Earliest American Textiles found in Peru

There is no question that the Nephites were adept at weaving and making outstanding clothes and other items. “I did cause that the women should spin, and toil, and work, and work all manner of fine linen, yea, and cloth of every kind, that we might clothe our nakedness; and thus we did prosper in the land “ (Mosiah 10:5); There was an “abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth” (Alma 1:29); “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which they had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes, for they began to wear very costly apparel” (Alma 4:6, 5:53; 31:28); “Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace” Helaman 6:13; 13:28).

About forty years ago, a discovery of major importance was uncovered in Peru, where textiles and rope fragments were found in a Peruvian cave that were dated back to the later centuries BC, making them the oldest textiles ever found in the Americas (April issue of Current Anthropology). Though the items were found more than 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave—located high in the Andes Mountains of Yungay Province, in the Ancash Region and located 160 feet above the Santa River in the Intermontane Callejón de Huaylas Valley in the north-central highlands or Peru, 8,460 feet above sea level—their significance only recently reached the scientific journals when they appeared in Science and Current Anthropology.

Some artifacts were “carbon dated” and were taken from bone, obsidian, and charcoal—items that are well known at times to produce inaccurate radiocarbon ages. However, the textiles themselves were not dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (Erie, Pennsylvania) who led this latest research. Further, Jolie stated that “charcoal especially can produce dates that tend to overestimate a site's age,” so "By dating the textiles themselves, we were able to confirm their antiquity and refine the timing of the early occupation of the Andes highlands," he added. 

Ancient Textiles (blanket) found in the Peruvian Guitaarrero Cave

 

Jolie’s team used the latest radiocarbon dating technique—accelerated mass spectrometry—to place the textiles between 12,100 and 11,080 years old. These textile items included fragments of woven fabrics possibly used for bags, baskets, wall or floor coverings, or even bedding. Jolie suggests that “they were likely left by settlers from lower altitude areas during periodic forays into the mountains.” Guitarrero Cave's location at a lower elevation in a more temperate environment as compared with the high Andean [plain] would have made it an ideal site for humans to camp and provision themselves for excursions to even higher altitudes," Jolie and his colleagues wrote.

It was suggested that these early mountain forays set the stage for the permanent settlements that came later when the climate warmed, glaciers receded, and settlers had a chance to adapt to living at higher altitudes. Jolie's research also suggests that women were among these earliest high altitude explorers. Bundles of processed plant material found in the cave indicate that textile weaving occurred on site. Said Jolie, "Given what we know about textile and basket production in other cultures, there's a good possibility that it would have been women doing this work,” which appears to have altered the early assumptions that such forays only included men (Edward A. Jolie, et al., “Cordage, Textiles, and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Andes,” Current Anthropology, vol.52, no.2, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, April 2011, p285).

Ancient textiles at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologða, Antropologða e Historia del Perð, is Peru`s biggest museum and contains the largest textile collection from the pre-ceramic period—about 2000 BC. This National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History, a $125 million edifice to preserve the country’s heritage, currently boasts a collection of 50,000 pre-Columbian objects, including repatriated artifacts, making it the largest and oldest museum in Peru. The museum and also houses more than 100,000 artifacts spanning the entire history of human occupation in what is now Andean South America. The works were transferred from the defunct Museo de la Nación, the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú and federal archives. Among them are artifacts that were looted and returned to Peru, such as ancient Andean textiles that were repatriated in 2017 by the ethnographic museum Världskulturmuseerna in Gothenburg, Sweden. 

Many fragments of woven cloth found in tombs around Andean Peru—these  from the Paracas mummies

 

Many fragments of these brilliantly colored and intricate tie-dyed patchwork cloths survive, which cloaks were frequently finished off by a wide edge with fringes that contrasted with the central cloth, claimed to be associated with the Late Nazca period, of about 500 to 700 AD, when the Huari culture was rising in the same area. These cloaks seem to have been assembled in two major zones, with the upper half consisting of two stepped-patterned pieces of separate designs and colors making up each square, with the other half made of small squares with smaller motifs, all joined together. According to Jolie, “Their complex geometry both delights and challenges the eye.”

The same strong colors predominate in both halves: red, green, blue and dark blue were dyed by dipping cream and yellowish plain-weave cloth into baths of dyes, with ringed squares and lines protected to make the pattern. Sometimes the background cloth is protected, and the little diamonds or lines are dyed in red. Rather than a simple sewn patchwork joining however, a discontinuous warp and weft technique—similar to that seen in the Paracas stepped mantle was used.

As described by Rebecca Stone-Miller, Professor emerita at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, with an extensive background in Andean art and architecture (emphasis on textiles), each shape of cloth was woven separately: with its threads in both directions turning back rather than interlocking, with scaffold threads temporarily holding them  together.” Evidently, when the scaffold threads were pulled out, the variously colored individual parts were reassembled with warps dovetailed and weft slits sewn. Of surprising significance, she notes that this technique is unique in the history of world textiles, and that it underscores how important it was to the ancient Andeans not to cut fabric. Rather, much labor was expended to obtain a particular visual effect, and how central innovation was to the aesthetic system (Rebecca Stone-Miller, To weave for the sun: Ancient Andean textiles in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and London, Museum of Fine Arts, Thames and Hudson, 1994, p101).

In fact, Paracas society, located on the south coast of Peru, is best known for its large cemeteries and funerary practices which included individuals and multiple individuals being wrapped in layers of textiles creating mummy bundles—the subtropical dessert environment in the Paracas Peninsulas also allowed for the most favorable conditions for mummification, preservation of spectacular textiles that were part of the mummy bundles. In 1929, the Peruvian archeologist Julio C. Tello unearthed the Paracas Necropolis Wari Kayan, an important site that uncovered 429 mummy bundles, which were unique for the multiple layers of extraordinary woven textiles that enveloped both the body and the grave goods. The mummies were often wrapped “in sumptuous embroidered textiles, some several feet long by half its width, and ranged in quality from rough swaths of undecorated cloth to finely embroidered mantles.”

Paracas textiles provide some of the most stunning examples of pre-Columbian Andean fiber art. Close examination of Paracas textiles reveals a great deal of information on the sophisticated embroidery techniques developed by Paracas artists, and their system of textile production in the last millennium BC.

In a systematic and methodical manner the early Peruvians created their designs  with (at the time) brilliant colors

 

On a red or black background, the usual decorative motifs are repeated in an orderly fashion: geometric designs, or stylized jaguars, fishes, fruits, and flowers. The Wari, who followed the Paracas, and found throughout Peru, are characterized by geometric designs that are alternated forming varied compositions, and animal motifs and characters with animal masks, all with a geometric profile.

The oldest woven fabric in the Americas has been found in Andean Peru (Paracas Culture), carbon-dated to 12,000 years old; in North America (Titusville, Florida, east along the coast from Orlando and just north of Cape Canaveral) estimated to be 5,000 to 6,000 years old (cannot be carbon dated because of their condition); Mesoamerica dated at 5,000 years old. While we place little value on carbon-dating as it relates to the actual calendar of time, it has value in comparison between carbon-dated events or items. As can be seen from these dates, the woven cloth textiles of the Andes in South America pre-dates that of Mesoamericas and North America by several thousand years—or in calendar time, predates the earliest usage in time of both Mesoamerica and the Heartland and Great Lakes locations.