Paracas culture

For other uses, see Paracas (disambiguation).

Paracas Necropolis mantle, 200 BCE - 200 CE. LACMA collections, Los Angeles, California.

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management. It developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region of Peru. Most information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas site, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. Author David Hatcher Childress, who has no academic credentials, has made controversial claims about Paracas, including the suggestion that elongated human skulls found there are extraterrestrial in nature.

The Paracas Cavernas are shaft tombs set into the top of Cerro Colorado, each containing multiple burials. There is evidence that these tombs were reused over centuries. In some cases the heads of the deceased were taken out, apparently for rituals, and later reburied. The associated ceramics include incised polychrome, "negative" resist decoration and other wares of the Paracas tradition. The associated textiles include many complex weave structures as well as elaborate plaiting and knotting techniques.

The necropolis of Wari Kayan consisted of two clusters of hundreds of burials set closely together inside and around abandoned buildings on the steep north slope of Cerro Colorado. The associated ceramics are very fine plain wares, some with white and red slips and other with pattern-burnished decoration, and other wares of the Topara tradition. Each burial consisted of a conical textile-wrapped bundle, most containing a seated individual facing north across the bay of Paracas, next to offerings such as ceramics, foodstuffs, baskets and weapons. Each body was bound with cord to hold it in a seated position, before being wrapped in many layers of intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles. The Paracas Necropolis embroideries are now known as some of the finest ever produced by Pre-Columbian Andean societies, and are the primary works of art by which Paracas is known. Burials at the necropolis of Wari Kayan continue until about 250 CE, and many of the mortuary bundles include textiles like those of early Nazca.

While the Paracas culture developed in this region between about 1200 BCE and 100 BCE, the Topará culture is thought to have invaded from the north at approximately 150 BCE. The two cultures then coexisted for one or more generations, both at this site and in the nearby Ica Valley, and their interaction played a key role in the development of the Nazca culture and ceramic and textile traditions. Though the elaborate textiles have only been preserved in the coastal desert sites, there is growing evidence that people associated with these cultures lived and traveled between the Pacific lowlands and the Andean highland valleys and mountain pastures to the east.

Cranial Deformation

The Museo Regional de Ica display both these skulls and the textiles

A case of skulls from the Andean Paracas culture, as seen in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología Antropología e Historia del Perú in Lima, Peru.

The Paracas culture resided on the coast of Peru, south of the capital Lima. Some estimates are that this culture existed between 700 BC and 100 AD, but sources vary, mainly because very little carbon 14 testing has been conducted on organic materials found in the area. Julio C. Tello (1880 to 1947), the "father" of Peruvian archaeology, conducted archaeological digs around the Paracas area in 1927 and 1928 as a result of learning that tomb robbers had found large caches of funerary materials, including highly prized textiles, as well as ceramics and ceremonial offerings at a site called Cerro Colorado, which is now a protected area inside the Paracas Ecological Reserve.

Little work has been done by archaeologists since Tello's time, but the plundering of the tombs of the nobility of this culture has gone on, ceaselessly, up to this very day. One intriguing aspect of this culture which has been overlooked by most researchers is the fact that the nobility practiced skull binding, resulting in cranial deformation. They were not unique in this, as the process of manipulating the shape of a child's head in infancy was practiced by many cultures, at different times, around the world. These other cultures include those in ancient Iraq, Russia, Melanesia, Malta, North America, Mexico, and possibly Egypt during the Amarna period: Tutankhamen has been cited as having an elongated head, but that is disputed by many scholars.

The Paracas situation is somewhat unique in that Childress, and his colleagues Juan Navarro and Brien Foerster, claim to have identified at least five distinct shapes of elongated skull,^{[citation needed]} each being predominant in specific cemeteries. The largest and most striking are from a site called Chongos, near the town of Pisco, north of Paracas. These skulls are called "cone heads" by many who see them, because of their literal conical appearance. Testing of these have illustrated that, on average, their cranial capacity is 1.5 liters, approximately 25% larger than contemporary skulls, and they weigh as much as 60 percent more.^{[citation needed]} The skulls' eye orbit cavities are significantly larger than contemporary skulls, and the jaws are both larger and thicker. Moreover, the Chongos skulls have two small holes at the back.^{[citation needed]} Childress and Foerster suggest that: these holes are naturally occurring foramen and not cranial deformation and; that blood vessels and perhaps nerves exited them and fed cranial skin tissue.

References

Paracas Textiles at the British Museum. Object 24 of A History of the World in 100 Objects.

See also

• Nazca culture

References

• Paracas Art and Architecture: Object and Context in South Coastal Peru by Anne Paul, Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 1991 ISBN 0-87745-327-6
• Ancient Peruvian Textiles by Ferdinand Anton, Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 1987, ISBN 0-500-01402-7
• Textile art of Peru by Jose Antoni Lavalle, Publisher: Textil Piura in the Textile (January 1, 1989), ASIN: B0021VU4DO
• Ancient astronomy about this

1:The Enigma Of Cranial Deformation; Elongated Skulls Of The Ancients: David Hatcher Childress and Brien Foerster, 2012, Adventures Unlimited Press.

External links

• Paracas Culture Precolumbian
• Paracas Textiles at the Brooklyn Museum
• Gallery of Paracas objects (archived link, text in Spanish)
• Impacts on Tourism at Paracas (in Spanish)
• Precolumbian textiles at MNAAHP (in Spanish)
• Paracas textile at the British Museum
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