If you visit the Four Corners region today, you might notice your shoes leaving footprints across the powdery pink sand. You might notice the footprints of the people who have walked there before you and even be able to guess the brand of the shoes and the size they wore based on the imprint of the sole. If you were taking the same walk 1,500 years ago, you would have had a similar experience. The Ancestral Pueblo people living in this region wore sandals with intricate raised treads unique to every sandal so the identity of the wearer would have been recognizable from their footsteps.
Top and bottom views of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 625 C.E. (Photos by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13901.
Arizona State Museum’s twined sandal collection comes primarily from the Prayer Rock District, a collection of sandstone alcoves in Northeastern Arizona that was occupied by the Ancestral Pueblo people. The largest portion of the sandals come from Broken Flute Cave which was excavated by Earl Morris and Ann Axtell Morris in the 1930s. Broken Flute Cave was first occupied around 500 C.E. and later reoccupied around 625 C.E. During its peak, it may have been home to as many as 12 households who lived in pit houses that were sheltered from the elements by the overhanging rock face. This created exceptional conditions for preservation. The Southwest has a dry climate that slows decomposition and artifacts in the cave were spared from over a thousand years of seasonal monsoons and winter snows that eroded more exposed sites. One of the greatest gifts of this extraordinary preservation, is a collection of textiles including over 280 sandals made from twined yucca leaf fibers. It is very rare that textiles survive hundreds of years, much less over a thousand years, because in most circumstances organic materials will decompose or get eaten by a hungry foraging animal. Luckily, yucca is too tough and fibrous to chew!
Even more fortunate, Broken Flute Cave is just one of many caves that sheltered Ancestral Pueblo people living in the Four Corners region during this period. Scholars estimate that easily 10,000 (and perhaps as many as 20,000) surviving yucca and agave sandals have been recovered from the larger region, making these fibrous sandals one of the most extensive collections of surviving textiles in the world.
Broken Flute Cave. (Photo by Earl H. Morris). Arizona State Museum Neg. 6024.
Woven textiles are created using warp yarns that are tensioned vertically and weft yarns that travel horizontally over and under the warp yarns. There are several methods that can be used to construct a woven sandal. The majority of the sandals from Broken Flute Cave are twined which a weaving technique where two weft yarns are paired and twist around each other while encasing the warp yarns. This basic twining weave can be altered by adding extra twists which creates a raised texture. By alternating types of twining weaves, a distinctive pattern can be created on the bottom of each sandal.
Different weaving techniques including plain weave and various twining methods. (Figure by Ever Brooks).
Each of the sandals discovered at Broken Flute Cave has a unique pattern of raised tread created through twining. If you were living in a small community like Broken Flute Cave over a thousand years ago, you would have known every person in your community well enough to recognize their clothing and the prints their sandals made in the sand. You might well have been able to tell who was at home based on which sandals were left near the entrance to the pit house. Therefore, when making decisions about the designs that would be woven into the bottom of your sandals, you would think about how you wanted to present yourself to the other people in your community, as well as the occasional stranger from other communities.
Left: Bottom view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 500 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13843.
Center: Bottom view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 625 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13900.
Right: Bottom view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 630 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-14023.
The unique geometric raised tread design on each sandal was paired with a geometric color design. In most cases, the sandals were woven with red and yellow paired together in one section of the sandal and black and tan paired together in the adjacent section. The geometric designs were created using various forms of symmetry including reflection, translation, and rotation.
When comparing the decorative designs used on sandals to the decorative designs found in other contexts throughout Broken Flute Cave, anthropologists notice there are two distinct styles of artwork. The first was the geometric style that you will recognize from the sandals. This style was also found on other portable artifacts including baskets, pottery, twined aprons worn by women, and tump bands used to carry burden baskets. It was uncommon to see recognizable humans or animals depicted in this style, and when they were present, they were created through patterns of small repeated geometric shapes. The second decorative style was found pecked into or painted onto rock surfaces rather than portable objects. This style emphasizes curving lines that often depict humans, plants, animals, and communal hunting scenes.
