The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village. Frank Salomon. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 331 pp.
Reviewed by John H. McDowell
Frank
Salomon, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison, is among the most prominent of living Andeanists, having
authored important historical and ethnographic studies and having
prepared, in partnership with George Urioste, the definitive text of
the famous Huarochirí manuscript, an early colonial-era compendium of
localized mythic narrative. Indeed, Salomon’s interest in the
Huarochirí document caused him to travel the highland district that
gave birth to it, and there, by “a fluke of ethnographic luck” (p. 3),
he came across a contemporary usage of khipus,
the record-keeping cords of knotted fiber that count as one of the
great mysteries and great achievements of Andean societies. Salomon was
lucky, as well, in the timing of this discovery, which coincided with a
growing interest among villagers in “Inka” symbolism and the connection
between the khipus and this revered ancestral past.
The
present monograph is an attempt to further our understanding of the
wide-spread khipu tradition by delving into local knowledge and
practice in the village of Tupicocha, in the sierra that rises to the
east of Lima, where patrimonial khipus are retained by ayllus,
corporate descent groups, and utilized in ayllu ceremonial politics.
What results is a brilliant piece of detective work that assembles a
diverse range of cues and clues and weaves them into a plausible
account of how khipus might have functioned as data-encoding systems
during the several centuries they persisted as the primary means for
recording and conserving information in a world region that famously
remained without writing even as it developed a highly complex
civilization.
In
the absence of resources that reliably explicate how this “technology
of knowledge” might have operated—the craft was suppressed after 1583
by the Spanish and the last competent local practitioners disappeared
in the early decades of the 20th century—Salomon adduces evidence both
ethnohistorical and ethnographic to mount an engaging argument that
originates in the Huarochirí province and in the specific code
properties of its khipus but carries us far beyond these points of
origin into a sustained encounter with the semiotics of sign systems,
with Andean ethnohistory, and with the essence of what it means to be
Andean.
The
cumulative effect of reading this book is to agree with the author that
the question, Did the Inkas have writing?, should be scuttled in favor
of adopting a mindset attuned to cultures organized around the
manipulation of fiber, where life is lived like a khipu, where canal
systems resemble giant khipus on the land, and where the cords of a
khipu can map the terrain even as they inscribe the progress and
completion of such procedures as assigning labor, keeping track of
material resources, and coordinating the interaction of political
entities. Basing his reasoning on the evidence he has uncovered,
Salomon presents khipus as “operation devices” (p. 273) that mirror in
their structure the structure of the social occasions that created
them. He states that “khipu recording was not only about the community—a controlling simulacrum, and important as such—but was itself the means of producing
the community performatively” (p. 269). Salomon proposes that khipus,
at least in the Tupicochan setting, functioned at one time as encodings
of planning sessions, where responsibilities were negotiated, and of
accounting sessions, where reckonings of performance were made and
collectively ratified. In contemporary Tupicocha, these khipus are used
mostly for ceremonial purposes, as emblems of local identity on
official occasions, though they retain a curious half-life and
afterlife, in Salomon’s terms, to which I will return below.
Let
me briefly profile some of the significant areas of argumentation in
this book. Regarding the interpretation of meaning in the khipu,
Salomon offers a technical exposition with two primary threads: one, an
inquiry into the type of signification operating in khipu art and the
other, an exhaustive treatment of the elements of khipu signification
and what kinds of data they most likely encode. Regarding the former, a
key question is whether the khipu is predicated on spoken language—is
it a lexigraph,
a sign vehicle that corresponds to segments of speech? Salomon argues
for a relation of complementarity between the khipu and speech, holding
that information stored on khipus can be articulated in speech but does
not depend on speech in the way that most familiar writing systems, for
example, do. He views khipus as semasiographs,
that is, signs that stand for the referents themselves, as in
notational, pictographic, and token systems. He notes that
semasiographs “are superior where different users have a substantial
domain of culture in common, but little spoken language in common” (p.
27), a situation that obtained over the vast territory controlled by
the Inka Empire.
