Textiles, Technical Practice, and Power in the Andes

An examination of the central role of textiles in Andean societies, past and present, highlighting their function as expressions of technological knowledge, social identity, and cosmology. Approaching textiles from a weaver’s perspective, the editors explore how structure, technique, and iconography reflect a complex three-dimensional worldview. Tracing the full production process, the book reveals how textiles embody shared cultural experiences and serve as tools for social integration, linking technology with power, gender, and community.

This book explores the importance of textiles in Andean societies, past and present, as vital indicators of regional ideas about technique and technology, and the ways these interact with power relations, including gender and class relations. The focus is on Andean textiles from a weaver’s point of view, as living things which express a complex three-dimensional worldview through their structures, techniques and iconography. These ontological conceptions are traced through the various tasks and processes in the productive chain of textile making, and the manifold ways in which the ideas about a finished textile product refer back continually to these shared experiences in Andean societies. Different thematic approaches examine how the material existence of textiles served, and still serves, as a record of technological knowledge, at the heart of human-centred efforts to integrate and coordinate diverse populations into socio-cultural and productive endeavours in common.

Introduction: Denise Y. Arnold

Part I - Andean textiles as cultural records, and issues in their documentation

1. Textiles, knotted khipus, and a semiosis in common: Towards a woven language of documentation in the Andes - Denise Y. Arnold

2. Practice and meaning in spiral-wrapped batons and cords from Cerrillos, a Late Paracas site in the Ica Valley, Peru - Jeffrey Splitstoser

3. Andean calendrical knowledge in the royal tunics called tarco huallca: Inca, Huari and Tiahuanaco tunics read as fourfold almanacs - R. T. Zuidema

Part II - Andean textiles, technology and material culture: Textile technologies and their social consequences

4. Paracas Necropolis: Communities of textile production, exchange networks and social boundaries in the Central Andes, 150 BC to AD 250 - Ann H. Peters

5. Weaving the body politic: the integration of technological practice and embodied social identity in the late prehispanic Andes - Anne Tiballi

6. Technical reflections of highland-coastal relationships in late prehispanic textiles from Chillon and Chancay - Ann P. Rowe

Part III - Woven techniques, instruments and skilled bodies: being and doing though cloth

7. Technical competence in weaving as a means of distinction among young Macha women, in Northern Potosi, Bolivia - Cassandra Torrico

8. Thoughts on productive knowledge in Andean weaving with discontinuous warp and weft - Penelope Dransart

9. Prehispanic textile production in Highland Bolivia: instruments for spinning and weaving processes - Claudia Rivera Casanovas

Part IV - Textiles as visual records of technological knowledge and worldview

10. The Dumbarton Oaks royal tunic perceived as a register of Inca worldview - Gail Silverman

11. On the relation between Andean textile iconography and woven techniques - Denise Y. Arnold, Miriam de Diego and Elvira Espejo

12. Woven techniques and social interactions in the South Central Andes: ladder designs and the visualisation of productive output - Elvira Espejo and Denise Y. Arnold

13. On textiles and alterity in the Recuay culture (AD 200-700), Ancash, Peru - George Lau,

Contents

Introduction: Denise Y. Arnold

Part I - Andean textiles as cultural records, and issues in their documentation

1. Textiles, knotted khipus, and a semiosis in common: Towards a woven language of documentation in the Andes - Denise Y. Arnold

2. Practice and meaning in spiral-wrapped batons and cords from Cerrillos, a Late Paracas site in the Ica Valley, Peru - Jeffrey Splitstoser

3. Andean calendrical knowledge in the royal tunics called tarco huallca: Inca, Huari and Tiahuanaco tunics read as fourfold almanacs - R. T. Zuidema

Part II - Andean textiles, technology and material culture: Textile technologies and their social consequences

4. Paracas Necropolis: Communities of textile production, exchange networks and social boundaries in the Central Andes, 150 BC to AD 250 - Ann H. Peters

5. Weaving the body politic: the integration of technological practice and embodied social identity in the late prehispanic Andes - Anne Tiballi

6. Technical reflections of highland-coastal relationships in late prehispanic textiles from Chillon and Chancay - Ann P. Rowe

Part III - Woven techniques, instruments and skilled bodies: being and doing though cloth

7. Technical competence in weaving as a means of distinction among young Macha women, in Northern Potosí, Bolivia - Cassandra Torrico

8. Thoughts on productive knowledge in Andean weaving with discontinuous warp and weft - Penelope Dransart

9. Prehispanic textile production in Highland Bolivia: instruments for spinning and weaving processes - Claudia Rivera Casanovas

Part IV - Textiles as visual records of technological knowledge and worldview

10. The Dumbarton Oaks royal tunic perceived as a register of Inca worldview - Gail Silverman

11. On the relation between Andean textile iconography and woven techniques - Denise Y. Arnold, Miriam de Diego and Elvira Espejo

12. Woven techniques and social interactions in the South Central Andes: ladder designs and the visualisation of productive output - Elvira Espejo and Denise Y. Arnold

13. On textiles and alterity in the Recuay culture (AD 200-700), Ancash, Peru - George Lau

• Edited by Denise Y. Arnold
• Edited by Penny Dransart