Pendant and ear spools

Although ancient Andean textiles remain virtually unknown to the North American public, there is no doubt that the fiber arts played a pre-eminent role in the indigenous cultures that flowered in western South America before the sixteenth-century European invasions. Thousands of well-preserved examples survive to make up the longest, most complete textile record in the world. In the Andean area, the widespread use of textiles preceded that of fired ceramics by at least a thousand years, and …