The contexts in which these two distinct art styles were used provides clues to better understand the identities they may have represented. In most Southwestern Native American cultures, women have been responsible for preparing and serving food, making hand-built pottery, weaving objects on backstrap looms, and making other non-loom textiles (textiles woven on looms may be made by men or women depending on the culture). Therefore, the objects used during these tasks or created by women were oftentimes decorated with designs that were associated with women. In the context of Broken Flute Cave, it seems likely that the geometric style found on these portable objects, including sandals, would have been associated with women. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that these geometric designs are used on aprons that were worn exclusively by women, as evidenced by the menstrual blood present on many aprons and their occasional presence in female burials. Meanwhile, the rock art style with the curving lines appears to overwhelmingly depict male or non-gendered figures.
While it seems that the sandals were worn by men, women, and children based on their wide range of sizes, it is interesting to note their use of the geometric design style associated with feminine crafts and tasks. This connection might indicate that the sandals were woven by women.
Both of these sandals have the customary color scheme pairing together red with yellow
and black with tan, however the yellow and tan have faded to be almost imperceptible.
Left: Top view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 625 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13985.
Right: Top view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dating to approx. 625 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-14078.
When you are taught a new skill, there are certain rules you are taught to follow to get the intended result. For example, many children in the US are taught to tie their shoes using the “bunny ears method” and if you learned to tie your shoes that way as a child, it is very unusual to deviate from that method later in life. The same is true when learning more complicated skills like weaving twined sandals. When archaeologists examine the collection of sandals from Broken Flute Cave, they notice a pattern of specific methods that were used to create the toe shape and finish the heel of each sandal. It was exceedingly rare for sandal makers to deviate from these tried-and-true methods. When the archaeological record does show changes in these practices, they are gradual shifts over long periods of time where a new method eventually overtakes an old method in popularity. Among the sandals that survive in Broken Flute Cave from the late 400s and early 500s, the majority have a scalloped toe shape and a square heel shape. The square heel has its corners drawn upwards by a loose bar made out of several of the warp yarns that emerge from the back of the sandal which secures the sandal to the back of the foot. Meanwhile, sandals found in Broken Flute Cave from the 600s are more likely to have a rounded toe shape and a puckered heel shape that was created by drawing up the corners tightly together until they met. The warp yarns that emerge from the back of the sandal were then used to create the heel straps.
This sandal has the square toe shape and square heel drawn together with a
loose bar that is characteristic of a sandal from the late 400s or early 500s.
Top view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave. Undated context. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13937.
Detail: Close up of heel finish where a loose bar made out of warp yarns pulls the corners of the square heel toward each other.
This sandal has the round toe shape and puckered heel created by the corners of the
heel being drawn tightly together that is characteristic of a sandal from the 600s.
Top view of a twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dated to approx. 625 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13903.
Detail: Close up of heel finish where uppermost warp yarns pull heel into tight puckered shape while the other warp yarns are bundled and trimmed.
The sandal weaving techniques, as well as the geometric designs used, were passed down from one generation of sandal makers to the next. With this knowledge in mind, archaeologists can develop hypotheses about aspects of life in Broken Flute Cave. Since the geometric patterns were associated with objects women created or used, it seems likely that the sandal makers were women who passed the skill down in a matrilineal fashion. Additionally, since most of the sandals were created using similar construction techniques, it seems likely that women who worked as sandal makers lived their entire lives in the same communities where they had learned the skill of sandal making. If there were greater variations in sandal construction techniques, it might indicate that women were born into different communities where they learned different sandal making techniques and then moved into their husband’s community after they married, but this is not the case. Instead, the homogeneity of sandal making techniques supports the hypothesis that the communities living in the Prayer Rock District were matrilocal, meaning that a married couple would live with the wife’s extended family in the community where she had grown up.
