Making Khipu Cords

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While Andean khipus—indigenous knot-and-cord recording devices—have been extensively studied over the past hundred years in their final, completed form, relatively little attention has been paid to the process by which they were made. As such, the level of agency that khipu makers, called khipukamayuqs, had in producing khipus is not fully understood. For instance, were khipu makers simply assembling preconstructed cords according to imperial edict? Were they granted the agency to produce their own cords and signs to reflect the on-the-ground realities that they were meant to record? Or something in between? Answering these questions has the potential to better elucidate the labor involved in the production of khipus, as well as the relative expressiveness and capacity for on-the-ground creativity in the making of the khipu cord signs. In this presentation, we seek to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the process by which khipu cords were made in the Andes from Wari and Inka through post-Inka times. In order to do so, we draw on recent evidence from archaeological excavation, ethnographic sources, and detailed museum recording and analysis, as well as experimentation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35606.0