Paracas Funerary Mantles: Offerings for Life – 2015
- Paracas funerary mantles: Offerings for Life
- Who Were The Paracas?
- The Wari Kayán Cemetery and Its discoverer
- What is a funerary bundle?
- Offerings for the Afterlife
- “Reading” the Images
- Severed heads, trophy heads
- Paracas textile art
- Three styles of embroidery
- A miniature outfit
- Headband: Turban I
- Headband: Turban II
- Headband: Turban III
- Turban-cloth: Two-headed serpents
- Skirt: Big-Eyed Being
- Uncu tunic with felines: Big-eyed Being
- Short poncho: Orcas
- Short poncho: Feline-Man
- Short poncho with fringes: Big-Eyed Being
- Attire of a Paracas chief
- Opening a funerary bundle from the Wari Kayán Necrópolis
- Mantles for the afterfile
- Bibliographic references
- Credits
Mantles for the afterlife
Mantles for the afterlife
Mantles for the afterlife
Mantles for the afterfile
Paracas mantles were part of the formal attire of Paracas chiefs, priests and other prominent members of society. As grave goods, however, they became one among many layers of textiles that gave the bundles their shape, with a single bundle containing up to 30 mantles. The complexity and combination of motifs and the range and arrangement of colors on these embroidered textiles followed strict rules that the craftspeople who made them were bound to follow.
A single mantle may contain up to a hundred versions of the same figure, with no two exactly alike. These figures seem to represent the mythical ancestors that helped the deceased persons to become one of them. Once reborn into the afterlife, these new ancestors could protect their communities of origin.
