2.7: Relatively Light Requirements for Tools and Special Inputs

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Inka testimonies claimed khipu as a monopoly of the imperial bureaucracy. But it is hard to see how the medium could have been monopolized, once one notices that all the materials and manufacturing skills — dyeing, spinning, knotting, ornamenting — are present in the routine of plebeian agropastoral households everywhere from southern Colombia to central Chile. Except for certain dyeing equipment, all the necessary gear was and is home-made and portable. Conklin (2002: 61) notes that one’s own hands and toes suffice as a frame to make even complex cord. I have seen modern villagers make khipu-quality cords in minutes using no tools but the ubiquitous drop spindle.

Materially, then, khipu had a demotic potential. Moreover, Inka administration itself relied on widespread khipu competence available throughout rural society, and not on a restricted clique of experts. Martín de Murúa (1946 [1590]: 124) noted that local ethnic groups had their own khipu resources apart from Inka officialdom, and that officials depended on them for detailed records. From the 1560s through the 1590s trials often show local lords of non-Inka origin adducing khipu evidence as work of their own khipukamayuqkuna (khipu masters). Basic numerical khipu knowledge was widespread among campesino herders (male and female) up to approximately the 1960s. This demotic development underlay the medium’s ability to convincingly represent Tupicocha as a totality to its own members: cords did not contain information reserved or manipulated by outsiders, but instead information transparent only to insiders.