Dress, technology, and identity in Colonial Peru

Description

"How do people use dress to convey information about themselves to the world? In colonial situations, when social and political roles are rapidly changing, clothing is a critical part of creating and negotiating group and individual identities. This project examines two collections of dress-related artifacts from colonial Peru. The first is a set of ten clothed figuries found on the patrimonial khipu of Rapaz, Peru, a small highland town. These figures probably date to the early nineteenth century. The second is an extensive collection of textiles excavated form the colonial site of Magdalena de Cao Viejo, Peru, on the north coast. Magdalena was a reducción and was occupied from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centures. The collection of textiles from Magdalena includes imported and indigenous fabrics, as well as a wide variety of hybrid artifacts. Both collections provide evidence for change in the production, wearing, and manipulation of clothing during the colonial period. The textiles from Magdalena de Cao show that some people (probably men) wore locally-grown and woven wool and imported linen sewn into European styles, while others (primarily women) continued to use indigenous cotton plainweaves. Technological hybridity occurs primarily in cotton cloth, suggesting that weavers manipulated textiles in a subtle way to indicate their blended identities. The figurines from Rapaz show that by the nineteenth century standard male highland dress consisted of a poncho, trousers, and a hat. Imported fabrics in a variety of textures and styles were used for highly visible or meaningful parts of the ensemble such as the headgear, coca bag, and scarves. This indicates that residents of Rapaz were adept at combining locally made and machine-produced fabrics into ensembles expressive of individual identity. Taken together, the collections indicate that after the Spanish conquest in 1532, indigenous Andeans quickly became skilled at European methods of textile production and clothing construction. Andean people choose to deploy these techniques in combination with their Pre-Colombian methods to create new ensembles and communicate complex information about their changing roles in a colonial world."--Leaves iii-iv.

Subjects