Andean textiles
The Andean textile tradition once spanned from the Pre-Columbian to the Colonial era throughout the western coast of South America, but was mainly concentrated in what is now Peru.
[6] The earliest known surviving textiles are samples of fiberwork found in Guitarrero Cave, Peru dating back to 8000 BCE.
[3] Early fiberwork by the Norte Chico civilization consisted of plant fibers that were intertwined and knotted to form baskets and other containers.
Surviving examples of finely spun thread and simple cloths indicate that knowledge of spinning and weaving had already been well-established and developed in the area.
Surviving textiles found from looted burials feature brown dye painted on large, seamed panels of cloth.
[8] Paracas officials adopted the practice of wearing multiple garments in sets, including headbands, turbans, mantles, ponchos, tunics, skirts, and loincloths.
This city was the center of a civilization that covered much of the highlands and coast of modern Peru.The discovery in early 2013 of an undisturbed royal tomb, El Castillo de Huarmey, offers new insight into the social and political influence of the Wari during this period.
There are between six and nine miles of thread in each tunic, and they often feature highly abstracted versions of typical Andean artistic motifs, such as the Staff God.
Thick garments made from awaska were worn as standard amongst the lower-classes of the Andean highlands, while lighter cotton clothing was produced on the warmer coastal lowlands.
This cloth, known as qompi (alternative spellings cumbi or kumpi), was of exceptionally high quality and required a specialized and state-run body of dedicated workers.
The main item of Inca clothing worn by women was a long dress known as an anaku (regional difference in style existed, with the aksu, a longer version of the male unku, being common).
A great deal of recovered Inca unku (shirts and tunics) are from the coast of Peru and Chile, rather than the Andes highlands, due to the climate of the Atacama desert being much more favorable for textile preservation.
A hybrid of a belt and a bag (chuspa) was very popular and commonly worn among the ethnic groups of the Altiplano in the south of the Empire.
Headdresses were very diverse in shape and form, many kinds of hats, turbans and headbands, even including things like deer antlers, slings, or cords wrapped around the head were worn.
The Andeans used the back strap loom to create woven textiles, as chronicled in El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno.
Proximity to other artisans allowed for additional features to be incorporated into plain weave textiles, including metallic threads, knotted strings of feathers, and brocading.
[14] Textile painting was common practice in the preparation of special cloths for funerary bundles of high-ranking members of society.
The size of the mantle and foreshortening effects of imagery contributed to the appearance of the wearer as being "larger than life," serving as explicit status symbols.
[3] Bright dyes served to distinguish social elite from those of lesser status, as undyed fabric worn by commoners was brown.
A region's ability to produce textiles was intricately connected to its success of camelid herding, indicating the value of state-controlled wealth in a territory.
Ritual gift objects wrapped in "mummy bundles" include obsidian knives, combs, and balls of thread.
Over 429 funeral bundles containing gift textiles, reams of plain cloth, and various ritual paraphernalia have been excavated from a necropolis at Cerro Colorado.
Soldiers depicted by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wear cloth tunics and wind strips of fabric around themselves to create a sturdy armor that allowed for movement while providing defense.
[2] For similar reasons, woven slings made of plant fibers were the preferred weapons of Moche civilization, rather than stiff wooden or metallic implements.
As a result, cumbi, a fine tapestry cloth woven from alpaca fibers, was modified to a Spanish color palette and produced for the homes and churches of settlers.
[19] The term tornasol refers to the style of textile absorbed by Andean weavers after the European context, characterized by a silky texture that appears to change color from different perspectives.
This has been interpreted as an act of mourning for the lost Inca empire, but may also be a result of cultural influence imported by arriving Spanish colonists.
[20] In the sixteenth century, Spanish policy makers began recognizing Andean textiles as a marketable commodity.
[21] Historian Karen Graubart explains in her own work that Spanish policy makers obliged Indian women to make clothing, which would then be sold by their caciques.
According to Graubart, this gender division of weaving occurred in the colonial period because Spanish policy makers assumed that Indian men would be busy with their mitas.
