Module 12 Ethical Question: Textiles from Burials
The textiles from Peru are very old, fragile, intricate pieces of artwork. The area they were made in used very complicated methods to create these pieces. They need to be handled with the utmost care to preserve the pieces for future generations to see and study. But there is some controversy with this. Why are we even taking the textiles from their place of origin? From the evidence we have found, the textiles were wrapped around deceased people. This practice is obviously for some religious purpose. This brings us back to the question, Why are we taking the textiles from their place of origin? These pieces have started to be taken in 1532, when Spanish conquesadors came to Peru and took the textiles. Most of them are in museums around the world. It also brings up a few other questions like, Should we keep the pieces in their home? And should we leave the pieces where they were found? I think we should keep all of these pieces in their places of origin, possibly museums in the region, to help preserve the history of that place. The people of the area should be able to see their history everyday. When the pieces are taken away from a place and moved to a whole new nation, it loses its historical context to the public. The public is not able to see where the art piece came from and the circumstances it was in when it was found. That’s why it is important to keep artworks in their places of origin. We can also leave the pieces where we find them to respect the culture and the people they were found with. It can also give the people that have ancestors here, a sense of their own culture and it can encourage to fully embrace their culture. When we do handle these pieces we need to be extremely careful because these textiles are very old and fragile. A lot of these pieces from Peru were made in a very lengthy way and this caused the textiles to be very intricate and beautiful pieces of work and it would be a shame to lose them to such a simple mistake. We can develop new ways to care for these pieces to better preserve them. We already have some really good techniques for doing this, but it can be improved. We can also leave the majority of the textiles with the original buried deceased person. This will help the region remember its long history and respect the culture of the people who used to live in Peru.
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Sources
Martin, Lois, and Lois Martin. “The Paracas Textile.” Smarthistory, 2015. https://smarthistory.org/the-paracas-textile/.
Hello! I like how you were able to describe the importance and the use of the textiles. I also enjoyed how you asked questions inside your post and then answered them yourself. How do you think would be the best way to return these textiles back to their place of origin if it was taken from a burial site?
ReplyDeleteI personally think you did an amazing job going into detail on what you see and then you continued asking questions as if you were an interactive reader. I have no issue with you blog post other than the fact of you missing an image of said textiles. I'm sure it's something we've seen before (or similar to it) but for the reader to get a full grasp on your post it'd be helpful to connect it to an image.
ReplyDelete