Overview
The first South Americans left almost no clothing, and what little there is comes from a handful of sites where organic material survived. This page is therefore an argument from tools, from climate and from one waterlogged settlement in southern Chile — stated as such, because the alternative is inventing a wardrobe.
Key garments and style
The materials were hide and plant fibre. Guanaco and deer supplied skins in the south, worked with stone scrapers whose edge wear shows they were used on hides; bone awls and needles indicate sewing where the cold required it.
Monte Verde in southern Chile is the exception that gives real evidence. Waterlogging preserved cordage, knotted fibre and worked plant material from a settlement some fourteen thousand years old, so twisted and knotted fibre technology is documented at the very beginning rather than inferred from later Andean weaving.
Beyond that the picture divides by environment, as it must across a continent spanning the Andes, the Amazon and Patagonia: tailored fur in the far south, where later Tehuelche and Selk’nam peoples wore guanaco-hide mantles into modern times, and little or no clothing with substantial body ornament in the tropical lowlands.
Transition
In the Archaic period cotton cultivation and loomless twining on the Peruvian coast turn this fibre skill into cloth, and the Andean textile tradition begins.