Meet the people, sample the flavor, and experience the kinship through 11 unique events and more than 25 inspiring projects. Yarn enthusiasts from coast to coast are embracing fiber festivals with gusto, from New York's Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival to Oregon's Black Sheep Gathering. This large-format, full-color book is a stunning visual celebration of eleven fiber festivals throughout the U.S., showcasing the rich marketplace and sprawling agricultural exhibits that attract visitors in astounding numbers. Perfect as a coffee table book, it also includes instructions for creating 25 unique knitting, crocheting, spinning, and dyeing projects that reflect the rural couture of these popular gatherings. Fiber Gathering brings America's most celebrated festivals into readers' hearts and homes—and inspires them to create clothing, art, and meaning from these time-honored crafts. Throughout history, we've gathered together in the market square. We're there to buy and sell, to get good deals on fibers, fabrics, fruits, vegetables, and bread, but we're also there to see friends, gossip, trade recipes, and admire new clothes. We've got an eye on each other's animals, and we're going to keep them from getting into any trouble. It's our chance to hold someone else's baby or to congratulate a new grandmother. It's a chance to connect, to touch, and to bond with others.

Living in modern society, we have become increasingly disassociated from the earth, from the essence of ourselves, and the need is awakened in us to return to the wilderness--physically and emotionally. We long to feel a sense of connection with our ancient roots. This urge is what has prompted man's fascination with primitive skills: producing objects from natural materials using methods similar to prehistoric cultures. Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills is a sharing of ideas--the philosophies, the history, and the personal stories by the authorities on primitive technology from teh pages of The Bulletin of Primitive Technology. Included are instructions for creating fire and tools of wood, stone, and bone, as well as fiber adhesives, projectiles, art, and music. Practicing these primitive methods will lead the seeker towards a tangible, raw connection with the ancient past, with nature's resources and, ultimately, with the creative forces that constructed the foundation of man's survival on the planet.

Broadening our understanding of southeastern hunter-gatherers who lived between 4600 and 3500 BP, Zackary Gilmore presents evidence that the Late Archaic community of Silver Glen--one of Florida’s most elaborate shell mound complexes--integrated people and places from throughout Florida by staging large-scale feasts and other public events. Gilmore analyzes the composition and style of pottery at the site, revealing that many of the large, elaborately decorated vessels from the shell mounds were imports with nonlocal origins. His findings indicate that the people of Silver Glen frequently hosted large-scale gatherings that helped to create a sense of community among culturally diverse groups with homelands separated by hundreds of kilometers. The history of Florida’s Late Archaic hunter-gatherers is shown here to be much more dynamic than traditionally thought.

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