JOANNE PILLSBURY: What we’re looking at here is a tunic, the primary male garment in the Andean region in the pre-Hispanic period, and it would have extended down to just above the knee, and it would have been worn over a loincloth.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK (NARRATOR): Joanne Pillsbury, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

JOANNE PILLSBURY: Any Andean person who would see somebody wearing a shirt such as this would immediately recognize that this was a person of incredibly high status because the weaving of these shirts is of the very, very highest quality.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: This tunic was made in a Wari imperial workshop. The Wari were the first expansive imperial power in the Andean region, predecessors of the Inca. The materials reveal the reach and complexity of the Wari economic network.

JOANNE PILLSBURY: We see this tunic, for example, has cotton that would have been grown on the coast but also the camelid fibers produced in the highlands, and the camelid wool take the dye quite readily. So, you can get these incredibly vivid colors that you can see here on the tunics.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez, a weaver from Chinchero, Peru, explains the origins of the colors.

NILDA CALLAÑAUPA ALVAREZ: The natural dye resource doesn’t exist that much in the high altitude, there's almost nothing. Most of the commerce of the natural dyes came to the Andes, from the Amazon or rainforest and from the valleys, that's what we use for natural dyeing today.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: Using backstrap looms and natural materials, ancient weavers developed a striking visual language.

JOANNE PILLSBURY: What we’re starting to see is this development of this powerful, geometric abstraction, that there can be figurative elements in these shirts, but often they are broken down and recombined in ways that are just so imaginative. We see this marvelous play of form, this interplay of color. It’s mind-bogglingly complex and wonderful.