THE TWISTING PATHS OF RECALL: Khipu (Andean cord notation) as artifact

Frank SALOMON Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison fsalomon@wisc.edu

Khipu, the cord- and knot-based Andean information medium, underwent a long, varied evolution before and after its one-century heyday (14??1532 CE) as the script of the Inka empire. Inka-era khipus physical characteristics as substrate for meaning have been the object of intense study, partly because other avenues to decipherment remain scarce. (The only well-understood component of khipu code is decimal-based arithmetic; Locke 1923; 1928.) In this paper, I will review current researchers innovative recent work on the material-meaningful nexus in Inka khipu, and then suggest how other studiesarchaeological and ethnographicfurther clarify our notions of khipus inscribed object-world. Starting from Ascher and Aschers (1997) suggestion that the inherently dualistic processes of spinning and plying are congenial analogues for Native South American cultures pervasive cultural binarism, Conklin (2002) and Urton (2003) have argued that a sequence of binary manufacturing operations, of which knotting is only the last, produces cords constituting seven-bit data units and that these may have had character-like functions. Their counsel to look beyond knotting has proven fruitful, though not predominantly in character-deciphering mode. Archaeologically, it appears pre-Inka khipu (Conklin 1982) were less knot-based than Inka ones, but more colorful and perhaps more aesthetically driven. Ethnographically, khipu practice in communities that conserve them as patrimony (Salomon 2004) also points to properties other than knotability. Foci include the fact that this eminently flexible medium exists in different physical states during its use cycle; that its composition by physically discrete parts lends it to use as a simulation device as opposed to text-fixing device (Radicati 1979); that its physical mode of articulating parts tends toward diagrammatic representation of data hierarchies, rather than sentential syntax; and that the act of reading was physically distributed among cord-handlers, calculators, and interpreters (de la Puente 2008), implying that there was no such actor as the unitary reader. Without denying that there were established practices for verbalizing khipu content, we suggest that Tuftes (1983) notion of data graphic may be more faithful to khipu practice than models premised on writing proper.

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