Diamond shaped textile,

800–1000

The arid climate on the western, coastal side of the Andes preserved thousands of ancient textiles, providing a continuous ten-thousand-year record of technical and stylistic development. This medallion-shaped fragment, one of five identical panels in the museum's collection, demonstrates the sophistication of Middle Horizon featherwork, an important type of textile decoration. Andean cultures maintained important trade relations with the tropical lowlands of the Amazon basin to the east, and the vibrant, iridescent feathers used here all come from Amazonian birds. Each medallion depicts an abstracted creature symmetrically reflected both horizontally and vertically. In typical Wari fashion, the faces at the top and bottom are reduced to framed eyes and a smiling mouth. The bisected, black-and-white treatment of the eyes is also a common trait in Middle Horizon art of both the Wari and Tiwanaku cultures. The red areas along each side of the pendant appear to correspond to the bodies of these creatures, with tiny sections of green and dark blue that possibly represent feet. This medallion, along with its counterparts, once adorned a tunic or large rectangular blanket that would have been wrapped around a mummy, forming part of its mortuary bundle.