Analysis of Paracas fibre material from the Gothenburg Collection

Abstract

Gothenburg City has in its collection, 2000-year-old textiles from the Paracas peninsula in Peru. After the exhibition ”A Stolen World” at the National Museums of World Culture in 2008, Peru asked for a repatriation of the collection. Following negotiations between the City of Gothenburg and the Ministry of Culture in Peru it was decided that the ownership of the textiles would be returned to Peru. In June 2014, the first four textiles were returned to the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History (MNAAHP) in Lima as a start of the repatriation. This was also the beginning of a collaboration with the shared objectives to learn more about physical conditions of the Paracas textiles collections in Peru and Sweden. In September 2015, the textile conservator returned to MNAAHP to examine the physical condition of the textiles after more than a year of acclimatization to the new museum environment. The investigations into the condition of the collection were undertaken by the textile conservator, as a visiting fellow, at the Heritage Laboratory of the Swedish National Heritage Board along with chemist Kaj Thuresson. Several analytical techniques were employed for the study: fibre documentation, optical microscopy, SEM, compression testing and pH measurements.