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2.8: Movable Parts

  • Page ID
    34162
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    Against the grain of khipu literature, I argue that khipus functioned as operational devices or simulators, and not as fixed texts. The physical attributes of khipus, especially those in Inka or Inka-like format, suggest mobility and not fixity as the default (for other examples of physical adjustment cf. Piquette, this volume). Hernando Pizarro (1920 [1533]: 175) said that Inka accountants updated accounts by adding and removing knots. The first scholar to show that ancient khipus actually have changeable — and changed — parts was Carlos Radicati di Primeglio, in his book on “the Inka system of accounting” (1979(?): 97–102). He later summed this up:

    A quipu with knots removed from its cords and re-knotted is, strictly speaking, a palimpsest, which can be reconstructed... It is amazing with what facility one can remake the knots, based on the traces which they leave marked on the cords. Unknotting is usually found on isolated cords, but sometimes also on a whole section. (Radicati di Primeglio 1990 [1987]: 91)

    By “traces” Radicati was alluding chiefly to cuts, kinks and / or color discontinuities visible where a knot was removed. One known specimen has been completely unknotted (Figure 17). When the “Indian chronicler” Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala drew khipus, he drew all but one of them knotless.

    And indeed many feature of the canonical khipu seem designed for ease in making alterations. If the default is operability — that is, if the working assumption of the makers was that khipus would change — then an operational khipu would have technical features allowing easy movement, removal, and attachment of elements. This is borne out in several ways. First, the standard attachment of pendants, the half-hitch, is the optimal one to allow either removing and reattaching a pendant individually, or repositioning it by sliding, without disturbing the rest of the structure. Some Tupicochan specimens show stretches of bare main cord while other specimens have jammed main cords. These seem to be carrying more pendants than they were designed for, so cords were likely added as time went by. Second, if a quipocamayo served as an operational device it is likely to show heterogeneity of manufacture. Tupicochan pendants in a single band do vary in texture, tightness, diameter and degree of wear. Third, if the hallmark of an operational device is movability of sign-bearing parts, those parts which are not to be moved, or to be moved jointly if at all, should bear signs or mechanical devices that impede mobility. Several such devices are in evidence, the firmest one being the binding of a group of pendants to each other with stitches right through their attachment loops.


    This page titled 2.8: Movable Parts is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Piquette (Ubiquity Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.