“Peru has the longest continuous textile record in world history. “
The earliest fragments of Peruvian textiles date from about 8600 BC; that’s 10,000 years ago. Peruvian pottery can only be traced back to between 1500 and 1000 BC.
It would be impossible to visit Peru today without recognizing that weaving and textiles more generally play important roles in the tourist trade. In Cusco, the tourists’ mecca, the streets are lined with shops selling all types of woven items, everything from chullos (those knit hats with ear flaps and tassels) to exquisite alpaca sweaters.
Just one of many types of woven hats for sale in Cusco
In the Sacred Valley, most tour operators make sure you visit at least one site or shop related to weaving. In a previous post, I mentioned my visit to Awana Kancha, a weaving collective. In addition to viewing the raw ingredients on the hoof, the visit included an introduction to how the hair was transformed into yarn and then woven.
Examples of Naturally-dyed Yarn
My tour company, Ancient Summit, also takes clients to a village where one gets a chance to learn about textile production one-on-one in a non-commercial setting, but I’ll talk about that visit in a later post.
Weaving was also highlighted during my visit to Taquile.
What I want to discuss in this post is what wasn’t discussed by any of my tour guides–the historical role of Andean textiles. Two excellent books on this subject are:
Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals, by Andrea Heckman, a trekking guide who earned a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies based on her anthropological-art history research, (2003), and
Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, Dreaming Patterns, Weaving Memories, by Nilda Alvarez (2007). Nilda, a weaver from Chinchero, established the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco.
During the 100-year reign of the Incas, most adults had to pay a tax in labor, the mit’a. Men typically served in the military or worked on public construction projects. Women wove, and a percentage of their output became the property of the Inca. The finest pieces became his personal property, but most of the cloth was stockpiled in storehouses and used to reward government service and clothe the army. In an economy without money, cloth was a highly-valued commodity.
In a society without the written word, textiles played a vital role in communication. “Weavings were a metaphorical presentation of the world” in which they lived. (Heckman, p. 8) Each village had its own cloth patterns and clothing styles. Even today it is possible for the knowledgeable to pinpoint someone’s hometown if he or she is wearing something made of homemade cloth.
Most of the weavings were arrangements of various geometric designs. Both the pattern and arrangement had meaning, making it possible to convey complex ideas. Unfortunately, as women migrate to urban areas in order to move beyond subsistence living, the traditional stories and meanings that were passed orally from one generation to the next along with the craft of weaving are being lost. Efforts to stem the loss of craft and knowledge vary from the skill-based efforts of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco to the knowledge-based efforts of AI researchers at the London Knowledge Lab.
Typical Weaving Patterns
The inclusion of animals and birds in chullos and sweaters for tourists is a modern adaptation in response to market demands. The weavers on Taquile have gone further than just adding non-geometric units to their weaving; they invented a cloth object just for the tourist trade–the calendar belt. For a discussion of the history of weaving on Taquile and the effects of tourism, see anthropologist Elayne Zorn’s Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth and Culture on an Andean Island (2004).
A Taquile Weaving in Progress
Taquile Design Details
Having studied the effects of tourism (via Fred Harvey) on the arts and crafts of the Navajo and Hopi, I found Zorn’s work particularly interesting. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find a scholarly study that addresses the issue of how tourism and commercialization of crafts effect native cultures.
Some additional resources:
“The Cultural Significance of Andean Cloth and Implications of Its Decline”