Laurie D. Webster (Ph.D. University of Arizona, 1997) is an independent researcher with institutional affiliations at the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, the American Museum of Natural History, and Crow Canyon. Laurie is a leading expert on Ancestral Pueblo perishable materials, especially woven objects and textiles, and she consults with Crow Canyon on the perishable materials encountered during the Center’s excavations.
Laurie is also a scholar of post-contact and contemporary Pueblo and Navajo weaving. Her research interests include craft production and innovation, technological change, cultural affiliation, and the documentation and interpretation of older museum collections. She has served as a consultant and technical expert about Southwestern textiles and perishable artifacts for museums, federal agencies, tribal entities, and cultural resource management firms. Laurie is a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, and a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Her publications include the edited volume \*Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas\* and the catalog \*Collecting the Weaver’s Art: The William Claflin Collection of Southwestern Textiles\*, as well as numerous articles about pre-Hispanic perishable technologies. In 2011 she initiated the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project to document the large collections of perishable artifacts recovered from southeastern Utah during the 1890s.
Laurie is the founder and director of the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project and lives in Mancos, Colorado.