Ramada Textiles from Southern Peru: Death’s Social Skins

Summary

Textiles from the Ramada culture of southern Peru are currently understudied and poorly understood. Recent research in the Vitor Valley suggests that the Ramada culture was a regional Early Intermediate-to-Middle Horizon cultural manifestation, contemporary with both Nazca, to the northwest, and the Wari traditions, but with its own distinct expressions of cultural identity. This paper presents preliminary analyses, using archaeological textiles from a cemetery dated to 550AD, which suggest that the Ramada culture exhibits its own grammar and patterns of textile production, decoration, and use. The use of textiles in Ramada mortuary contexts displays different strategies and internal expressions of identity that were used to reflect regional identity, gender and age as well as group affiliation. While preliminary, these analyses have opened the way for more holistic approaches to defining dress and identity within the Ramada cultural complex in southern Peru.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• See How We Are: Representing Identity in the Ancient Americas

Keywords

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