Perspectives in the Pampa: ancient american huge ground drawings in Peru's desert
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From mostly looted tombs: finds of the Nazca culture
Not only ceramics and bones, but also textiles, feathers,
hairs and skin stay conserved in the absolute dryness. Above all, painted clay
vessels and decorated textiles provide an insight into a world of myths and
rites strange for us.
The high developed ceramic of Nazca culture is characterized by inburnt colors
in contrary to the pottery of the preceding Paracas culture. In the museums and
in art-dealing predominantly fine ceramic can be found, because simple pottery
of everyday use achieves no price. Rarely the vessels are modelled like humans
or animals. The paintings range from simple to highly elaborate figural, the
motives are often martial or mirror the world of gods.
Different textile techniques are known in abundance not only from Nazca culture,
but above all from the preceding Paracas culture. The cloths were woven or
plaited, often furnished with deliberate weaving designs or extensively painted.
Also bird feathers were used (mid below). Birds are also represented like you
find them in geoglyphs.
A motive not only of the geoglyphs (26 m long), but also of pottery: the orca or
killer whale, formed as a vessel or painted on them.
Panpipe made of clay
Different sizes!
Parts of the Nazca culture population have artificially elongated skulls. This
happens when already the heads of the babies were pressed into a form and could
not grow elsewise.
Fan of plant tissue and included feathers
Grave mummy with textiles
’Colibri’ geoglyph (95 m)
1: deartidas.com; 2, 3, 10, 12: wikimedia.org; 4: Science
daily; 5, 6: Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg; 8: Field Museum / J.Weinstein; 9:
Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim, 11: xenophilia.com; 13: Museo Nacional Lima;
14: arquelogia.com.ar; 15: TAI Gallery / Textile Arts; 16: Antonini-Museum Nazca;
17: Museum of Archeology and Anthropology Cambridge; 18: Xanthos Antiquities;
19: picasaweb.google.com / SATextiles; 20: latinamericanstudies.org; 21:
ethnotextile.com