Both the carrying and water baskets are so shaped as to fit against the shoulders and it is believed that they were carried on the back, probably with a tump strap running from the basket over the forehead of the bearer. This type of woven strap, which is commonly found in Basketmaker sites, is a device which helps to support and keep in place a burden carried on the back while leaving the hands free. It would be particularly useful in cases where there were cliffs to be negotiated and it was essential to be able to utilize hand holes pecked in the rock faces. Some of the water baskets are nearly two feet high and could have held some two or three gallons of water. Since all the water used in the caves would have to be carried up from streams below, or brought down from mesa tops where rain water had accumulated in natural basins or depressions, supplying the needs of a household would be no light chore, and the Basketmakers must have needed all the help which their tump straps provided. [Illustration: Fig. 11—Basketmaker coiled baskets. (Courtesy Peabody Museum, Harvard University.)] Although baskets and carrying straps were utilitarian objects, their decorative possibilities were not overlooked. Many of the baskets had red and black designs formed by dyeing the sewing splints. Another technique which was employed, primarily for the production of bags and to a limited extent in the making of baskets, was twining. In twining, splints or threads are intertwined around a foundation of radiating rods or threads. Twined bags are very characteristic of the Basketmaker culture. These are soft, seamless sacks which vary in size from a few inches to two or more feet in length. They are egg-shaped with slightly pointed bottoms and somewhat constricted necks. Usually they were made of the fiber of apocynum, but some yucca fiber was also used. Most of the bag was of the warm yellowish brown of the undyed fiber but decoration was provided by dyeing some of the threads red or black and weaving in designs in horizontal bands. There was no introduction of specially dyed elements. When a change in color was desired, weft threads were simply rubbed with color. Possibly the finished article was treated in some way to fix the dye. Burden or tump straps and narrow sashes were also twined-woven and similarly decorated. [Illustration: Fig. 12—Basketmaker carrying basket, with tump strap. (Courtesy Peabody Museum, Harvard University.)]