Stitches of Dependency: A Nasca Textile from the Bonn Collection of the Americas 

Textiles from the Nasca culture (200 BC–600 AD) are among the most impressive and most spectacular material relics of the pre-Hispanic Americas. This unusual Nasca textile from the Bonn Collection of the Americas is a polychromatic painted fabric made from cotton and camelid wool, showing a feline-like hybrid creature on the left and a “Staff God”, also a hybrid creature, on the right. 

Textiles in the pre-Hispanic Andes 

Some of the most high-quality textiles in human history were produced in the pre-Hispanic Andes (fig. 1 – 5). Their manufacture involved a huge amount of work, especially when spinning the fine threads by hand. It is thus no coincidence that the industrial revolution in the 18th century began with the mechanization of textile production. The need to organize and control the workforce in textile production also led to growing social inequalities and asymmetrical dependencies in pre-Hispanic times. Andean textiles also served as important social indicators, so that they exemplify these working and dependency processes. In the Andean textile tradition dating back millennia, the roots of which lie in the pre-pottery weaving technique for fishing nets (Beresford-Jones et al. 2018) (fig. 6), cotton was used alongside animal fibers from Andean camelids, particularly domesticated alpacas (Vicugna pacos). The history of cotton (Gossypium barbadense), following its domestication on the South American Pacific coast around 7000 years ago, is certainly associated with slavery and the strongest forms of asymmetrical dependency like almost no other crop (Beckert 2014). 

Fig. 1: Fragment of loincloth: plain weave cotton and camelid fiber tapestry with sea birds in supplemental weft patterning. Late Intermediate Period (c AD 1000–1476), likely Chancay Valley, Peru central coast. BASA-Museum of the University of Bonn, inv. No. RV 24. Restored and photographed using BCDSS funds (photo: B. Frommann, 2024).

Fig. 2: Braided band, likely Early Intermediate Period, late phase Nazca c. AD 600. Cotton and camelid fiber, BASA-Museum of the University of Bonn, inv. No. 5726. Restored and photographed using BCDSS funds (photo: B. Frommann, 2024).

Fig. 5: Unku (shirt) woven in cotton and camelid fiber slit weave tapestry depicting marine motifs (here waves) typical of the Chimor Empire, Late Intermediate Period (c AD 1000–1476), north-central coast of Peru. The shirt’s wide shape suggests it was made for a funerary bundle rather than to be worn in life. Musées royaux d’art et d’histoire / Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Inv. Nr. AAM 00046.7.343 (CC BY– RMAH / © ImageStudio RMAH Brussels).

Fig. 6: Fragment of 6,000 year-old, bast fiber fishing net from Middle Preceramic site of La Yerba III, Rio Ica estuary, south coast Peru, directly radiocarbon dated to 6176 – 5910 cal BP (photo: D.G. Beresford-Jones, 2015).

An Unusual Nasca Textile 

The Nasca textile from the Bonn Collection of the Americas (BASA Museum; Inv.No. Ho 16) is a polychromatic painted piece of fabric (H: 60 cm, W: 92 cm) made from cotton and camelid wool (fig. 7). Apart from the statement that the textile comes from the collection of Erwin Hoess, we unfortunately have no information about its context, so we do not know where precisely the textile comes from, under what circumstances it was found or excavated, and when and how it ended up in a private collection in Germany. Based on the style of its illustrations, the textile is attributed to the archaeological Nasca culture (200 BC–600 AD) on the south coast of present-day Peru. The material relics of the Nasca culture – with their often technically challenging and high-quality textiles, but also their famous fine ceramics (fig. 8 – 10) and metal artifacts, which were often part of extensive grave goods – attest to a hierarchically organized society with religious and political elites, a pronounced division of labor with specialized crafts and agriculture as well as dependencies that defined the relationships between the different social classes (Silverman & Proulx 2002; Pardo & Fux 2017). 

Fig. 7: Fragment of painted plain weave cotton panel depicting Nasca iconography (c. AD 100 – 500). Possibly fake. Erwin Hoess Collection, BASA-Museum of Bonn University; Inv. No. Ho 16, restored with BCDSS funds (photo: P. Czerwinske, 2024).

The illustrated surface of the Nasca textile is divided into two and consists of a left-hand panel with a green background and a right-hand panel with a brown background. Two birds are pictured at the top of each side. On the left-hand side, two birds are also pictured in the lower area. The center of the left-hand panel shows a feline-like hybrid creature with a total of four heads and six legs. In the central area of the right-hand panel is what is known as a “Staff God” or “Staff Demon”, also a hybrid of human and orca (killer whale) or shark. The staff, which the god holds in its right hand and which is adorned at the bottom with a head, can be understood as a symbol of power. Like on the left-hand panel, further heads are also connected to the Staff God, in this case two fish-like heads. Next to the Staff God are four concentric circular patterns (Nagy 2012). 

The Nasca textile is quite unusual and unique, as it is much less carefully crafted compared to other surviving painted Nasca textiles and the imagery between the two panels, which do not quite match stylistically, is partly mixed. It thus cannot be ruled out that it is a forgery, although its extraordinariness, in particular, could also speak in favor of it being an original, as forgeries are usually made of textiles with frequently occurring and known motifs. Archaeometric investigations of the fabric and the applied dyes are necessary to ultimately clarify the authenticity of the Nasca textile. In this respect, it remains to be seen to what extent the textile will actually give us an authentic insight into the world of the pre-Hispanic Nasca culture. In any case, the Nasca textile also reflects our “modern” world, in which archaeological objects and forgeries become art and can be found in private and public collections worldwide, not least because of today’s inequalities and dependencies. 

Fig. 11: View of the UNESCO World Heritage site Nazca Pampa, south coast Peru showing one of its vast palimpsest of geoglyphs, this one depicting a monkey (photo: B. Ihde, 2017).

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Further Reading

Beckert, S., 2014. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Penguin. 

Beresford-Jones, D., Pullen, A., Chauca, G., Cadwallader, L., García, M., Salvatierra, I., Whaley, O., Vásquez, V., Arce, S., Lane, K., & French, C., 2018. Refining the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization: How Plant Fiber Technology Drove Social Complexity During the Preceramic Period. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 25, 393–425. 

Nagy, K., 2012. Textil mit der Darstellung einer „Stabgottheit“. In Kultur- und Stadthistorisches Museum Duisburg (Ed.), Sammlung Köhler-Osbahr (Vol. VII, pp. 86–87). Duisburg: WAZ. 

Pardo, C., and Fux, P. (Ed.), 2017. Nasca – Peru: Archäologische Spurensuche in der Wüste. Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess. 

Silverman, H., & Proulx, D. A., 2002. The Nasca. Malden, MA: Blackwell.