Awana (the backstrap loom itself); pushka (drop spindle); pallay (the woven geometric symbol/pattern system)
A pre-Hispanic Quechua textile tradition centered on Chinchero, in Cusco's Sacred Valley, in which women hand-spin alpaca, llama, and sheep wool on a drop spindle, dye it using entirely natural insect, plant, and mineral sources, and weave it on a body-tensioned backstrap loom into pieces whose specific colors, borders, and geometric pallay symbols identify the wearer's home community. Threatened by the mid-20th-century arrival of industrial fabric and chemical dye, the tradition was deliberately revived from the 1970s onward by an informal group of Chinchero weavers meeting in the courtyard of Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez's family home, formalized in 1996 as the nonprofit Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco (CTTC), now partnered with ten weaving communities across the region.
Risk level: Endangered · Not UNESCO-inscribed; Peru is a State Party to the 2003 ICH Convention
The hand-carving of alabaster (calcium sulfate), known locally as piedra de Huamanga, into devotional religious sculptures, miniature nativity scenes, and decorative reliefs.
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