Capítulo 3: Comprensión de la dimensión socio-afectiva vista desde la

This dissertation is framed by research questions that have grown from deep currents in Andean scholarship, including scholarly research on textiles and their assumed role in reflecting identity, culture-historical frameworks that often essentially rest on ceramics, and the more recent reassessment of geopolitics on the north coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period. The research questions are as follows:

(1) How did the ancient residents of Virú and Moche settlements produce the yarns that would eventually be used for weaving textiles? Was there a single spinning

14 _{Wallace (1974, 1984) followed in their footsteps but harnessed a much larger dataset with a focus on}

plain woven cloth.

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tradition on the north coast of Peru or did several methods coexist? How were these methods aligned with the different fiber types used?

(2) Flowing from the notion that what you wear signifies who you are in the Andes, did Early Intermediate Period textiles from the north coast of Peru encode identity? If so, which types of fabric were used to herald cultural or political allegiances, and how were the messages conveyed?

(3) Were textiles and ceramic objects from Virú and Moche societies operating on distinct registers or were they following similar trends? If so, is it the case that different types of fabrics were more closely aligned with specific types of ceramic objects?

(4) Do textiles help assess the nature of the early statecraft on the north coast of Peru? How can an understanding of ancient textiles help assess the relations between Moche and Virú polities?

To document these questions, I have collected and analyzed more than 2300 textiles from thirteen sites across seven valleys on the north coast of Peru. All textiles came from secure Virú and Moche archaeological contexts that were either physically examined or compiled from the literature (unprovenanced item were excluded). The study corpus includes undecorated or minimally decorated pieces that are usually discarded from textile studies, which often focus on brightly and brilliantly woven pieces. Technical and aesthetic attributes from each of these textiles were recorded. This work provides a full description of little known Virú textile assemblages and a comparative study of Virú textiles with those from Moche settlements in neighbouring regions. This study

ultimately serves to broaden Andean textile scholarship by shifting the focus from unique textiles to the widest range of fabrics that were produced and used by the peoples of the Peruvian north coast, from museum gallery-worthy tapestries to the humblest plain weaves.

The following two chapters provide background information on cloth making on the north coast, focussing on the technological processes involved in transforming raw materials into finished objects (Chapter Two), and on the textile assemblage that were selected for analysis (Chapter Three). The subsequent chapters represent the core of the

dissertation and include comparative studies of fibre types and spinning methods (Chapter Four), weaving techniques and structures (Chapter Five), and textile motifs (Chapter Six), within and between different sites associated with Virú and Moche corporate ceramics.

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Textile Production on the North Coast of Peru—

from Raw Materials to Finished Objects

Textile production involves at minimum two broad technological steps, spinning and weaving, which may or may not be completed by the same artisans in the community. Animal husbandry, agricultural practices, dyeing techniques, metallurgy, ceramics, and woodworking provided other elements depending on the tools needed and the item being made. In short, textiles were community-made objects and yet the stark descriptions of textile techniques neglect the human elements which shape the technological and aesthetic choices, finished products and eventual consumption of textile products. Furthermore, what researchers know about the textiles of the north coast is based upon archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data, and is heavily influenced by the presence of modern highland spinning and weaving traditions. While highland textiles do provide a useful analogy in some cases, they fail to illuminate materials and methods that were unique to the textile traditions of the north coast of Peru such as the extensive reliance on cotton with camelid fibre as a limited and likely imported luxury. For that, research into archaeological remains and the remnants of local modern traditions provides clearer answers. Ethnographic accounts do provide models for how, in

particular, the methods of spinning and weaving are passed on to subsequent generations as well as for the ability to question the “why” of choices being made by textile artisans, especially when the choices at hand appear technically inconsequential.

This chapter provides the contextual background for the assemblage descriptions in Chapter Three and discussions in Chapter Four, Five and Six by describing what is known about the making of cloth on the north coast prior to the arrival of the Spanish in conjunction with select examples from ethnographic sources from other regions. The goal is to illuminate the number of steps and skills, resources and tools, and

consequently, the people who were involved in textile production in the past on the north coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period. Focusing on technological processes, this chapter starts with raw materials and ends with the finished objects—from fibre source to final assembly within a context where humans are presented as key actors alongside detailed descriptions of materials and their transformation into textile goods.