Coiled Basketry Through Time in Ancient Egypt – Roman Period
The Roman Period saw a greater shift in the direction of mismatched basketry techniques within a single product. A more traditional basket is housed in the Petrie Museum. This small, shallow basket, or possibly lid, is made of tightly wrapped coils. The wrappings do contain patterns, though not dyed patterns. These patterns derive from different methods of wrapping. The background wrapping is the common wrapping that is threaded through the wrapping of the previous coils, though the chevron pattern is less distinct in this subject. Wrapping stretching over two layers of coils form intermittent triangle patterns. The rim is a plain, tight wrapping (Artifact UC59026).
A flattened plaited basket is also located at the Petrie Museum. The body of the basket appears to be made up of plaits sewn together with a knob in the bottom, the purpose of which cannot be determined by the author. The rim, however, is coiled, breaking distinctly from the bulk of the Dynastic basketry, which rarely mixed coiled techniques with other basketry techniques (Artifact UC59033).
The final basket to be analyzed is a helmet-shaped basket with intricate weaving designs. The majority of the basket is made up of hexagonal hole patterns. A band of simple weaving of two dyed colors bordered by waling splits the hexagonal pattern in two. The rim, which was constructed using the coiling technique, shows the reeds used in the construction of the basket folded over, with coiling hiding the finishing step from the consumer’s eyes (Artifact UC8454).
© 2011, Page Strong. All rights reserved.
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