In
Salomon’s view, the semiotics of khipus are pragmatic rather than
grammatical, and “the record-keeping art takes shape around the social
problems it solves” (p. 28). He notes that, “the khipu’s surface
regularities are likely to bear the stamp of schemata repeatedly
employed to effect the social ends of gatherings where they were
present” (p. 38). Sorting out these regularities and the schemata they
might represent is the most technical component of this ambitious
study, and if one is willing to follow the argument, a viable portrait
of khipu signification emerges. Figure 26, the Key Figure (150-151), is
a sketch of a composite Tupicochan khipu that captures most of the
structural features presumably implicated in khipu signification. There
are a great many variables capable of fashioning a difference in
meaning: the color of threads, their size, the placement of knots, the
kinds of knots used, the attachment of pendants, the grouping of cords
into like-color bands, the use of specific colors as run-through
elements—these and other dimensions of khipu art lend themselves to
signification. As Salomon’s exegesis of khipu construction proceeds, it
becomes clear that corded fiber is a remarkably potent medium for
encoding bits of information.
Salomon
draws on two related technologies of knowledge practiced in villages
like Tupicocha to suggest the means and functions of khipu
signification. One of these is the visual codes carved into staffs of
office in Tupicocha. These designs carry information about the
hierarchy of local offices and are distributed through a process of
collective negotiation in a ceremonial forum. Much like the khipus, in
Salomon’s view, the visual designs encode a process of social
collaboration, but in this case within a much more limited semiotic
medium. Also of consequence to the argument are practices associated
with ayllu books that have been used for some time now in communities
like Tupicocha to record duties to be performed and resources
communally held. These books are updated annually and are employed to
plan and then certify performance of communal labor. The occasion for
updating the books, as is true for the carving of the staffs, is a
ceremonial one, with ritual drinking, dancing, and the performance of
music. Salomon proposes that practices observed in these media are
congruent with practices associated with the making and remaking of
khipus during the period when they were the medium of choice for
recording these kinds of information.
Although
apparently no living person commands the language of the khipus, there
is a local lore that conserves a good many details of khipu art and
signification. Salomon gathers and surveys this fount of information to
good effect, and at this stage the various branches of his argument
begin to cohere into an account with considerable credibility. An
interesting episode revolves around the reconstructions of Nery Javier
Rojas, who as a young fellow spent a good deal of time with his
grandfather, one of the last khipu masters, and committed to memory
much of what he learned from this elder relative. Salomon refers to the
store of information preserved in contemporary commentary as the
half-life of the khipu medium, and he takes note as well of what he
calls its afterlife, invented traditions centering on the khipus that
may nonetheless reveal or confirm an authentic approach or concept. He
coins the term “khipumancy” to refer to a well-entrenched practice
centered on the “fall” of khipu cords in divinatory sessions.
Salomon
has produced a challenging and rewarding study that takes us deep
within the core of highland cultures in the Andes. His work here builds
upon a strong tradition of khipu research and extends previous
understandings by bringing into the picture a well-documented case
study of khipu practices in a specific locale. Salomon integrates his
findings into this literature by proposing Tupicocha as a regional
variant, a vernacular or grassroots off-shoot, sharing many common
features with the inventory of Inka khipus held in museums around the
world but adapted to the purposes of local rather than imperial
authority. Of necessity, his conclusions are speculative, but they are
grounded on a firm foundation of evidence and exposition, and as a
consequence they approach and enter into the realm of the believable.
This
study is surely not the final word on khipu art and signification; as
Salomon notes in closing, a new database (in progress) of khipus in
museums, and the encounter of new khipus in undisturbed archaeological
sites, are likely to produce conditions for evaluating the arguments he
advances in this book and pushing towards that breakthrough that would
allow a definitive reading of these Andean artifacts, characterized by
Salomon as “perhaps the most complex and versatile of data writings”
(p. 281) in the world’s diversified repertoire of information-encoding
systems.
John
McDowell is Professor of Folklore at Indiana University. His
ethnographic research has led to extensive work in a number of cultural
settings in the United States, Mexico, and the Andes. His Andean
studies are reported in numerous works, including “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (University Press of
Kentucky, 1994). Currently working on a number of archival and digital
exhibition projects, his most recent book is Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (University of Illinois Press, 2000).