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Description: This ground-breaking book documents the weaving traditions and textiles of one of Asias most ethnically diverse areas, placing them in a regional context. It represents a novel approach to anthropological and ethnographic studies, based on detailed field reports and an explicitly comparative approach, integrating both statistical (Bayesian phylogenetic, Neighbornet) and classical methods to present a unified picture. The first three chapters describe the ethnographic and linguistic and historical background to the region, focussing on the diversity of ethnicities, and their (sometimes turbulent) relations with the dominant Han Chinese polity. The authors review historical and archaeological remains of textiles and looms from the region, and present a revisionist account of the development of loom technologies. The core of the book consists of detailed fieldwork, based on more than a decade of first-hand study. The authors record the traditions of Miao, Yao, Buyi, Dong, Zhuang, Maonan, Dai and Li weavers from Guizhou to Hainan Island. Their investigation focuses on decorated textiles made on the loom (as opposed to embroidery or appliqué), since these are the most complex and most conservative part of the weavers repertoire. They describe the looms and techniques of these groups, including diagrams, descriptions and photographs of the weaving processes and woven structures. Interviews with active weavers reveal the social dimensions of weaving and the items that are made from woven cloth, including marriage and burial related customs. Each tradition is illustrated with precisely provenanced examples of textiles from each sub-region, drawn from the He Haiyan collection in Beijing, including many nineteenth century examples. The research was carried out with a sense of urgency, since many traditions are disappearing, and in some cases are limited to a small number of elderly weavers. These accounts form a primary ethnographic source for weaving cultures in the region, many of which have never been documented before. In the final chapter the authors present a comparative analysis of loom technology across the Asian mainland, using techniques derived from linguistics and biology (Bayesian analysis and Neighbornet plots). They use these to chart the evolutionary history of looms in Asia, demonstrating that all the major traditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Island Southeast Asia are structurally and functionally related, in spite of their apparent diversity, and have their origins on the Asian mainland in the same region that includes the apparent homlands of many of the major linguistic groups. The results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of how complex culture develops and spreads. The findings also shed light on widely-discussed topics such as the development of the Chinese Drawloom, showing how key features of the complex patterning device on this loom were derived from Tai-Kadai looms.
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