Keys to Mathematical Treasure Chests: Andean Khipus – Conclusion and References

Conclusion

As we near the 100-year anniversary of Leland Locke’s The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record [1923], this survey of khipu studies’ online footprint has endeavored to highlight the sheer variety of resources created since Locke’s decipherment of the numerical “khipu code.” Khipus of different times and places are maintained in the high-quality online records of dozens of museum institutions, with an ever-growing percentage encoded in an existing, open-source khipu database. Rich documentation and analyses await the online reader invested—like today’s handful of khipu researchers—in someday fully deciphering the primary sources of the ancient Andes.

References

Adawi Schreiber, Luis, Alexander Ortegal lzquierdo, Marlene Mejía Pérez, and Alejo Rojas Leiva. 2011. “Una aproximación al estudio de los quipus del MNAAHP.” In Atando cabos, edited by Carmen Arellano Hoffmann and Gary Urton, 239–63. Lima: Ministerio de Cultura del Perú and Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú.

Ascher, Marcia, and Robert Ascher. 1981. Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics, and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Barraza Lescano, Sergio, Rodrigo Areche Espinola, and Giancarlo Marcone Flores. 2022. “By Stones and by Knots: The Counting and Recording of Chili Peppers Stored During the Inca Occupation of the Guarco Administrative Center of Huacones-Vilcahuasi, Lower Cañete Valley, Peru.” Andean Past 13: 221–64.

Brunori, Martina, and Stefania Passerini. 2019. “Sixteenth-century Peruvian Quipu.” In Reports from the Ethnological Materials Laboratory 4, edited by Stefania Pandozy, 68–75. Vatican City: Musei Vaticani.

Clindaniel, Jon. 2019. “Toward a Grammar of the Inka Khipu: Investigating the Production of Non-numerical Signs.” PhD diss., Harvard University.

Clindaniel, Jon, and Gary Urton. 2017. “Quipus de Pachacamac. Hacia la estanderización de las convenciones de signos en el Tawantinsuyu.” In Pachacamac: El oráculo en el horizonte marino del sol poniente, 274–87. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú.

Gänger, Stefanie. 2014. Relics of the Past: The Collecting and Study of Pre-Columbian Antiquities in Peru and Chile, 1837-1911. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Google Arts & Culture and MALI, Museo de Arte de Lima. 2021. The Khipu Keepers. https://artsandculture.google.com/project/khipus.

Hyland, Sabine. 2014. “Ply, Markedness, and Redundancy: New Evidence for How Andean Khipus Encoded Information.” American Anthropologist 116(3): 643–48.

Hyland, Sabine, and Christine Lee. 2021. “Indigenous Record Keeping and Hacienda Culture in the Andes: Modern Khipu Accounting on the Island of the Sun, Bolivia.” Hispanic American Historical Review 101(3): 409–32.

Landa Cragg, Patricia. 2018. “El proceso de la conservación de los quipus de Incahuasi.” Boletín Yungas 2(6): 61–62.

Locke, L. Leland. 1912. “The Ancient Quipu, a Peruvian Knot Record.” American Anthropologist 14(2): 325–32.

Locke, L. Leland. 1923. The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record. New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Loza, Carmen Beatriz. 2000. “El modelo de Max Uhle para el estudio de los quipus a la luz de sus notas inéditas de trabajo de campo (1894–1897).” Indiana 16: 123–58.

Mackey, Carol J. 1970. “Knot Records in Ancient and Modern Peru.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.

Medrano, Manuel. 2021a. “Khipu Transcription Typologies: A Corpus-Based Study of the Textos Andinos.” Ethnohistory 68(2): 311–41.

Medrano, Manuel. 2021b. Quipus: Mil años de historia anudada en los Andes y su futuro digital. Lima: Planeta.

OKR Team. 2022. The Open Khipu Repository (v.2.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6908343.

Pancorvo, Anel, ed. 2020. Quipus y quipucamayoc. Codificación y administración en el antiguo Perú. Lima: Apus Graph Ediciones.

Pardo, Cecilia. 2021. Inca Khipu: The record and writing system made entirely of knots. Curator’s Corner. The British Museum. YouTube.

Pereyra Sánchez, Hugo. 2006. Descripción de los quipus del Museo de Sitio de Pachacamac. Lima: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Inovación Tecnológica.

Quave, Kylie E. 2009. “Confronting Anomaly in the Khipu Structure: Cultural and Individual Variations from Two Museum Collections.” In Actas de las IV Jornadas Internacionales sobre Textiles Precolombinos, edited by Victòria Solanilla Demestre, 241–51. Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

Quave, Kylie E. 2022. The Inka khipu. Smarthistory: The Center for Public Art History.

Radicati di Primeglio, Carlos. 1964. La “seriación” como posible clave para descifrar los quipus extranumerales. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Rojas Leiva, Alejo. 2009. “La construcción y el registro universal del quipu inca.” In Actas de las IV Jornadas Internacionales sobre Textiles Precolombinos, edited by Victòria Solanilla Demestre, 253–66. Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

Splitstoser, Jeffrey. 2020. “Los khipus Wari.” In Khipus, edited by Cecilia Pardo, 28–35. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima.

Uhle, Max. 1897. “A Modern Kipu from Cutusuma, Bolivia.” Bulletin of the Free Museum of Science and Art of the University of Pennsylvania 1(2): 51–63.

Urbizagástegui Alvarado, Rubén. 2014. La escritura inca: Quipus, yupanas y tocapus. Lima: Hipocampo Editores.

Urton, Gary. 2006. “Censos registrados en cordeles con ‘amarres’. Padrones poblacionales pre-hispánicos y coloniales tempranos en los khipu Inka.” Revista Andina 42: 153–96.

Collections

American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA.

Dallas Museum of Art, TX, USA.

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collections, Washington, DC, USA.

Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru.

Museo Larco, Lima, Peru.

Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú, Lima.

Museo de Sitio de Pachacamac, Peru.

Penn Museum, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, USA.

Världskulturmuseet, Gothenburg, Sweden.