Textile conceptual ideas as mobility indicators between highlands and coast, Central Andes, c. 200BC-600AD

Summary

Textiles are important artifacts when looking at mobility since they constitute a matrix of complex conceptual ideas, are important identity markers, and they travel easily with their owners. Pre-Columbian textiles have seldom been preserved in the wet Andean highlands, making it difficult to evaluate their past diversity and to identify them among the vast quantity of pieces discovered on the arid coast of Peru. Nevertheless, combining the study of present highland weaving practices with the observation of pre-Columbian artifacts, it has been possible to demonstrate that part of the famous Paracas Necropolis embroideries and of the Lima culture iconography respectively found on the south and central coast of Peru are reinterpretations of textile designs woven in the highlands at the end of the Early Horizon and during the Early Intermediate Period. These two cases indicate that people and their textiles moved between somewhere in the highland and the coast. Recent archaeology and linguistic studies will be utilized to localize and identify the highland weavers whose art met so much success on the coast.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• E pur si muove: Exploring Mobilities in Latin America

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