THE PARACAS TEXTILES
The Museum of World Culture in Göteborg has custody of a collection of textiles known as the Paracas Collection. These textiles were discovered on the Paracas peninsula in Peru at the beginning of the 20th century. They are about 2,000 years old and come from graves. The dead had been placed in a seated posture and then shrouded in several layers of beautiful textiles to make up a funerary bundle. Most of the textiles in these funerary bundles were woven and embroidered garments.
HOW WERE THE TEXTILES MADE?
The people who made the textiles of the Paracas civilisation developed their craft into a highly sophisticated art. The textile workers were versed in most of the weaving techniques known today and were masterly spinners of thin thread. We do not know how textile production was divided up between the people of Paracas, but clearly they were specialised craftspeople.
The textiles were made using cotton and the hair of the alpaca and vicuña llamas. The ground weave was usually cotton, which was then embroidered with thin woollen thread. The textiles for a large funerary bundle took a long time to produce. The biggest bundles which have been found at 1.5 metres high and 1.5 metres wide and comprise something like 400 textiles which were an estimated 10,000 hours in the making. Textile production therefore required the co-operation of many people, from the people who grew the cotton and looked after the alpacas to those who did the dyeing, spinning, weaving and embroidering.
The Paracas textiles present fantastic colours which today, 2,000 years later, are still well preserved. The wool of the alpaca and vicuña has a natural colour scale which includes grey, white, fawn, brown and black. Cotton grows naturally in different shades of colour. The natural hues of cotton and llama wool were supplemented by dyeing the yarn. Dyeing skills were very advanced.
COSTUME PARTS
One common and powerful tradition of the Andean civilisations is for the dead to be buried shrouded in several layers of textiles. Most of the textiles in the funerary bundles were woven and embroidered garments, such as the poncho, cloak, tunic, loincloth and various items of headgear. We do not know for sure whether all the garments entombed had been worn previously.
The original significance of the textiles is now a mystery. For example, there are the borders round the garments. Borders usually go all the way round the edge of a textile, forming a beautiful finish. In the Paracas textiles, the borders never go all the way round. For some reason, variously sized openings were always left in them.
