Page 596 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

452

TUNIC

early colonial Peruvian
cotton
2
92 x 81 (36 /4 x 31%]
Museo de América, Madrid

Tunics continued to be made in the early colonial
period, often by native craftsmen weaving tapes-
try on commission for the Spaniards, who greatly
admired the work of Inka weavers (see A. Rowe
1978, 6). This tunic, probably woven shortly after
the conquest, is no longer in a pure Inka style. It
retains the preconquest t'oqapu waistband and the
V-shape (awaqui) framing the neck area, but the
borders of the V section and the lower edge are of
a later style; some of the t'oqapu motifs are post-
conquest variants; and the plant that is the major
design is not an Inka motif. It has been identified
as datura or floripondio (Datura arbórea), a plant
with handsome flowers that grows in the Uru-
bamba Valley near Cuzco, among other places,
and is widely used as a psychoactive ritual drug
(Cabello Carro 1989; Herrera 1941, 365).
This tunic was collected by Joseph Dombey at
Pachacamac, in the Lurin Valley, south of Lima,
in the course of a botanical expedition to Peru in
1777-1787. In pre-Inka times, Pachacamac had
been a sacred place and a pilgrimage center with
an important oracle. The Inka allowed the site to
continue as a sacred place and built a temple to
the sun there. Many Inka-style objects have been
found there, including a silver figure (cat. 448) in
this catalogue. Pachacamac was one of the most
powerful wacas (sacred places) in the Inka empire
(Cieza de León 1959, 334-337; Patterson 1985).
Its oracle was consulted even by the Inka ruler
himself. E.P.B.

453
TUNIC

Inka
wool and cotton
5
88x 7i.8(34 /8X28y4)
Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Munich

The word qompi was used for fine, soft tapestry
woven by cloistered women for religious pur-
poses—offerings and cult images —and for the
Inka ruler; it was also woven by the wives of pro-
vincial administrative officials and by men who
specialized in weaving to meet their labor-tax
obligation to the government. The wefts of qompi
are invariably of two-ply alpaca; the warps are
usually three-ply dark brown or black alpaca, or

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