2006 SCA California Archaeology Month Poster: Basketweaver Julia Parker

Four Generations of the Parker Family
Learning, Honoring, and Teaching the Traditions of the Past

2006 SCA Archaeology Month Poster

The 2006 SCA California Archaeology Month poster depicts four generations of the Parker-Jones family: Julia Parker (Coast Miwok and Kashaya Pomo ), Lucy Parker, daughter of Julia and Ralph Parker (Paiute/Southern Sierra Miwok), Ursula Jones, daughter of Lucy, and Naomi Jones, daughter of Ursula and Boone Jones. These four woman travel and work together preparing basket materials, as shown, weaving in a traditional manner (as Lucy shows in splitting willow by holding it with her teeth and hands), embracing the baskets of their heritage from the coiled basket on the upper right shelf to the tule basket held by Ursula.

By teaching and honoring traditional methods and techniques, the Native people of California also inform archaeologists about the tools recovered for sites. In the frieze near the bottom of the poster are some of the tools or artifacts of the art– largely scrapers for removing bark and stem nodules or awls used to weave. Also depicted in the frieze is a basket specifically woven to hold basket-making tools. Archaeologists find such tools in excavations, and rarely, the remains of baskets are found in caves and other dry locations. Basket weaving as an activity has a heritage that is millennia old.

In addition, Julia Parker was the recipient of the 2006 California Indian Heritage Award given at the Society for California Archaeology Annual Meeting in Ventura.