Woven Reed Carrying Cloth with Double-Wave Border (Vorrashi, c. -2900)

This carrying cloth (catalog ref. VRP-TX-0041) represents a textile typology that, while almost certainly ubiquitous in Vorrashi domestic contexts, is preserved only in exceptional archaeological circumstances owing to the organic nature of its constituent materials. Its recovery from a partially waterlogged midden layer at the Meviru Bend site — where anaerobic conditions inhibited complete decomposition — makes it among the better-preserved examples of common Vorrashi weaving currently in institutional collections, alongside the three fragmentary pieces held by the Comparative Ashenmere Studies Institute. The double-wave corner motifs merit particular attention. As established by Vorrashi visual language scholarship, the double wave specifically encodes the concept of river confluence — the meeting of two waterways — and its placement at the four corners of a carrying cloth is functionally and symbolically legible: corners are themselves points of meeting, where warp and weft, horizontal and vertical, converge. This is not likely coincidental. The choice to concentrate the most symbolically loaded motif at structural junctions is consistent with a broader Vorrashi tendency, visible across material categories, to align decorative grammar with functional form. The flowing water lines along the borders reinforce a directional reading of the cloth as a contained river space — a microcosmic rendering of the waterway environment that defined Vorrashi subsistence and cosmology. The fish-scale tessellation units in the central field are less elaborated than those found on formal or ceremonially associated textiles. Where higher-status pieces show densely packed, carefully graduated scale patterns referencing the reed boat iconography and pearl-in-spiral motifs associated with ritual contexts, this example's three rows appear almost incidental — a minimum threshold of patterning sufficient to situate the object within Vorrashi visual culture without elevating it above domestic utility. This gradation of motif density as a proxy for status and context is consistent with the broader material record. Dating to approximately -2900 is based on stratigraphic association with a hearth deposit radiocarbon-dated to -2920 ± 40 BP (calibrated), as well as fiber treatment techniques consistent with pre-Kethari contact assemblages. Notably, the dyeing method for the river-blue fiber does not employ the copper-mordant fixation technique that appears in Vorrashi textiles from approximately -2750 onward — the period in which Kethari bronze tool and kiln technology began diffusing into Vorrashi communities. This places the cloth in a pre-contact or very early contact horizon, before Kethari cultural exchange had materially altered Vorrashi craft production. Post-contact textiles show significantly improved dye fastness and color saturation; the moderate fading of this piece's river-blue elements is consistent with pre-mordant technique and corroborates the early dating. The cloth offers no evidence of inscription, which is wholly expected: the Vorrashi maintained no writing system, relying entirely on oral tradition. Household or clan identification, where present in the textile record, is encoded visually through motif selection and spatial arrangement rather than through any graphic language.