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Only partially finished, this thousand-year-old belt was being made on a Chancay backstrap loom. It probably was still in process when its weaver died; it was a fairly common practice in various ancient Andean cultures to include unfinished textiles…

Throughout the indigenous Americas and over the millennia weavers have employed the same basic backstrap loom, much like a thousand-year-old Andean example. This one is from Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Similar ones remain in use in Guatemala as…