• Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Andean Tapestry: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 3)

Backstrap Loom, ca. 600-1476 AD Peru, Pachacamac, Gravefield I; William Pepper Peruvian Expedition; Max Uhle, subscription of Phebe A. Hearst, 1897; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Antrhopology

This series features five online museum exhibits created by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for a class titled “Colonial Latin America Through Objects.” The class assumes that Latin America was never  a continent onto itself. The course also insists that objects document the nature of historical change in ways written archives alone cannot.

Irene Smith’s exhibit offers a survey of weaving techniques in pre-colonial and colonial Peru and shows how the natives sought to keep forms of local weaving in the context of new looms and new fibers. The result were fabrics that dazzle but also reveal long-lasting Andean continuities in the midst of rapid technological change.

More from the Colonial Latin America Through Objects series:

Of Merchants and Nature by Diana Heredia López
Nanban Art by John Monsour

You may also like:

Brittany Erwin reviews The Archaeology and History of Colonial Mexico by Enrique Rodríguez Alegría
Zachary Carmichael reviews Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí by Jane Mangan
Naming and Picturing New World Nature by Maria Jose Afanador

Posted March 7, 2018 More Teaching

Recent Posts

  • Resources for Understanding and Celebrating Juneteenth
  • The Fight for Freedom and Justice: A Forum with Formerly Incarcerated Black Women Leading the Movement
  • Year in Review – Academic year 2021-2022
  • Re-imagining Public History: A Tribute to Joan Neuberger
  • Humanizing Great Mother Russia: “Ekaterina” on Amazon Prime
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

    Sign up to receive the monthly Not Even Past newsletter

    • Features
    • Books
    • Teaching
    • Digital & Film
    • Blog
    • IHS
    • Texas
    • Spotlight
    • About