Cord Keepers

The Inkan empire did not have writing as it is usually understood. The Inkas kept track of information - including their complex social and political organization - on khipus, knotted cords of cotton or wool. Presenting a unique challenge to scholars of Andean history, khipus have proven enormously difficult to decipher. In "The Cord Keepers", the distinguished anthropologist Frank Salomon breaks new ground by offering a reading of the khipus of one Andean village, where villagers have conserved a set of these enigmatic cords to the present day. Salomon suggests that the multi-colored cords, with their knots and bright adornments, may not have mimicked speech as most systems of writing do, but may instead have been anchored in non-verbal codes."The Cord Keepers" makes a compelling argument for a close intrinsic link between rituals and visual sign-systems. It indicates that while Andean graphic representation may differ radically from familiar ideas of writing, it may not lie beyond the reach of scholarly interpretation. In 1994, Salomon witnessed the use of khipus as civic regalia in the village of Tupicocha, in Peru's central Huarochiri region.By observing the rich ritual surrounding them, studying the early writings which villagers created for their own use, and analyzing the khipus themselves, Salomon opens a fresh chapter in the quest for khipu decipherment. He draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tupicocha and surrounding Huaraochiri villages between 1990 and 2001, early colonial records, and radiocarbon and fibre analysis. Challenging the prevailing idea that the use of khipus ended under Spanish colonial rule, Salomon reveals that these beautiful objects served, apparently as late as the early twentieth century, to document households' contribution to their kin groups and their kin groups' contribution to their village. "The Cord Keepers" is a major contribution to Andean history and, more broadly, to understandings of writing and literacy.