Andean Textile Logic: Weaving as Practice and Process in the Precontact Andes

Catalog description

Looking at textiles in the archaeological and visual record, this course will consider their materiality, fabrication processes, and circulation as part of embedded value in the Andes over hundreds of years. Course content will cover how Indigenous textiles in the Andes have long engaged questions of identity, subjecthood, representation, status, and knowledge production, as well as potentially legal and territorial considerations. We will give a good amount of attention to the Inka empire, the autochthonous power that dominated the area just before European invasion and how textiles and fiber technology was part of a rhetoric of power for the Inka state. During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the Inkas expanded along the western edge of South America, plotting their presence with administrative and production centers such as weaving workshops. Textiles were critical to how the Inkas visualized their power and reach, with very specialized, elite cloth serving as emblems of the state.