The cord keepers : khipus and cultural life in a Peruvian village / Frank Salomon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Salomon, Frank.

Series:

Latin America otherwise

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Quipu--Peru--Huarochirí (Province)--History.

Quipu.

Quechua Indians--Peru--Huarochirí (Province)--History.

Quechua Indians.

Quechua philosophy--Peru--Huarochirí (Province).

Quechua philosophy.

Manners and customs.

History.

Peru--Huarochirí (Province).

Quechua Indians--Peru--Huarochirí (Province)--Social life and customs.

Huarochirí (Peru : Province)--History.

Huarochirí (Peru : Province).

Huarochirí (Peru : Province)--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

xxi, 331 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2004.

Summary:

None of the world's "lost writings" have proven more perplexing than the mysterious script in which the Inka Empire kept its records. Ancient Andean peoples encoded knowledge in knotted cords of cotton or wool called khipus. In The Cord Keepers, the distinguished anthropologist Frank Salomon breaks new ground with a close ethnography of one Andean village where villagers, surprisingly, have conserved a set of these enigmatic cords to the present day. The "quipocamayos," as the villagers call them, form a sacred patrimony. Keying his reading to the internal life of the ancient kin groups that own the khipus, Salomon suggests that the multicolored cords, with their knots and lavishly woven ornaments, did not mimic speech as most systems of writing do, but instead were anchored in nonverbal codes. Making a compelling argument for a close intrinsic link between rituals and visual-sign systems, he indicates that, while Andean graphic representation may differ radically from familiar ideas of writing, it may not lie beyond the reach of scholarly interpretation. The Cord Keepers is a major contribution to Andean history and, more broadly, to understandings of writing and literacy.

Contents:

The Unread Legacy: An Introduction to Tupicocha's Khipu Problem, and Anthropology's 3

1 Universes of the Legible and Theories of Writing 23

2 A Flowery Script: The Social and Documentary Order of Modern Tupicocha Village 41

3 Living by the "Book of the Thousand": Community, Ayllu, and Customary Governance 55

4 The Tupicochan Staff Code 77

5 The Khipu Art after the Inkas 109

6 The Patrimonial Quipocamayos of Tupicocha 137

7 Ayllu Cords and Ayllu Books 185

8 The Half-Life and Afterlife of an Andean Medium: How Modern Villagers Interpret Quipocamayos 209

9 Toward Synthetic Interpretation 237.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-315) and index.

ISBN:

0822333791

0822333902

OCLC:

54929904