Featured on PDR in the collection Pied Beauty: Wari Tie-Dye Textiles (ca. 425–1100)

When the lords of the Inca were forced to send tribute to the Spanish, they made their payments, in part, in panes de grana — “cakes” or “loaves” of the cactus-eating cochineal beetle (magno or macnu in Quechua), which when pulverized and mixed with mordant produces a blood-red pigment whose intensity was unrivaled by anything previously known to Europeans. Since long before Pizarro’s invasion, Andean peoples from the coastal deserts to the highlands had been perfecting a range of techniques for creating, coloring, and otherwise ornamenting textiles. Colonial accounts and archaeological finds offer a glimpse of this complexity: regimented and ritualized dyestuff harvesting, designated “chosen women” (aklla) tasked with weaving for the Inca ruler, and selectively bred alpacas and llamas capable of producing finer wool…