Turban Band (Llauto) | Cleveland Museum of Art

Made by weavers of the Paracas people of Peru’s south coast between 300 BC and AD 100, the tunic (1946.227), headband (1946.228), and mantle (a shawl-like wrap, 1946.226)—are similar to those recovered from the Paracas Necrópolis, a renowned cemetery on the Paracas Peninsula. The cemetery contained over 400 mummy bundles of varying sizes, each created by wrapping a human body in cloth. (In one instance, 45 pounds of beans replaced the corpse, indicating that ancestors were tied to fertility.) In small bundles, the cloth was plain; in the less common larger bundles, some nearly five feet tall, plain cloth alternated with colorful, elaborately embroidered garments like the three shown here. <br><br>The three garments are all decorated with the same image—a two-headed bird of unknown significance rendered in different orientations and color combinations. It is not clear whether the textiles form a matched set that an important Paracas man wore as an ensemble.