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Peru, Wari Culture (flourished 600–1100 ce), Tunic, ca. 500–800 ce. Wool and cotton interlocked tapestry weave, 103.8 x 101 cm (40 7/8" x 39 3/4"). © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (MFAB-575) |
Recently a royal tomb of the Andean Wari culture was
excavated in Peru about 175 miles north of Lima. It contained the mummified
bodies of 57 royal women and 6 female servants (assumed sacrificed). The site
is El Castillo de Huarmey. It’s always exciting (especially for art historians)
to hear about new excavations and new discoveries that shatter long-held
beliefs about ancient cultures. This particular excavation— which contained three
women rulers— has apparently revealed that women were more important in ancient Andean cultures than previously
believed, because of the richness of their burial jewelry and number and
apparent rank of the attendant female mummies.
The Wari culture is
thought to have unified the various Andean cultures into a single empire by the
year 600 ce. The name of the
culture comes from the central city of Wari. Other impotant centers of the
culture were Virachochapampa and Pikillaqta, 700 kilometers north and 250
kilometers southeast of Wari. The Wari empire was probably the first unified
state in the Peruvian Andes, and formed the basis of what the later Inca conquered. Both the Chimú (flourished 900–1500 ce) and the Inca (1438–1534) cultures
are descendants of the Wari.
The textiles of ancient Peru,
woven in every technique known for over three thousand years, represent a
significant achievement of ancient Andean civilizations. They were highly prized,
second only to gold. So many textiles have survived because they were part of
burial rituals (in the arid coastal plains), such was their value. Wari weavers
abstracted human and animal forms and explored geometric abstraction as the
major themes of their textiles. This highly analytical abstracting of forms
has, by art critics, been compared to Cubism.
Indeed, it may have been influenced the Cubism of Pablo
Picasso (1881–1973, Spain) and Georges
Braque (1882–1963, France).
This tunic has six
columns of alternating squares: outlined step fret and one half abstracted faces
with split eye and abstracted four animal heads on two u-shaped bodies with
characteristic split eyes.
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Detail of Tunic |
Correlation to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 3: 6.31, 6.31-32 studio; Explorations
in Art Grade 4: 5.27; Explorations in Art Grade 5: 2.10; Explorations in Art
Grade 6: 5.30; A Community Connection: 1.5; A Global Pursuit: 5.5; Exploring
Visual Design: 8, 11, 12; Discovering Art History: 4.9; The Visual Experience:
10.8, 14.4
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