Paracas textile
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| Material | Wool and cotton |
|---|---|
| Created | 300–200 BCE |
| Discovered | Peru |
| Present location | British Museum, London |
The Paracas textiles were found at a necropolis in Peru in the 1920s. The necropolis held 420 bodies who had been mummified and wrapped in embroidered textiles in 200–300 BCE The examples in the British Museum show flying shamans who hold severed heads by their hair.
These textiles were made by South American people before the rise of the Inca or the Aztecs. 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.
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, jewellery from gold as well as understanding all the complexities of weaving.
The textiles were made from wool and cotton. The wool is thought to have come from Alpaca or Llama. They had been dyed with natural dyes 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.
One of the unusual qualities of the skulls that were found is that many of them had been distorted in unusual ways. This distortion is achieved by attaching boards and weights to the skull as it grows. Other distortions are due to the process of trepanning which as where holes were drilled into the skulls of living people. Inspection shows that these holes had healed and shows that the patients did not die when this process was applied. Museums in Peru like the Museo Regional de Ica display both these skulls and the textiles that were found around them.
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