The twined sandals created by Ancestral Pueblo people of the Four Corners region in this time period are truly extraordinary works of art. Twined sandals continued to be made over the next 700 years, but started to decrease in popularity around 1150 C.E. Around this time, people began to instead wear sandals made from coarser yucca fibers that were plaited similar to how you might braid your hair. Production of twined sandals stopped just before 1300 C.E. The plaited sandals that replaced them were far quicker to produce but could not convey as much information about the identity of the wearer compared to the earlier twined sandals with their incredibly complex raised tread and designs.
This is an example of the later style of plaited sandal that became
more common over time and eventually replaced twined sandals.
Top view of plaited sandal from Broken Flute Cave from undated context. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-14156.
The makers and wearers of twined sandals valued their sandals for reasons that went beyond just protecting their feet from harsh terrain. There is no better evidence for this than the fact that most of these intricately twined sandals have large holes under the ball and heel of the foot. The holes are often over two inches wide, leaving very little material in these high-wear areas to separate the foot from the ground. However, they continued to be worn. We may never understand the exact significance of these twined sandals to the wearers that cherished them, however we can appreciate them as marvelous evidence of how humans have always used clothing to communicate information about their identity.
These sandals are a few examples out of many
that had large holes but continued to be worn.
Left: Top view of twined sandal from Broken Flute Cave dated to approx. 625 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13879.
Right: Top view of twined sandal from Morris Cave 3 dated to approx. 645 C.E. (Photo by Benjamin Bellorado). A-13925.
References:
Bellorado, Benjamin A. 2020. Leaving Footprints in the Ancient Southwest: Visible Indicators of Group Affiliation and Social Position in the Chaco and Post-Chaco Eras (AD 850–1300). PhD Dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Bellorado, Benjamin A. 2023. Pushing the Boundaries of Clothing Research: A Preliminary Look at Twined Sandals in Relation to Social Identities in the Chaco and Post-Chaco Eras. In Pushing Boundaries, Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium, edited by Stephen E. Nash and Erin L. Baxter. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
Emery, Irene. 1980. The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification. The Textile Museum, Washington.
Hays-Gilpin, Kelley Ann, Ann Cordy Deegan, and Elizabeth Ann Morris. 1998. Prehistoric Sandals from Northeastern Arizona: The Earl H. Morris and Ann Axtell Morris Research. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona Vol. 62. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Hays-Gilpin, Kelley Ann. 2000. Gender Constructs in the Material Culture of Seventh-century Anasazi Farmers in North-eastern Arizona. In Representations of Gender from Prehistory to Present, edited by Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe, pp. 31-44. Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.
Kidder, Alfred V. 1926. A Sandal from Northeastern Arizona. American Anthropologist, New Series, 28(4):618-632.
Morris, Elizabeth Ann. 1980. Basketmaker Caves in The Prayer Rock District, Northeastern Arizona. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona Vol. 35. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Polhemus, Ted and Lynn Proctor. 1978. Fashion and Anti-Fashion: Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London.
Acknowledgments:
Dr. Benjamin Bellorado (left), ASM’s assistant curator of archaeology, and undergraduate student Ever Brooks (right) in 2025.
Text by Ever Brooks.
Edited by Dr. Benjamin Bellorado, Assistant Curator of Archaeology.
Photography by Dr. Benjamin Bellorado, Assistant Curator of Archaeology.
Figure by Ever Brooks.
Research by Dr. Benjamin Bellorado and Ever Brooks based on the work of Earl Morris, Ann Axtell Morris, Dr. Kelley Ann Hays-Gilpin, Dr. Ann Cordy Deegan, and Dr. Elizabeth Ann Morris.
Archival access provided by Molly Stothert-Maurer.
Formatting and photography advice provided by Jannelle Weakly.
Web design by Darlene Lizarraga.