Fig. 6. Nasca artist. Headband. Río Grande de Nasca, Peru, 6th–7th century. Camelid 昀椀ber, 3 × 56 in. (7.6 × 142.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.746) complex geometries fostered by the grid of the loom itself, including on headbands and turbans (昀椀gs. 6, 7). Nasca artists continued to create cotton plain weaves that they then painted or embellished with colorful embroidery, often incorporating imported camelid 昀椀ber. For example, on three exquisite chuspas, fringed bags designed to hold coca leaves, single geometric motifs are repeated with variations in color (昀椀gs. 8–10). Chewing coca leaves with moist lime powder (calcium hydroxide), created from burned seashells, produces a mild stimulating effect, and the practice was and is of profound social and ritual 5 importance in the Andes. The compositions of some of the earliest Andean tex- tiles are rectilinear with simple geometric patterning, but others boast curvilinear, 昀椀gural imagery. Contrary to argu- ments put forward by early twentieth-century theorists, such as Aloïs Riegl and Wilhelm Worringer, abstraction in the Andes was not a 昀椀rst step toward naturalism and 昀椀guration. Worringer in his seminal 1908 book Abstraction and Empathy argued that there is an initial human artis- tic inclination toward abstraction, a response to intense anxiety in certain times and places before the early mod- 6 ern period. In the ancient Andes, however, 昀椀gural and geometric imagery coexisted; if anything, abstraction Fig. 7. Nasca artist. Headband with ornamental tassels. Río Grande de Nasca, Peru, 6th–8th century. Camelid 昀椀ber, 8 ⼀攀 × 12 in. (21 × 30.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Jane Costello Goldberg, from the Collection of Arnold I. Goldberg, 1986 (1987.394.692) 10