97
CULTURAL PANORAMA
Around 250 BC, the Paracas style emerged on the
South Coast of Peru both in ceramics and textiles.
As is plainly evident from the virtuoso way they
handled the style’s complex designs and iconography,
the Paracas weavers were masters of their art.
They used many highly intricate techniques including.
creating double- and even triple-woven cloth to
give life to the mythical beings depicted on their tunics
and mantles. One of the most remarkable fi nd
sites for this period is Ocucaje,10 a basin on the Peruvian
South Coast that would later be absorbed by
Nazca culture. The Ocucaje fardos were surmounted
by small cotton-fi ber heads covered with painted
cotton headbands. This is also where the oldest
“scaffolded” mantos have been found. This technique
consists of arranging discontinuous segments
of warp and weft. These fardos, which have been
found in subterranean graves and in adobe vaults,
were generally accompanied by high-quality ceramics,
and the diversity of the ornaments and the offerings
in these contexts suggests that the peoples
of this region were from a much wider area than
just the southern Andes, in turn implying that the
Ocucaje region was a crossroads of infl uences. The
extent of the trade networks involved is attested to
by the presence of bird feathers from the Amazon
basin and spondylus shells, which are found off the
Ecuadorian coast.
Paracas textiles are also the fi nest examples of
the mastery of embroidery, both in the “linear” and
“wide band” styles and, later, in the “naturalistic”
and “block color” styles.11 They display an extraordinary
iconographic repertoire: mythical fi gure with
heads bent backward, birds, fi sh, warriors, felines,
and trophy heads that later appear in Nazca iconography
(fi g. 20). This amazing variety within the
textiles’ complex designs was supported by mutual
infl uence and cultural exchange that occurred in
conjunction with the circulation and movement of
weavings between far-fl ung peoples. These designs
also appear on painted textiles as well as on ceramics
and, contrary to what might be assumed, textiles
were the vehicles that infl uenced other arts, and not
vice versa. With the arrival of the Nazca hegemony,
designs became less unique and less naturalistic.
Their diffusion became more consistent and relied
on relatively homogeneous symbolic models.
The Chancay style developed in the eponymous
Chancay Valley of the Peruvian Central Coast.
Little information is available about it, as only a
few tomb excavations in the region have been completed.
The main source of information we have,
apart from the ceramics, is its “dolls”—miniature
funerary offering fi gures that were dressed in textile
outfi ts. Some of these actually depict women in
the act of weaving. The bodies were made of two
panels of fabric sewn together, often with little decoration,
and the fabrics display just a few relatively
unstable colors such as blue, orange, and brown.
They also depict women’s headdresses in fabric or
gauze, placed loosely atop the hair, as they were
undoubtedly worn by women of the time. The texture
of these textiles is supple because their threads
measure almost a millimeter in diameter. Two
styles coexisted in the highlands, the fi rst with diamond
shaped designs and the second with vertical
bands, the edges of which terminate in scale-like
elements. Chancay motifs mirrored these characteristics,
revealing early Inca infl uence on the valley
toward the end of the culture’s ascendance in
the fi fteenth century. Interesting examples of unfi
nished Chancay textiles have been found. These
may have been weavers’ samples used to display or
transmit certain designs.
FIG. 20 (below): Vessel in
the form of a trophy head.
Nazca, South Coast, Peru.
AD 100–600..
Terracotta. H: 10.6 cm.
Musée Royal d’Art et d’Histoire,
Brussels, inv. AAM 46.7.151.
© KMKG-MRAH.
ANDEAN TEXTILES