IHBS Zoom and Webex Events Subject: The Preceramic Textiles of Huaca Prieta (North Coast of Peru) and the Earliest Known Use of Indigo Date: IHBS Zoom Talk on Sunday, January 17, 2021 Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey C. Splitstoser Co-hosts: DATC (Designers and Artisans Textile Club) and IHBS (International Hajji Baba Society) Description: The Preceramic site of Huaca Prieta, on the north coast of present-day Peru, has been known since the late 1940s to have contained some of the world's earliest cotton textiles, which were decorated with complex colorful designs. Blue is present among even the earliest fabrics, but its source remained elusive until recently when indigo was detected in a 6,200-year-old striped fabric from the site. This discovery marked the earliest known use of indigo in the world. In this presentation, Dr. Splitstoser will talk about the site of Huaca Prieta and its textiles, including a discussion about how the fabrics were excavated, their condition (and how they survived over six-thousand years), their conservation, and how their structures and designs were studied and their pigments analyzed. Dr. Jeffrey C. Splitstoser has specialized in ancient Andean textiles, having studied them for over 20 years. He is the textile specialist for the Huaca Prieta Archaeological Project (directed by Dr. Tom Dillehay), where he led the team that discovered the world's earliest known use of indigo blue, found in a 6,200-year-old cotton textile. Splitstoser is also a leading authority on Wari khipus—colored-and-knotted-string devices that allowed Andean people to record information without writing. He co-curated (with Juan Antonio Murro) the exhibition, Written in Knots: Undeciphered Records of Andean Life April 2–August 18, 2019, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. Dr. Splitstoser is currently an Assistant Research Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He is a research associate of the Institute of Andean Studies, Berkeley, and a Cosmos Club scholar. Dr. Splitstoser is also Vice President of the Boundary End Center (BEC), an archaeology research facility and retreat in western North Carolina, and is an editor of its two peer-reviewed journals, Ancient America and the Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing. He was a Junior Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks (2005-2006). Dr. Splitsoser received his Master's degree (1999) and Ph.D. (2009) in anthropology from The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. His dissertation is a study of the Paracas textiles (ca. 850-300 BCE) from Cerrillos, Ica Valley, Peru.