OTHER ARTS.
Textile Peruvians were well acquainted with spinning and weaving. Both animal and vegetable tissues were employed, and fine as well as coarse stuffs were in common use as clothing.
They cultivated in the warm valleys of the coast two varieties of cot ton—one pure white, the other grayish. The animal fibres were obtained from the four species of American camels indigenous to their country, of which two, the llama and the alpaca, were domesticated, while the others, the huanaco and the vicuna, were in the savage state. The finest of the cloths were woven from the hair of the vicuna, and were reserved for members of the Inca family and for those nobles who as a special favor were permitted to wear them.
Dyes and dyes were numerous, and the coloring matter was so permanent that after centuries of exposure in the tombs many pieces of the so-called mummy-cloth conic forth bright and clear. This is especially true of the animal fibre. Analysis has shown that all the colors employed by the ancient dyers were derived from the vege table kingdom.
The decoration of the textile materials was generally in geometrical patterns, and where figures of men or animals are represented, their out lines are in similar straight lines. Occasionally the figures bear a decep tive resemblance to alphabetic characters, but the illusion is dispelled on close examination.
Quipis.—Twisted cords and strings were the substitutes of the Peru vians for the picture-writing of the northern nations. Their celebrated quipts were formed by attaching to a base cord a number of strings of different thicknesses, colors, and lengths. These were knotted together or plaited. Each of these characters had a definite meaning applicable to the subject to which the quipu referred. Specimens of these are now rare, and the secret of interpreting them appears to have perished soon after the Conquest. (See Vol. I. pp. 9o, 231, fit. 53.) Leather.—The art of tanning was unknown in this region, but the skins of animals were prepared by a process which imparted to them considerable durability, and pieces of such leather are not infrequently exhumed from tombs. The hides were placed in large vases filled with
urine and buried in moist earth. After a time they were taken out, dried, and beaten.
Tombs and Arummics.—Although the study of the Peruvian mummies belongs rather to Anthropology (see Vol. I. pp. 132, 232) than to Archae ology, we may mention them here, as they form an indispensable adjunct to every collection of the antiquities of that country. They are exceed ingly numerous, and doubtless hundreds of thousands of them yet remain undisturbed in their carefully-concealed sepulchral chambers. The Peru vians were, like the ancient Egyptians, believers in the resurrection of the body in its most literal sense; they therefore wished to preserve it in the most complete manner possible. It is said that they even gathered up and had buried with them the parings of their nails and the hairs which fell from their heads, so that they should lose in the future life no part of their personality. This induced them also to seek out the most inaccessible spots for burial, or to construct solid stone towers, called chulpas (fil. 8, fig-. 29), or to sink vaults deep under ground, in which the remains should be deposited as free as possible from danger of desecration. Sometimes the burial-caves which abound in the upper Andes can be reached only by descending the face of a perpendicular precipice a hun dred feet or more by means of ropes. (Comp. pp. 85, 137.) In more ancient days, before the mason's art had been cultivated, rock-sepulchres were erected almost precisely similar to the dolmens (pl. 3, fig. I) which the early neolithic inhabitants of Europe were wont to rear for the common burial-places of their tribes. One such, from the Peruvian uplands, is represented on Plate 8 (fig. 28).
ARCHiEOLOGIr OF THE AREA OF SOUTHERN AND EASTERN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.