Nasca Ceramics and Textiles
Part of Hall of South American Peoples.
Part of Hall of South American Peoples.
An early Nasca ceramic trumpet and Nasca ceramic vessel bear the image and shape, respectively, of a mythic killer whale. The killer whale is also the needlework motif repeated in the approximately 1,700-year-old textile fragment displayed here.
The Nasca people, who lived from 100 BC to AD 700 along the coast in what is now Peru, are famous for the immense patterns they produced on the desert surface, among them killer whale holding a human head.