Tunacunnhee fabric pseudomorphs

Table I. Fiber Identification and Elemental Analyses of Tunacunnhee Fabric Pseudomorphs...

Further analysis of the fabrication techniques employed in the production of these examples also is necessary. The Etowah bundle, for example, should be unfolded, while using correct conservation methods, and its structure should be subjected to detailed scrutiny. Only then can its relation to the fragments from the same burial on display in the Etowah Mound Museum and other Mississippian fabrics be known. When more data about the phenomenon of fabric pseudomorphism are obtained, then questions associated with the Tunacunnhee objects can be answered. Certainly the relationship between alternate-pair twined fabric found in both sites in Georgia deserves further study. 

Types of twined fabric structures composed of bast or phloem fibers and feathers were identified in prehistoric fabrics of southeastern North America by chemical and physical analyses and technical fabrication studies. Fabrics and either partially or completely mineralized pseudomorphs after fabric from the Tunacunnhee and Etowah sites in Georgia (dated respectively A.D. 150 95 years and about A.D. 1200) were examined. The work confirms the presence of at least two types of twined structures for the earlier Hopewell site and intricately constructed re-plied yarns and twined fabric for the later Mississippian one. The study of fabrics from both sites provides evidence of the kinds of materials produced and used by prehistoric peoples of the region during a 1000-year interlude. 

Three copper objects from the Tunacunnhee site with pseudomorphs after fabric adhering to their surfaces were selected for analysis. These were the copper plate, one set of earspools from Mound C (F-30), and a copper earspool from Mound E (F-33). 

The outer surface of the earspools from Tunacunnhee Mounds C and E and the reverse side of the breastplate display pseudomorphs that have shapes characteristic of bast fibers (Figure 7). Typical of these fibers, the pseudomorphs occur in bundles of irregular size which are used as units in fabric production. The fibers are longer than staple and exhibit little of the twisting required for short fibers to produce a usable yam. The fiber bundles of the bast group can be used with little processing in making fabrics. 

Just as baffling is the presence of pseudomorphs after feathers in conjunction with spaced weft twined fabric and fine yams yet, no interworking of feathers into either fabric or yam structures could be ascertained. The significance of the feathers is pertinent here. Their position only on the underside of the plate near its center may mean that the feathers were placed there for a special mortuary purpose and bear no relation to the fabric. On the other hand, the pseudomorphs after feathers could be part of one of the fabrics, surviving only because of their association with the copper. Fabric, feathers, and copper plate may be parts of ceremonial garb. The ornaments were not placed next to the skeleton, but rather they were beneath its remains and separated from it by soil fill. Church (18) also points out the presence of textiles or preserved textiles adhering to copper plates found on chest or loins of human remains in the Ohio Hopewell finds. She does not mention feathers as part of the plate-textile finds. Scholtz (12) has found feathers used in yams recovered from the Ozark Bluff shelters, but the manipulation of the feathers appears to be closer to the Etowah fabric No. 1145 than to the feather pseudomorphs of Tunacunnhee. 

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