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Just how many fish feathers does it require to generate an early blanket? 11,500

A fluffy gray blanket next to a coil of cord.

Expand / / A section of fiber string that’s been wrapped with turkey feathers, together with a solitary downy feather. (charge: Washington State University)

Indigenous Pueblo inhabitants in the Southwest–ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo tribes–normally wove blankets, cloaks, and funeral wrappings from animal hides, furs, and turkey feathers. Anthropologists in Washington State University (WSU) have analyzed one such historical turkey-feather blanket also decided it required tens of thousands of these featherswrapped around almost 200 metres to yucca fiber, to create, based on a brand new {} printed in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reviews.

“Blankets or robes created out of turkey feathers because the insulating medium proved widely employed by Ancestral Pueblo people in what’s currently the Upland Southwest, however little is understood about the way they were created since few such fabrics have survived because of their perishable nature,” stated co-author Bill Lipe, emeritus professor of anthropology at WSU. “The objective of the study was to shed fresh light onto the creation of turkey feather blankets and also learn more about the cultural and economic facets of increasing turkeys to provide the feathers”

For their analysis, Lipe along with his WSU colleague along with co-author, Shannon Tushingham, analyzed a blanket frame on screen in the Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding, Utah. Although pests had devoured the first feather vanes along with barbs, the bottoms were {} , wrapped round yucca fiber strings. They were able to check at another, smaller blanket that still had all its own feathers intact. Both blankets approximately date into the early 1200s CE.

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