What are commonly referred to as “Inca khipu” display a myriad of variations on the structure shown in Figure 41.2. The following overview of khipu construction features is based on the study of 301 samples entered into the Khipu Database (KDB), at Harvard University (see the project website at: Http://khipukamayuq. fas. harvard. edu/).
Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell.
Springer, New York, 2008
Figure 41.1. A large khipu in the Ethnographic Museum, Goteborg, Sweden. (photo by Gary Urton)
Khipu are composed of a variable number of spun and twisted threads, called pendant cords or strings that are attached by means of half-hitch knots to a thicker cord, the latter of which is referred to as a primary cord. The average thickness of primary cords is 0.26 cm, and their average length is 61 cm. The average number of pendant cords per khipu on samples in the KDB is 60; the median number per device is 27. The average length of pendant strings is 33 cm, and the average thickness of the approximately 1,300 measured to date is 0.16 cm. In 35% of cases recorded in the KDB, pendant cords have attached to them what are commonly called subsidiary cords. Subsidiary cords may have second-order subsidiary cords attached to them, and so on down to several levels of subsidiaries. The deepest level of subsidiary attachments recorded to date is on a sample (AS70/UR35 [Note 2]) from Arica, Chile; this sample bears pendant cords with as many as thirteen levels of subsidiaries (Figure 41.3).
Eighteen out of the 301 samples bear what are referred to as top cords. These cords are attached to the primary cord opposite the pendant cords. Many top cords have their attachments passing through the loop(s) of the half-hitch knot attachments of groups of pendant cords. Many years ago Locke (1923) showed that on khipu containing numerical/ statistical data that have top cords, the sum of the numerical data registered on groups of pendant cords bound to the same top cord appeared on that top cord itself.
As stated earlier, khipu are made of either cotton fibers or camelid hair, although the vast majority—all but four of the 301 samples in the KDB—are of cotton [Note 3]. In a small number of samples, khipu made primarily of one of these materials bear a few cords made of the other material. Khipu are generally quite colorful. This is often a result of the use of differently colored camelid hairs (these vary in hues of white, beige, brown, black) or cotton fibers (ancient Andean domesticated cotton varies greatly in color: white, and various hues of brown from light brown to chocolate) (Conklin, 2002: 60). In addition to these material-based sources of color differences, cords were often dyed with vegetal dyes (Arellano 1999).
Three major types of knots were tied into khipu pendant, subsidiary, and top cords (primary cords are rarely knotted). The three knot types are referred to as: figure-eight
Figure 41.3. Numerous subsidiary strings attached to pendant cords on a khipu (AS70/UR35) in the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago de Chile. (photo by Gary Urton)
Knots, whose final shape is indicated by the name of this knot; long knots, which are made by turning the cord (usually) between two to nine times inside the body of the knot; and single or overhand knots. These three knot types were central elements in the signaling of quantitative information in the decimal-based system of administration in the empire (Locke 1923; Ascher and Ascher 1997; Julien 1988; Pereyra S. 1996, 2001).
Each of the three types of knots described above may be tied in one or the other of two different ways, which result in variations in the axial orientation of the knots. That is, they may be tied so as to have a dominant axis running across or inside the body of the knot from upper right to lower left (= Z-knot), or the knot may be tied to have the dominant axis running from upper left to lower right (= S-knot; see Urton 1994). The tying of knots as either Z - or S-knots was one of the forms of structural variation in khipu construction around which sign values may have been constructed in what has been argued was a binary coding system (see Urton 2003).
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