Most remaining Chinchorro textiles (dated to approximately 7000-1000 BC) are twined vegetable fiber mats/shrouds measuring up to approximately 2 x 1.5 m. Though large in size these reed blankets were not loom woven, but made by hand manipulations. The Chin-chorros twined pairs of reed yarns or wefts binding sets of vertical elements or warps, to make mats. In later periods (approximately 2000-1000 BC), the Chinchorros made twined mats using camelid fibers, but these are rare.
Even though the Chinchorro mummification practices changed drastically through time with natural, black, red, bandage, and mud-coated mummies, the twined textile covers remained an integral and relatively unchanging feature of the mummy bundle. The tight wrapping of the mummies added to their preservation and integrity.
The reed wrapping started early. The Acha body, from 7000 BC, had a painted twined mat/blanket. Though twined mats have received very little attention, they are the most enduring Chinchorro characteristic. In other words, the presence of a mat shroud is a constant and diagnostic feature of Chinchorro culture. Usually a mat wrapped a single individual; however, there are examples of very large mats covering a group of Chinchorro individuals (Munoz, Arriaza, and Aufderheide 1993: 115-116). The same is true centuries later for the Acha 3 site and bodies. There, three bodies have a painted mat covering them plus a camelid fur under the mat (Standen and Santoro 2004). In brief, mortuary mat shrouds were typical throughout the Chinchorro period and continued to be common in the culture known as Quiani (1500 BC) that marks a transition to a new cultural era based on new mortuary
Traditions. During Quiani times, the dead were buried in a semi-flexed position and artificial mummification was no longer practiced. In comparison, later agropastoral cultures, with distinctive flexed burials, used woven cloth of camelid yarns for mortuary shrouds.
Even today, plant fiber sources of totora and junquillos (reeds) are found in the deltas of the two rivers that flowed through the Lluta and Azapa valleys into the Pacific Ocean. With the help of botanist Eliana Belmonte we identified various species found today: Scirpus americanus var. ordalus (Cyperaceae), Scirpus americanus, variety with a triangular stem (Cyperaceae), Scirpus americanus var. monofilus (Cyperaceae), Equisetum giganteum (Equisetaceae), Cortaderia sp. (Gramineae), Distichlis sp. (Gramineae), and Polypogon (another Gramineae). From comparative microscopy, it appears the Chinchorros used one of the Scirpus varieties.
The Chinchorros sometimes painted their shrouds with red and yellow ochre, as well as manganese pigment for black. In addition, the Chinchorros decorated their shrouds with embroidery in brown camelid yarns along the edges and as colorful linear geometric symbols on the surfaces. They often used a wrapping technique.
If one tries to imagine Chinchorro society, one has to acknowledge the dual nature of matting and cordage. These organic materials were a vital resource for practical and symbolic uses in the everyday lives of the Chinchorros. These materials clothed, decorated the body, sheltered households, and provided nets and fishing lines for gathering marine resources to eat. Within the mummies themselves, cordage replaced human muscles and ligaments, and the twined mats provided the vehicle and environment for transporting or holding the body for the journey to the other world.
World History
