Vol. 154 (2024): Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia
Research Papers

Keepers of memories. Pre-Columbian Peruvian workbaskets in the Anthropology and Ethnology Museum of Florence

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  • Giulia Dionisio
Giulia Dionisio
Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze - Sede di Antropologia e Etnologia
The cover of the CLIV_2024 volume
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-3088

Published 2024-11-19

Keywords

  • Spondylus shell,
  • funerary context,
  • rituals,
  • symbolic value,
  • textile production

How to Cite

Dionisio, G. (2024). Keepers of memories. Pre-Columbian Peruvian workbaskets in the Anthropology and Ethnology Museum of Florence. Archivio Per l’Antropologia E La Etnologia, 154, 69–81. https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-3088

Copyright (c) 2024 Giulia Dionisio

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Pre-Columbian workbaskets were common inside burials, especially in coastal Andean regions. They mostly contained tools and raw materials related to textile production, but there were also some elements (e.g. Spondylus shells) not strictly connected to a practical use. Workbaskets are mentioned in many contributions by scholars and researchers but unfortunately rarely studied in detail. The Pre-Columbian collections housed in the Anthropology and Ethnology Museum in Florence include four Peruvian workbaskets. As no in-depth study has ever been published on them, this contribution aims to provide a detailed analysis of their structure and contents.

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