Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari (Wari) culture, ca. 500 to 1000 CE. A bright textile panel showing six figures in profile surmounted by bird designs. Each figure is in a repeated motif with different colors, set into a rectangular frame, all on a dark red background. The figures are on backgrounds of red, blue, brown, yellow, and black. Scholars have interpreted these figures shown in profile to be attendants to either gods or the emperor; their avian characteristics match a known textile from a tunic, where attendant icons with clawed hands hold staffs. Size: 5" W x 20" H (12.7 cm x 50.8 cm)

The Huari, from their large urban center north of modern day Ayacucho, colonized a diverse group of people in the Andes. Part of the evidence for their colonization efforts - beyond the standardized architecture throughout their empire - is the presence of iconographically similar textiles in burials throughout the region. Some have suggested that the wearing of certain types of motifs or textile items in life (because the textiles the Huari are buried with seem to have been worn by the living before they were used in burial) showed rank in the complex imperial structure that the Huari created.

Provenance: Ex-Slavin Collection, acquired in Peru & Bolivia, 1971-1972

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#118713

Small stains to red background, wear to edges, loss to one end.