Paracas

Location: Paracas culture is a civilization located along the south central coast of Peru. The cultural center is located on the hill of Cerro Colorado near the peninsula of Paracas. This peninsula lies between the valley of Pisco and Ica River.

History: Paracas culture is an Andean civilization of the early horizon, estimated to have existed between 900 BC to 400 CE, as a contemporary of Chavin Culture. It was discovered by a Peruvian archeologist, Julio C. Tello, who also excavated extraordinary burial sites now referred to as Paracas Necropolis.

Three Periods of Paracas Culture

Paracas Cavernas: Dating from 500 to 300 BC, archeological remnants found in Cerro Colorado include male and female mummies of different ages. The bodies were bottle-shaped and placed in a vertical position. The mummies were also wrapped in ordinary textiles. But brightly colored textiles were decorated with animal figures, such fish, snakes and other geometric figures. The pottery was consisted of complex polychrome decorated with several colors, such as red, and yellow, or black and white associated with religious representation. Paracas Necropolis: Dating from 300 to 100 B.C. South coast textiles displayed a remarkable artistic and technical evolution. This period of archeological remnants was located on an arid, sandy peninsula on the south coast in Perú.

Paracas Necropolis:Paracas Necropolis received its name because of the fact that is a large cemetery. The citizens of this city of the dead were buried in all their finest clothing, adorned with ceremonial and symbolic items. The site contains different sized compartments, each considered a funeral chamber. A total of 429 corpses wrapped in marvelous embroidered shrouds were found within these chambers. The funeral chambers were also built over the remains of older settlements. This period of Paracas culture is considered an early phase of Nazca and renowned for its technical and stylistic weaving and pottery. The mummies were wrapped with fine and rough textiles. These include many layers of wool made from alpaca brought down from the Altiplano. But the specific process of creating the textiles is not understood. The adult mummies lie in a fetal position with food, such as corn, yucca and peanuts, wrapped with their bodies.

Daily Life:Paracas cultural organization is still unclear. They were evidently producers of fine textiles painted with bright colors and spectacular designs. The economy was mostly based on agriculture and fishing. The agricultural advancements they developed include the construction of aqueducts in the deserts, which gave them the ability to produce artificial water sources, and the use of guano as fertilizing.

Best known features:

Paracas textile art is considered the best of the ancient Andean cultures. These textiles include vicuña wool, cotton painted with several colors and animals designs, as well as anthropomorphic and geometrics figures made by combining feathers with wool or cotton.
These textiles elaborated the represented imagination of an individual in a ritual ceremony. The sizes of these textiles were typically 2.3 to 2.8 meters long, usually styled in linear and block designs.  The linear style consists of four colors decorated at the top of the weaving. These were decorated with figures of animals such birds, felines and snakes.
The block color style differs from the linear color style quite notably. Block style is a completely unique decorative motif. It consists of the rich use of color and a composition of curvy pictorial motifs outlined by a border.  The series of improvement in their weaving made by the use a bright colors and vicuña wool is considered their best advancement in textiles.

Paracas culture is also well-known for their method to alter the shape of the skull to distinguish social class. The skulls found in Paracas Necropolis have stretches and slopes in the crane. They practice a crane surgery called crane trepanation (boring a hole through the skull).  Although, the reason for this practice is not known, the most prevalent theories are that skull fractures were frequent in battle at that time, or that it might have been used as a way of relieving constant headaches.  The operation was carried out under an anesthetic (probably by coca, alcohol, or even hypnosis) and continued by substituting the bone with a gold plate, closing the open wound and applying bandages. 

                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                               

Though this page has been carefully researched, the author does not claim expertise on the Paracas culture.

Please send questions, comments, and corrections to emuseum@mnsu.edu and include the URL.

Resources:

Fred Kleiner

2006  Sourcebook of Nasca ceramic iconography: reading a culture through its art

 

Donald A. Proulx

2008  TitleGardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History.

 

 

By Kruscaya Casaverde