Doctoral student and anthropological collections manager Elizabeth Kallenbach of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History with an exhibit showing examples of early weaving using material from plants.
Digging into Oregon’s Native Plants
Elizabeth Kallenbach is using cutting-edge tools to trace humanity’s use of native Oregon plants through 12 millennia of archaeological basketry and cordage. Kallenbach, an anthropology doctoral candidate in the College of Arts and Sciences and the anthropological collections manager at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, received an award from the National Science Foundation to study textiles recovered from Paisley Caves in Oregon’s Great Basin, to see what they can reveal about how people engaged with changing landscapes over time. About 14,000 years ago, as Pleistocene glaciers retreated and lake levels dropped, marshlands in the Great Basin expanded rapidly, creating suitable conditions for hunting, fishing and plant gathering, including fiber plants used in textiles.