Indigenous Andean Hats and Headdresses: Tradition, Identity, and Symbolism

In the Andes, before the Spanish conquest, natives wore distinctive headdresses as markers of regional and ethnic identity. Thus the hat has been, and still is, a conduit of social and cultural reproduction, knowledge, values, and beliefs. After the colonists brought the Merino sheep to Peru around 1537, started farming cotton, and imposed Spanish ways of dressing on the natives, hats in the Andes became diversified. But the diversity of hats that Andean natives wear today is fast changing....