The origins of basketry are lost in the mists of prehistory, but making baskets is certainly one of the oldest and most nearly universal crafts of mankind. In the Americas, basket artifacts found in caves in Utah have been dated at 7000 B.C., while twined baskets said to be at least 5,000 years old have been uncovered in Peru. In the American Southwest, an entire Indian culture (ca. 100-700 A.D.) is known as -Basket Maker- because of the distinctive baskets it produced.
This exhaustive survey (two volumes in one) of American Indian basketry, perhaps the finest book ever published...