This thesis analyzes the structure, technique and iconography of an embroidered burial mantle from Wari Kayan Necropolis on the Paracas Peninsula, Peru, which dates between approximately 100 B.C. and A.D. 100. The mantle is currently in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (Accession no. 41.2/632), and will be referred to subsequently as the AMNH mantle. This study will consist of a structural analysis of the burial mantle, addressing the design of the textile and the iconography. In addition to examining the origin and iconography of the double-headed bird motif which appears throughout the mantle, this study analyzes technical and design considerations involved in the creation of the mantle, including style of embroidery, structure, and color repeats. Ethnographic studies of Andean cultures will also be considered in the analysis of the symbolic and ritual aspects of textiles, and how they relate to the symbolic function of the mantle in its burial context.

The long-neck Kayans have long been subjected to scrutiny by both Thai and foreign writers. This study traces the historical existence of the Kayans in Burma and their status as refugees within Thailand. Since the arrival of the first group of Kayans in late 1984, this tribe have been of interest to the provincial government of Mae Hong Son, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, NGOs and tourism developers. All of these groups, in one way or another, claim to be protecting the interest of the Kayans. This thesis investigates the validity of claims that Kayan interests are being protected. It further questions the government’s move to centralise the Kayans into one settlement at Huay Pu Kaeng. I argue that the Kayan race is the most marginal beneficiary of the Kayan ethnic tourism and illustrate how their vulnerability has been exploited both by government agencies and tourism developers.

This practice-based thesis presents the results of experimental research devoted to ethnic tourism among the Kayan minority and has involved the interconnection of artistic and anthropological languages. Known worldwide for the traditional female custom of wearing a long coiled brass necklace aimed at causing a considerable extension to the neck, the Kayan are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group originally from Burma. Due to the prolonged civil war in their own homeland, a large number of Kayan recently fled from Burma to refuge in neighbouring Thailand. Here, over the past years, in response to the “incisive” tourism policy promoted by the Thai government in the northern areas of the country, some families, abandoning the refugee camps where they were hosted, have been resettled in several new villages open to tourists, on payment of a modest entrance fee. Here the Kayan, their culture and their daily life, have been transformed into an authentic tourist attraction capable of drawing about 10,000 visitors a year. Founded on a strictly “visual media primitivist” approach and inspired by its peculiar aesthetics – as systematically presented in the first, theoretical, section of the thesis –, the enquiry involves a multimedia perspective. In such a context, analogue photography and filmmaking, creative writing and sound composition have been combined to give concrete shape to an original artwork firmly grounded in ethnographic practice. The choice, far from being a solely arbitrary and subjective option, has indeed been motivated by the critical employment of specific theoretical assumptions of some of the most recent streams of anthropology and epistemology of the human sciences. The multidisciplinary methodology adopted to develop the research, as well as the multifaceted language employed to display its results, represent an innovative and experimental way of approaching the complex theme of cultural identity in present-day Asian contexts, as well as of highlighting the most aesthetic and philosophic implications connected to the revival of analogue vintage media in contemporary artistic practice.