The Paracas textiles were found at a

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

in the 1920s. The necropolis held 420 bodies who had been mummified and wrapped in embroidered textiles of the

Paracas culture The Paracas culture was an Andean society existing between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and that made significant contributions in the textile arts. It was located in what toda ...

in 200–300 BCE. The examples in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

show flying

shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...

s who hold severed heads by their hair.

Description

These textiles were made by South American people over a thousand years before the rise of the

Inca The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...

. They are brightly coloured and show evidence of both a design and a style. The subject of these images are supernatural creatures or shamans who use their hands to hold severed human heads whilst their wings transport them like birds. These could be intended to represent being carried to the next world by spirits or that these figures represent the spirits themselves.Paracas textile
British Museum, accessed 27 September 2010 The people who created these textiles had a complex society. There is evidence of pottery, fishing, and farming. There were craftspeople who could make knives from obsidian, jewelry from gold as well as understanding all the complexities of weaving.

Construction

The textiles were made from wool and cotton. The wool is thought to have come from

Alpaca The alpaca (''Lama pacos'') is a species of South American camelid mammal. Traditionally, alpacas were kept in herds that grazed on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile. More recentl ...

Llama The llama (; or ) (''Lama glama'') is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a List of meat animals, meat and pack animal by Inca empire, Andean cultures since the pre-Columbian era. Llamas are social animals and live with ...

. They had been dyed with

natural dye Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources—roots, berry, berries, Bark (botany), bark, leaf, leaves, and wood—and other biological sourc ...

s which unusually had kept their colour after over 2,000 years. The preservation of the colours is attributed to the dry conditions combined with the lack of damage which would usually have been caused by sunlight. The smaller fragments illustrated here have been taken from the large pieces of cloth that were used to wrap the bodies of the dead. These cloths were as long as 100 feet (34 metres) and would have required a significant organisation of a number of people to construct. The bodies were found in groups of 40 or 50 as if they were family vaults which had been used by several generations.

Provenance

The necropolis on the Paracas Peninsula was discovered by Julio C. Tello in the 1920s. Tello first visited the site on July 26, 1925 following a trail that had begun in 1915 when he had purchased ancient textiles in

Pisco, Peru Pisco () is a city located in the Department of Ica of Peru, the capital of the Pisco Province. The city is around 9 metres (28 feet) above sea level. Pisco was founded in 1640, close to the indigenous emplacement of the same name. Pisco originall ...

. On 25 October 1927, Tello and his team uncovered the first of hundreds of ceremonial mummified bundle burials. Tello discovered a necropolis that contained corpses that were sat in baskets. Around each of the bodies were large textiles that included large woven cotton that was decorated with woollen embroidery. A was built near Paracas at the request of President Benevides who in August 1938 authorised Tello to build a museum to house the 380 textiles that Tello and his staff had preserved. They were able to put on display over 180 textiles. The preservation of these had been funded by the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

. The embroidery illustrated here are fragments from a larger piece of fabric that were removed before they were purchased by the British Museum. Today these are only shown under limited light conditions where they are held tight between a backing material and perspex. In 1928 they began to remove these for safe keeping.

History of the World

These textile pictures from the British Museum were chosen to be one of the ''

A History of the World in 100 Objects ''A History of the World in 100 Objects'' was a joint project of BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum, consisting of a 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor. In 15-minute presentations broadcast o ...

'' which was a series of radio programmes that started in 2010 and that were created in a partnership between the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and the British Museum.

References

{{British-Museum-100, 24, Kang Hou Gui, Gold coin of Croesus

External Links

PBS NOVA: Nazca Desert Myster

Ancient and contemporary Paracas textiles are highlighted from 13:45-19:15 Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum Pre-Columbian art Peru–United Kingdom relations