Dear all,
Six of the party began the day with a short visit to the archaeology department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and a meeting with Prof. Louis Jaime Castillo. Prof Castillo has many years experience of Peruvian archaeology and international cultural politics. We discussed different possibilities of collaboration.
After the meeting we left Lima with rest of the group and went south out in the desert. Our first stop was the temple of Pachacamac. This is major site has a continuity of at least 1000 years which ended with the Spanish conquest. The most important pre-Inca religious site in Coastal Peru. In the city there were major palaces , temples, official building and also burial grounds. However, common people lived outside. The highlights were to se the the moon temple also called the house of the protected women and of course the sun temple.
The last visits for today was to the museum Huaca Malena and further, a visit to a major cemetery of the Wari culture. Here we met with Dr. Romel Angelo who showed us the fantastic textiles. The textiles were made in elaborated techniques and an extremely high quality with very thin threads. There were also, for example, several unique examples of head gear in different knotting techniques. The visit to cemetery was so far the most spectacular experience. This major burial ground is still constantly robbed for the dyed and colourful textiles which are taken. The coarser and more simple textiles, together with the skeletons and body-parts, are left on the ground which makes the walk both fascinating and surrealistic at the same time. We all admire Romel for his fantastic work and hope to see him soon in Copenhagen at the Pre-Colombian Textiles Conference.
Eva Andersson Strand