PRIMITIVE BASKETRY The word basket does not occur in Teutonic or Romance lan guages; its first appearance in the English tongue is in the i3th century, and the modern Celtic words (Welsh, basged; Irish, basceid, etc.) are probably adapted from the English. Basketry is a convenient, though ill-defined term, including actual baskets, wattlework, matting and ornamental plaitwork, made by hand without the aid of a frame or loom.
The industry is almost universal in time and in space. In the larger areas in which it is not found the lack may be traced either to the scarcity of suitable materials (as in much of Arctic Amer ica) or to the substitution of skins (as in the plains of North America, or across central Asia). The antiquity of basket-making is shown by its mention in folklore and creation myths in many parts of the world (Torres straits, Malay area, North America, etc.). The Potawatami (Wisconsin) believe that there is an old woman up in the moon making a basket. When it is finished the world will be destroyed ; but a dog from time to time ruins her work (an eclipse), and she has to start over again. Basket-making may well have been the earliest human industry, though the perish able materials are not preserved like flints and potsherds. It certainly preceded pottery-making in western America, and pos sibly in other parts of the world, and the invention of pottery has been ascribed to the clay coating or lining of baskets, subsequently burnt (see POTTERY). But in the Andaman islands A. R. Brown traces evolution in an opposite direction, that of baskets from pottery. Each pot is wrapped up in a covering of leaves in North Andaman ; in South Andaman the leaf-covering has become a basket exactly fitting the pot.
The earliest baskets that can be approximately dated are the large circular granaries found embedded in the sand in the Fayum, used for storing grain 4000 or 500o B.C. (Plate I., fig. 2.) ; Exodus records the basket (made of papyrus coated with mud) in which the infant Moses was hidden and discovered ; Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. describes the round basket-work gufa on the Euphrates and Tigris, where similar boats may be seen to-day. Wattle and daub huts—essentially a basket-work process—were characteristic of the bronze age in Britain, and are still a common type of dwelling in many parts of Africa. Nor has basketry technique changed. The strokes used in the baskets in Etruscan tombs, preserved in the Museo Etrusco in Florence, are those used by the English basket-maker; the late Roman baskets of A.D. 300 to 450 dug up at Karanis in 1924-26 are modern in all respects (Pl. I., fig. 1) ; the method of mat and basket-making found in prehistoric Egypt may be recognized in the tool basket (probably from Portugal) of the English workman.
Uses.—Among uncivilized peoples at the present day, basket work provides clothing (girdles, petticoats, mats, hats, sandals, ornaments), shelter (wattle-work screens and huts, sleeping mats, cradles), transport (canoes, travelling chairs, coffins), all the do mestic furniture, cooking and water vessels, besides many of the fish and game traps, winnowing trays and granaries. The uses are not confined to domestic work. Wicker shields are still used in war, as in the days of Xenophon, while the coir armour of the Gilbert islands, the Hawaiian helmets and the slatted cuirasses of the Indians of north-west America, are dependent on basketry technique. Basketry is still the one industrial art in which human hands excel the machine and can defy mechanical competition ; in choice of form, colour and design, the basket-maker can show true artistic gifts, and the use of symbolism may enshrine magic or religious motives. Further, it is the one art in which the savage excel the civilized. Collections from Africa, Malay and Pacific regions show beauty as well as dexterity, and the North American ware, especially the Californian, is famous throughout the world. The Indian woman takes a personal pride in her work; her status in the tribe is estimated by her skill, and she often reserves her finest work to be buried with her in her grave.
Materials.—The superiority of savage over civilized basket work is not due solely to hereditary skill, and the disregard of time characteristic of primitive societies; the cause is partly geographi cal, depending on the basketry materials provided by nature. "The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb" both in America and England; but while willows, reeds and grass are almost the only native materials found in Great Britain, more than 87 dif ferent plants used in making or dyeing Indian baskets were identi fied in the Agricultural Department at Washington in 1902, and many more are still unidentified. Throughout tropical America, tropical Africa, the East Indian archipelago and the Pacific region various palms provide ideal leaf-strips, as they do in less profusion and variety round the shores of the Mediterranean. In Africa and the Pacific region banana leaves are in common use, and in the latter area screw-pine (Pandanus) affords strips for stronger work. Certain materials are characteristic of their respective regions. Such are the spruce (Picea sitchensis), of whose split roots water tight baskets are made by the Tlingit of Alaska, the bamboo used in China and Japan, and the "flax" (Phormium tenax) of New Zealand. Maiden-hair fern (Adiantum pedatum) is as character istic of Californian decoration as khus-khus grass (Anatherum muricatum) of India and the East Indies, or the yellow orchid skin (Dendrobium) of New Guinea or Little Andaman. Among other materials may be enumerated the fronds of the palm of the Seychelles, Lodoicea sechellarurn, which are used for very deli cate basket-work in those islands. Esparto fibre is used in Spain and Algeria for rude fruit baskets. Various species of Maranta yield basket materials in the West Indies and South America; and the Tirite, a species of Calathea, a member of the order Zingi beraceae, is also employed similarly in Trinidad. Baskets are also frequently made from straw, from various sedges (Cyperus), and from shavings and splints of many kinds of wood.