WESTSIDE / VALLEY : Threads of Ethnic History : An anthropologist studies clothes for evidence of changes that have taken place in non-industrialized populations

Patricia Rieff Anawalt is an academic sleuth who looks for clues in clothes.

Described in a recent issue of Archaeology magazine as “an ethnohistorical-ethnological Sherlock Holmes,” Anawalt seeks evidence of what is happening to non-industrialized peoples in the clothes they wear.

Anawalt is founding director of the Center for the Study of Regional Dress, which officially opens today at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History on the Westwood campus. At 2 p.m., she will deliver a public lecture on her research passion, “Textiles as History: Clothing Clues to 500 Years of Costume Change in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico.”

“As an anthropologist, I’ve always been interested in this thing that happens when two different cultures come together and something new comes out of that,” Anawalt said. In her view, there is no better place to study that process, known as acculturation, than Mexico.

“It’s the world’s cleanest acculturation lab,” said Anawalt, who is fascinated by the new culture that emerged in the area after the epic meeting in 1519 of the Spanish invader Hernando Cortes and the great Aztec king Montezuma. One reason Mexico provides so clean an example of acculturation, she explained, is that the Spanish people were successful in keeping other Europeans out of the region for so long.

Holder of a doctorate in anthropology from UCLA, Anawalt did a study of the clothing of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica for her dissertation. Bent on solving what could be called the riddle of the Aztec closet, she analyzed pre-Columbian sources and the systematic studies of the native people undertaken by Spanish missionaries to find out what local people wore. From these sources, she came up with the probable wardrobe of the Aztecs and other people of the area, including loincloths and capes for the men and wraparound skirts and simple tunics or shoulder shawls for the women.

She was able to conjecture authoritatively on what clothes people grabbed for in the morning despite the fact that virtually no complete garments from the period have survived. “The tropics aren’t kind to textiles,” she said. One surprising source of textile remains, the cenote or sacred pool at the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Fragmentary garments of sacrificial victims who were thrown into the pool have been retrieved, blackened but protected from cloth-killing oxygen by the mud.

The appearance of the Spanish convulsed Mesoamerica--by 1620 the population of the area had dropped from more than 21 million people to about 1 million, largely because of diseases introduced by the Europeans. The Spanish also profoundly changed native dress. According to Anawalt, some of the changes resulted from the introduction of new technology. Before the Spanish arrived, clothing was made of cotton or bast fiber woven on a backstrap loom. That type of loom, which is still in use, produced a piece of cloth, no wider than the weaver could extend her arms, with finished edges all around.

Clothing made from fabric from a backstrap loom is flat and untailored. The Spanish introduced the treadle loom, a technology that produced much wider pieces of fabric that could be cut and shaped to fit the body.

Pre-Hispanic weaving was woman’s work, but the new machine was operated by men, who often worked in a sweatshop. The new loom also had its major sartorial impact on men. The missionaries found the native dress of the women more or less acceptable, so women continued to wear such traditional garments as triangular shawls. But the missionaries decided those loincloths were a scandal and had to go. Under the Spanish, native men began to wear white pantaloons, called calzones , as well as long-sleeved shirts or camisas .

Acculturation is an ongoing process, and you can still see the history of Mexico in garments being worn today, she said. In the course of five research trips to central Mexico in recent years, she continues to find clues in clothes. In the marketplaces of mountain villages, men still wear trousers whose seats feature three seams, tailored according to the fashion of 16th-Century Spain.

Anthropologist Toni Flores, who has also worked in Mexico and Central America, points to the persistence of ancient religious symbols in contemporary clothes. The Maya women of Guatemala, she said, often wear huipils, loose tops, that feature the world cross of Maya mythology. “When a Maya woman puts one on, she places herself at the center of the universe,” said Flores, who teaches at Hobart and William Smith colleges in Geneva, N.Y. Like any good detective, Anawalt savors the moment of discovery. Recently, she had a major breakthrough. Because of her familiarity with the detailed illustrations of native life in the codices compiled by the Spanish, she was able to trace the previously unknown noble ancestry of a humble garment worn in Mexico today.

The ancient gods of the Aztecs are often shown wearing a sleeveless jacket with a fringed hem called a xicolli. This “godly jacket” also was worn by Aztec priests when they tore the beating hearts out of sacrificial victims. Anawalt has pointed out that the xicolli is the same size and shape as the 20th-Century cotorina, a sleeveless jacket with fringed hem often worn by working men in Central Mexico. Now made of wool on a treadle loom, the once godly jacket now protects ordinary men against the cold.

According to Anawalt, the new center will be open to students, scholars and others interested in clothing as a barometer of social change. Users will be able to draw on the Fowler’s collection of more than 10,000 textiles. The center will also provide a temporary home for visiting experts on cloth-producing cultures.

Patricia Rieff Anawalt will speak on “Textiles as History: Clothing Clues to 500 Years of Costume Change in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico” at 2 p.m. this afternoon in the Harry and Yvonne Lenart Auditorium of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History. For additional information on the center, call (310) 206-7005. The Fowler museum is located off Sunset Boulevard and Westwood Plaza on UCLA’s campus. The museum is open to the public from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Friday-Sunday. Thursday hours are noon to 8 p.m. No admission, but parking on campus is $5. For information on the museum, call (310) 825-4361.