Fifty years with baskets

The year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of my first publication on prehistoric basketry. Over the past five decades, the field of perishable artifact analysis has evolved dramatically. Though this evolution has not resulted in a geometric increase in the number of practitioners of this still arcane specialty, it has witnessed numerous transformations and enhancements of focus. After a half century and literally hundreds of publications, papers, and other perishable platitudes, my fundamental “message” continues to follow Weltfish’s original observation that basketry is valuable as a medium for comparative study from multiple points of view because as noted by Weltfish decades ago “the mechanical factors involved in the technical process objectify themselves in the product and are not lost in the process of making.” This contribution summarizes some of the major developments in the arena of basketry studies and, more broadly, in the field of perishable artifact analysis at large.