American Studies Commons^™

Knot Anomalies On Inka Khipus: Revising Locke’S Knot Typology, Sabine Hyland

IX Jornadas Internacionales de Textiles Precolombinos y Amerindianos / 9th International Conference on Pre-Columbian and Amerindian Textiles, Museo delle Culture, Milan, 2022.

In 2007, in the IV Actas de las Jornadas Internacionales sobre Textiles Precolombinos, Kylie Quave noted the existence of various structural anomalies in khipus presumed to date to the Late Horizon. These anomalies included the use of non-cotton vegetal fibres, the inclusion of single red strings, subsidiary cords that are plied through rather than half hitched, and the placement of long knots and figure-8 knots “in a way that precludes a numerical reading”. Since Quave’s article, there has been little examination of such anomalies, nor have scholars known whether such anomalies were to be found in khipus that had …