Cord Keepers

Salomon Frank L. Salomon

Description

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. The Cord Keepers makes a compelling argument for a close intrinsic link between rituals and visual-sign systems. It indicates that, while Andean graphic representation may differ radically from familiar ideas of writing, it may not lie beyond the reach of scholarly interpretation.In 1994, Salomon witnessed the use of khipus as civic regalia on the heights of Tupicocha, in Peru's central Huarochiri region. By observing the rich ritual surrounding them, studying the village's written records from past centuries, and analyzing the khipus themselves, Salomon opens a fresh chapter in the quest for khipu decipherment. He draws on a decade's field research, early colonial records, and radiocarbon and fiber analysis. Challenging the prevailing idea that the use of khipus ended under early Spanish colonial rule, Salomon reveals that these beautiful objects served, apparently as late as the early twentieth century, to document households' contribution to their kin groups and these kin groups' contribution to their village. The Cord Keepers is a major contribution to Andean history and, more broadly, to understandings of writing and literacy.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Perú
• América del Sur
• Cultural studies
• South America
• Biological anthropology
• History of the Americas
• History
• Andes
• Peru

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 29 octobre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386179
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

  

A book in the series Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations Series editors: Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University Irene Silverblatt, Duke University Sonia Saldívar-Hull, University of California at Los Angeles

THE CORD KEEPERS

Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village

Frank Salomon

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

  .   :

‘‘No digan ‘perdido.’ Digan ‘aún no encontrado.’ ’’ ‘‘Don’t say ‘lost.’ Say ‘not yet found.’ ’’

 



    



CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Maps ix List of Tables xiii About the Series xv Preface xvii The Unread Legacy: An Introduction to Tupicocha’s Khipu Problem, and Anthropology’s  Universes of the Legible and Theories of Writing  A Flowery Script: The Social and Documentary Order of Modern Tupicocha Village  Living by the ‘‘Book of the Thousand’’: Community, Ayllu, and Customary Governance  The Tupicochan Staff Code  The Khipu Art after the Inkas  The Patrimonial Quipocamayos of Tupicocha  Ayllu Cords and Ayllu Books  The Half-Life and Afterlife of an Andean Medium: How Modern Villagers Interpret Quipocamayos  Toward Synthetic Interpretation  Conclusions  Notes  Glossary  References  Index 





    

  



   

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Plates (following )

Staff-holding traditional authorities with quipocamayo-draped presidents of ayllus and sacred clowns,  January  Rolling up ayllu Primera Satafasca’s quipocamayo-in the ancient way Quipocamayos on display at the huayrona, or civic plenum,  The newly invested ayllu presidents of  Signing the minutes after installation of  ayllu presidents Pendants of ayllu Segunda Allauca’s quipocamayo- The pachacamanta or knob of ayllu Primera Satafasca’s quipocamayo- Hito, or marker, on quipocamayo-of Cacarima ayllu Pendants of Cacarima’s- Nery Javier Rojas and his former teacher with his simulacrum, in  Amancio Javier lifts cords seeking relevance to a numerological reduction of a name Close-up of- The formerly paired quipocamayos-and- Primer Huangre’s quipocamayo is almost empty of knots To observe-’s quartet structure, look for the pale gray cord forming the third member of each quartet