Textiles, Technical Practice, and Power in the Andes

This volume explores the production and use of Andean textiles from the weaver's perspective and follows recent intellectual developments on the productive chain of weaving.

This book explores issues around the production of cloth in the Andean region and its use in Andean societies. Where possible, the book focuses on Andean textiles from a weaver's point of view, through the various tasks and processes in their making, and the manifold ways in which the ideas about a finished textile product refer back continually to these prior processes. Recent intellectual developments on the productive chain of weaving are taken into account, specifically on the human dimension of this in the operative chain (chaîne opératoire) of the textile domain. By working from the productive chain backwards, it is possible to trace and define the processes which led to the material makeup of a certain piece. In this way it is possible to make more convincing links between the materials or colors used during the productive processes and the finished museum object.

Denise Y. Arnold is an expert in Andean anthropology. She is Director of the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara in La Paz and a former Research Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Penelope Dransart is Reader in Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK.