Wari Textiles

The Wari people dominated coastal Peru and some of the Andes between about 600 and 1000 CE. Their most spectacular surviving artifacts are textiles, which come from tombs in Peru's dry deserts. Above is a detail from a feathered panel, woven of macaw feathers, that was found in 1943 by local people near the village of La Victoria in the Ocoña Valley on the far south coast of Peru. There were reported to be ninety-six of these in the group, found rolled up in large ceramic jars decorated with mythological imagery. I am not sure how many survive, but there are several well preserved ones.

Right now an exhibit titled Wari: Lord of the Ancient Andes, organized by the Cleveland Museum, is touring the country with many of these famous works. These are three tunics from the exhibit.

More Wari tunics. A procession of their nobles or priests must have been a very impressive sight. Seeing these reminds me how much we are missing from most past cultures, like the ancient American Indians whose camp sites I dig up.

Bundles of cloth, woven of cotton and llama wool, used to wrap some of the bodies in a spectacular Wari tomb discovered earlier this year. These particular bodies are believed to have been human sacrifices.