Tying the Archive in Knots, or: Dying to Get into the Archive in Ancient Peru

Abstract

Record keeping in the Inka Empire of the Andes of ancient Peru was based on the knotted-string recording device, the khipu (or quipu; Quechua: ‘knot'). Khipus were produced and consulted by Inka administrators for a variety of purposes, including the recording of censuses, tribute data, as well as life histories and genealogies of the Inka nobility. Cord-keepers were organized in a hierarchical arrangement of officials, from local khipukamayuqs (‘knot makers/organizers'), to higher-level officials who staffed provincial administrative centers, to state cord-keepers in the capital, Cusco. The khipu-keepers stored collections of khipus in regional centers and in Cusco where they could be consulted on a variety of matters of interest to the state. This study looks first at the way information was recorded on the knotted-cord records. This is followed by an overview of what we know to date about archival collections of khipus, including a close study of a colonial era khipu archive from the Santa Valley, on the north-central coast of Peru. Of particular note is the fact that many khipus were stored in burial chambers with ancestral mummies, a situation that left these records accessible to descendants of the ancestors, who visited the burial chambers where they paid tribute to the mummies and consulted the knot records.