At left, a historical Sally bag woven in the Columbia Plateau region. At right, a portrait of Elizabeth Kallenbach, Assistant Director of Anthropological Collections at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Date and time: Thursday, January 16, 2025. 6:30pm PDT

Location: Online via Zoom

Cost: Free. No need to RSVP. All Guild members will be emailed a Zoom link prior to the meeting.

Description: Using archaeological examples from the Paisley Caves, Elizabeth will highlight native plants that have been used by Oregon weavers for millennia. She will also discuss the introduction of commercial fibers during the 19th century, based on baskets from the collections at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

“Indigenous Oregon basketweaving requires ecological knowledge of a diversity of plants such as willow, hazel, dogbane, and stinging nettle,” says Elizabeth. “Weaving begins with gathering and preparing plants to create different weaving elements. Basket makers select plants based on the form and design they are looking to create. Soft bast fibers like stinging nettle, milkweed, and dogbane are commonly used for cordage warps in flexible, twined bags from the Columbia Plateau and in Klamath hats. Rigid baskets from Western Oregon are often made with hazel stick warps and spruce root wefts. Other common plants include tule, cattail, sedge, maple, willow, and maidenhair fern.”

Elizabeth Kallenbach is the Assistant Director of Anthropological Collections at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Elizabeth combines her love of textile arts with research in paleoethnobotany, fiber technology of North America, and cultural heritage management.

Highlights of museum work include collaborations with diverse communities, including indigenous weavers who use museum collections for education and research. Her doctoral work centered on archaeobotany of the Great Basin and explored how people interacted with their landscape over time by identifying the plants people used to make basketry and cordage.