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The Museo Regional Maria Reiche de Ica , block 8 of Avenida Ayabaca (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun & fiestas 9am-1pm; $1.50, $2 extra if you want to take photos), is one of the best archeological museums in Peru. It's a little way out from the centre on the Prolongacion Ayabaca; to get there, take bus #17 from the Plaza de Armas, or walk six blocks down Avenida San Martin from the San Francisco church, then another six blocks right along Ayabaca; either way you can't miss the concrete museum building stuck out on its own in the middle of barren desert parkland. Behind the Museo there's an excellent large-scale model of the Nazca lines. The most striking and possibly most important of the museum's collections is its display of Paracas textiles , the majority of them discovered at Cerro Colorado in the Paracas Peninsula by Julio Tello in 1927. Enigmatic in their apparent coding of colours and patterns, these funeral cloths consist of blank rectangles alternating with elaborately woven ones - repetitious and identical except in their multidirectional shifts of colour and position. The first room to the right off the main foyer contains a fairly gruesome display of mummies , trepanned skulls , grave artefacts and trophy heads . It seems very likely that the taking of trophy heads in this region was related to specific religious beliefs - as it was until quite recently among the head-hunting Jivaro of the Amazon Basin. The earliest of these skulls, presumably hunted and collected by the victor in battle, come from the Asia Valley (north of Ica) and date from around 2000 BC. The museum's main room is almost entirely devoted to pre-Columbian ceramics and textiles , possibly the finest collection outside Lima. On the left as you enter are spectacular Paracas urns; one is particularly outstanding, with an owl and serpent design painted on one side, a human face with arms, legs and a navel on the other. There is some exquisite Nazca pottery, too, undoubtedly the most colourful and abstractly imaginative designs found on any ancient Peruvian ceramics. The last wall is devoted mainly to artefacts from the Ica-Chincha culture, which seems to have been specifically marked by a decline in importance of the feline god and a move towards urbanization. A highlight is the beautiful feather cape , with multicoloured plumes in almost perfect condition. Displayed also in the main room are several quipus , ancient calculators using bundles of knotted strings as mnemonic devices. According to the historian Alden Mason, these numerical records followed a decimal system very much like our own - a simple knot representing "one", digits from two to nine denoted by longer knots in which the cord was wound or looped a given number of times before it was pulled tight. The concept of zero was shown by the absence of any knot in the expected position, while place value is indicated by any particular knot's distance from the main cord. Quipu s were also mnemonic aids for the recitation of ancient legends, genealogies and ballads. They have survived better here on the coast than in the mountains and the Ica collection is one of the best in the country. On the second floor are various (though not signposted) Colonial and Republican exhibits.
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