Trans-oceanic transfer of bark-cloth technology from South China–Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica?

Scholars have long recognised the important role bark cloth plays in articulating status in Polynesian societies. In life (and death), Polynesian chiefs were traditionally presented (or shrouded) with copious quantities of bark cloth, the precise number of strips contingent on status. The considerable economic expenditure required to produce such large quantities reflects the significance of this item of material culture in its cultural context, as well as the importance of hierarchy in traditional Polynesian societies. Kleinschmidt’s unforgettable drawing (Figure 1) of a Fijian chief wearing more than 180 m of tapa during a ceremony to mark the conclusion of 100 days of mourning for a paramount chief captures this symbolism dramatically. It is therefore fitting that on his retirement, we honour our Polynesian colleague (archaeologist and chief ) by symbolically presenting him with paper through this festschrift. From a technological perspective, bark cloth and paper are not markedly different, but they represent different stages of production. Both are produced by beating plant fibres; paper simply requires additional pounding and softening to completely macerate the fibres. Chinese historical documents indicate that bark-cloth production was abandoned in the early dynastic period when paper was invented; greater returns could be obtained from the processing of paper and clothing made from woven bast fibres (Shih Sheng-Han 1961). Elsewhere, I have demonstrated firm parallels between prehistoric bark-cloth beaters from Neolithic sites in southeast China and prehistoric bark-cloth beaters from mainland and Island Southeast Asian contexts (Cameron 2006). This chapter extends this typological reconstruction to Mesoamerica, which suggests the possibility of pre-Columbian contact long before bark-cloth technology diffused into the Pacific.