Ecology and society in embroidered images from the Paracas Necropolis

Peters, Ann H. (Ann Hudson)

essay

Ecology and society in embroidered images from the Paracas Necropolis

paracas art & architecture : object and context in south coastal peru • Iowa City • Published In 1991 • Pages: 240-314

By: Peters, Ann H. (Ann Hudson).

Abstract
The author examined the designs on the Paracas textiles in an attempt to find meanings in their design, and how the clues to the weavers’ relationships to the social and natural realms might reflect a common worldview. The focus is on the animal and plant elements in the imagery. Late subtradition Paracas Necrópolis (an extension of the northern Topará subtradition) iconography suggests a system of social power based on control of esoteric knowledge. The main difference between early Nasca and Necrópolis iconography is in the choice of subject matter with Nasca imagery depicting useful plants and animals and humans engaged in natural resource extraction such as fishing or agriculture. Discussion centers on Topará block color textiles from Necropolis burial bundles. Most images of flora and fauna are a melding of species, with few economically important species shown. In fact, the species depicted appear to represent competitors with humans in the hunt and/or collaborators in the control of pests around settlements, with the implication that both such creatures and the senior men buried with the most, and most elaborate, textiles, operated as mediators between culture and nature, simultaneously capable of moving between realms of land, sea and air.

Fauna

Flora

Woven and other interworked fabrics

Normal garb

Visual arts

Burial practices and funerals

Ethnobotany

Ethnozoology

Nazca

HRAF PubDate

2015

Region