Color, Structure and Meaning in Ancient Andean Fiber Arts

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Stone.

Color is one of many key expressive modes for textiles in particular. Intense, communicative, and not always predictable, Andean textile coloration is a complex issue. Rather than submitting to a "cookbook" delineation of color symbolism (red means blood, etc.), the abstract mindset of ancient and modern Andean societies means that color has many more complex, even philosophical, roles to play in the fiber arts of this area. For instance, purposeful rupturing of regular color patterning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Urton.

This paper analyzes the uses of color in the Wari and Inka khipus. The focus of the study will be on the ranges and ways of combining colors used in each tradition. The central question to be addressed is: How was color used as a medium of coding information in each tradition and what can we say about how and why the system of color may have changed as it did from Wari to Inka times?

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Peters.

Anne Paul (1998) observed that the Paracas Necropolis embroiderers seem to explore all possible color repeat patterns in their mantle design. At the same time, a few dominant color combinations recur throughout the assemblage. Like speech, color is a system of difference, hues perceived relationally through contrast with those adjacent. Dyed color is produced by chemical processes on natural fiber with pre-existing tones, and changes over time in diverse environmental conditions. These factors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Splitstoser.

Inka khipus used cord color, knots, cord attachment, final twist, and sometimes material (e.g., colored camelid hair) to encode information. Middle Horizon (Wari) khipus used all these conventions and more. For instance, the thick, white, cotton pendant cords of MH khipus were routinely wrapped with brightly colored (usually camelid hair) yarns that most likely conveyed meaning. The thickness and structure of pendant-cords themselves likely held significance. Further, while Wari khipu makers...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baitzel.

In the Andes, weaving and wearing cloth are essential for shaping identity and social relations. The weavers of the south-central Andean Tiwanaku state (Middle Horizon period A.D.500-1100) possessed knowledge of plant and animal fibers, weave techniques, dyes, and iconography which allowed them to produce a wide range of textiles, from the monochrome cloths of daily life to the vibrantly colored tapestries. Examining textile evidence from burials at the provincial center of Omo M10 (Moquegua,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Blenda Femenias.

Of the many surviving pre-Columbian Inka textiles, especially those made in tapestry and featuring tukapu (rectangular design blocks), only a few full-size garments are associated with females. There are, however, many miniature female garments. Inka textiles also tend to follow a limited number of color combinations, although some textiles show a more diverse, even exuberant mixture. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, in his section on the coyas (queens), attributes a specific set of colors to each...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Bergh.

Artistically elaborate tapestry-woven tunics were the raiment of rulers and other esteemed elites of the ancient Andean Wari civilization (AD 600-1000). The tunics’ figurative iconography is well known: drawn from a limited repertoire that often relates to the Wari state’s official religious cult, it almost always comprises a single type of motif that repeats many times in different orientations and color combinations (color blocks) across each tunic’s gridded body. Less legible and recognized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Phipps.

Andean textile artists transformed fibers and dyes from nature to create complex color palettes attuned to the aesthetic of their time and place. Creating unique qualities not only of value and hue, qualities of color—in nuance shades, degree of sheen and brilliance-- Andean dyers, spinners and weavers built a vocabulary of color that contributed to the meaning and value of textiles in their social, political and creative context. From Chavin religious and supernatural figures created through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin McEwan.

Andean tupus (cloak pins) recovered from archaeological contexts often have a single perforation in the middle of the head. This suggests that they were connected by a woven cord and worn in pairs, an observation that is corroborated by ethno-historic accounts as well as contemporary ethnography. There are also some surviving examples of miniature tupus connected by miniature woven cords from capac hucha burials. This presentation describes and analyses one such example from the British Museum...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Ogburn.

Colors of cords in Inka khipu are of great interest because it has long been understood that they were meant to convey specific meanings, namely indicating the individual category being encoded in a particular position on a khipu. Colonial authors such as Calancha and Garcilaso de la Vega made claims regarding what certain colors symbolized, but studies of extant khipu have yet to definitively correlate colors with specific meanings. Before we can begin to understand the correlation between...