Pre-Columbian, South Coast Peru, Paracas culture, ca. 500 to 300 BCE. A petite textile fragment composed of tightly woven camelid (alpaca or llama wool) fibers in hues of orange, brown, blue, green, cream, sage, and fuchsia. The textile fragment depicts a highly stylized flying warrior figure wearing a loincloth between delineated legs as well as a belt bearing three disembodied trophy heads. The face of the warrior presents with red eyes atop an orange stripe and wears a brown headdress with three projecting tabs. Mounted atop a museum-quality display fabric. Size (textile): 2.75" L x 1.75" W (7 cm x 4.4 cm); (display fabric): 17" L x 14.5" W (43.2 cm x 36.8 cm).

Little is known about the Paracas people, and what little we do know comes from a 1920s archaeological excavation of the Paracas Cavernas, shaft tombs containing multiple burials, many of which contained ceramic vessels, probably for holding offerings or provisioning the dead in the afterlife. The iconography of the Paracas people is linear and stylistic, based on formal figures whose species, when zoomorphic, often cannot be identified. Motifs on their textiles mirror those of their ceramics that they used to wrap their dead and probably represent gods or mythical figures of power.

Provenance: private Hawaii, USA collection; ex-Arte Primitivo Gallery, New York, New York, USA

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#148268

This is a fragment of a larger textile composition. Losses to peripheral threads as shown. Loosening and fraying to some interior and peripheral threads, with light fading to original coloration. Iconography is still visible.