coated with natural pitch. They used these woven baskets to transport and store water. We can call these water bottle baskets.
The many peoples of the Southwestern deserts shared in the heritage of this utilitarian craft. The Northern Paiute, Washo, Shoshone, Gosiute, Eastern Achomawi, Southern Paiute, Havasupai, Ute, Walapai, Yavapai, Apache, Chumash, Tongva, Yokuts, Kitanemuk, Serrano, Kawaiisu, and Tubatulabal all waterproofed their woven vessels for water storage. (Mohr) In his book Alcohol in Ancient Mexico, Henry J Bruman even suggests that the native people of the Mexican deserts may have fermented corn beer and agave wine inside of such water-tight baskets. Perhaps water in such dry places required this level of ingenuity.
Mohr and Sample categorize the water-tight baskets into 2 distinct traditions: the Chumash variety which have no handles, small openings, and pitch only on the inside and the Great Basin variety which often have handles, wide openings, and can have pitch both inside and outside (and even red ochre paint).. Craftspeople wove baskets from willow fibers or fibers extracted from yucca leaves. They waterproofed the insides with some variety of pitch.
Pitch, bitumen, resin, mastic. These all describe the sticky and hydrophobic finishes employed in the waterproofing of traditional water bottle baskets. The actual material that sealed the woven surface depended on local resources and has inspired a considerable deal of anthropological debate.
Many of the tribes that lived along California’s coast got their pitch from asphalt. The La Brea Tar Pits are famous enough to explain the abundance of sticky substances in the area, but even the islands off the coast had chunks of asphalt wash up on shore. The Chumash or Tongva natives of Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara, or San Nicolas could easily collect the black chunks on beaches and incorporate them into local crafts.
Alternatively, the land-locked peoples relied on vegetable and insect resins. The Pauite and Apache used the resin of the pinyon tree which also provided nuts for eating. The dry areas of the Southwest are home to Pinus edulis or the pinyon, Pinus ponderosa or the ponderosa, and Juniperus scopulorum, or the Juniper. All produce resin, although there is no evidence the juniper was used in basket sealing.
Lastly, some anthropologists suggest that baskets could have been sealed with resin made from insect excretions. The Creosote Lac Scale is an insect that lives on the Creosote Bush throughout the Mojave region into Baja and northern Mexico. The insect latches onto the bush permanently to feed where it secretes a protective goo known as lac. Native people harvested this resin to use medicinally as gum or an adhesive. Evidence that indigenous groups used this resin to make water bottle baskets is inconclusive.
Several recent studies have attempted to use modern methods of chemical analysis to decide once and for all what kind of pitch natives used in these baskets. Edwards and Falk conclude that Apache, Paiute, and Washo baskets had pitch from the Pinus monophylla, the single-leaf pinyon. Maitland and others, studying the Four Corners region, conclude that Pinus edilus, the pinyon pine, is the source of all resin.
In order to waterproof baskets, natives developed certain techniques. Although particular techniques may have differed between local traditions, weavers placed asphalt stones or pitch into an unfinished basket and added hot round stones. They then spun the basket so the rocks would coat the interior with the melted resin. Some techniques may have required that mud smeared on the outside prior to tarring the interior. Artifacts of crucibles also exist, suggesting that weavers may have first melted the resin to then pour into the basket as a liquid.
The resin on these water bottle baskets is not only on the inside. The bottom of the baskets has tar on the outside as well to provide structural support. The opening and neck of most baskets are also coated with pitch both inside and out. This practice provides structure and could also help to house a stopper to avoid evaporation. Some stoppers were also made from pitch. (Hunter)
Because pitch was so important in the production of water vessels (we need not say how important water is), there are many artifacts that contain the sticky stuff. Shells, especially abalone shells, covered in pitch suggest that natives used them to store asphalt. The Chumash also hollowed out the large vertebrae of swordfish to use as cups for both asphalt and red ochre.
Waterproofing woven goods with different kinds of pitch is not anomalous to the American Southwest. Sumerians who lived atop considerable hydrocarbon deposits used asphalt to create waterproof baskets to use as buckets, waterproof bricks to line the outside of houses, and massive waterproofed sheets of reeds used as irrigation gates. Egyptians used bitumen in the mummification process.
In the American Southwest and California’s Channel Islands, this weaving practice is considerably ancient. San Miguel Island yields artifacts that suggest bitumen has been incorporated into tools as early as 8,000 BCE. (Wärmländer) Tarring pebbles used to coat the interior of baskets with asphalt date back to 6,000 BCE. (Hunter) More conclusively, water bottle baskets likely became increasingly common after 3,000 BCE. The same asphalt coating technique would later be applied to tomol or canoes, which emerged around 2,000 years ago. (Wärmländer) As ancient as the tradition is, the early 1900s saw the ultimate decline of the native craft as manufactured containers became increasingly accessible to the indigenous people of the Southwest.
Water…today it comes in bottles, glasses, and faucets. We need not expend our creative energies on the most basic drink there is. Our modern comfort, however, belies the reality of hydration both globally and historically. How have peoples surrounded by desert of salt water preserved their potable water supply? For some, it turns out, baskets were a suitable solution. Far more lightweight than clay, resin-coated basketry served to hydrate some native populations for many thousands of years.
Bruman, Henry J., and Peter T. Furst. Alcohol in Ancient Mexico. Univ. of Utah Pr., 2001.
Davenport. D.. Johnson. J. R.. and Timbrook. T.. 1993. The Chumash and the swordfish, Antiquity, 67,257-72.
Doble, Rick. “The Crucial Importance of Basket Weaving Technology for the World’s First Civilizations.” (2021).
Edwards, H. G. M., and M. J. Falk. “Fourier transform Raman spectroscopic study of ancient resins: a feasibility study of application to archaeological artefacts.” Journal of Raman spectroscopy 28.4 (1997): 211-218.
Fox, Andrew, Carl Heron, and Mark Q. Sutton. “Characterization of natural products on Native American archaeological and ethnographic materials from the Great Basin region, USA: A preliminary study.” Archaeometry 37.2 (1995): 363-375.
Hunter, Galen, and Henry C. Koerper. “A Steatite Crucible Containing Ten Tarring Pebbles: Implications for Waterproofing Cuyama-Style Baskets.”
Sebastian KTS, et al. “Could the health decline of prehistoric California indians be related to exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from natural bitumen?.” Environmental health perspectives 119.9 (2011): 1203-1207.
Maitland, Brian A., Jesse W. Tune, and Michael P. Grubb. “Identification of the natural origin of waterproofing pine pitch in historical Southwest Native American basketry through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30 (2020): 102190.
Mohr, Albert, and L. L. Sample. “Twined water bottles of the Cuyama area, southern California.” American Antiquity 20.4Part1 (1955): 345-354.
SUTTON, MARK Q. “Southwest and Great Basin, USA: Proof of Concept.”
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