Cultivation and Herding Practices, Fiber Colors and Textile Styles in the Paracas-Nasca Transition

Summary

Improving documentation of artifact assemblages in the funerary contexts of the Necropolis of Wari Kayan (Paracas site, south coast of the Central Andes) leads to identification of multiple contemporary textile styles as well as their transformation over the period of cemetery use (c. 250 BCE to 250 CE). While artifact variability in the region has largely been organized in hypothetical phases, expanded data on garment design and production details, as well as imagery, is most usefully organized and correlated using a formal typology. While social diversity may account for a larger percentage of formal variation than has been considered under the phase model, hypothetical temporal sequences among garment styles imply processes of adoption and syncretism. While to date we cannot document the geographic loci of garment production, correlations between characteristics of plant and animal fibers, natural and dyed colors and particular style groups suggest a vertical organization of production and exchange that ranged from agricultural selection and herd management practices to the contribution of a finished textile to a particular mortuary rite. Artifact forms and component materials support a model of sociopolitical relationships linking diverse communities of practice, whose presence, prominence and self-definitions change over time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20028