Pre-Columbian Woven Treasures in the National Museum of Denmark

Pizarro's conquest of Peru in 1532 and his subsequent introduction of the Catholic Church obliterated Incan civilisation. One great loss was textile traditions that had been evolving for millennia during the rise and fall of numerous cultures. Fortunately for textile historians, the region's prehistoric peoples left thousands of mummies buried in the desert, some of them wrapped in more than a hundred pieces of cloth. These mummy bundles show that pre-Columbian Peruvians had mastered all the textile technologies known to preindustrial Europe, as well as others unknown there, such as discontinuous warp and double wrap techniques. This volume examines the items in the National Museum's collection of pre-Columbian textiles, some of them dating back to 500 BCE. Bjerregaard provides a brief but intriguing history of these finds, which were recovered from graves about a century ago by archaeologists, amateurs and thieves. A technical analysis of the various weaving techniques follows, accompanied by helpful illustrations. Most of the book, however, is devoted to the finds themselves, which feature figurative and mythic as well as abstract patterns. For each item, there is a detailed description, a fibre analysis and at least one photograph. A number of colour photos attest to the surprising vibrancy that many dyes have retained over the intervening centuries.