Twisting and Spinning from Symbols to Signs

Abstract

The Inca khipus—the principal record-keeping device used for administrative and narrative records in the Inca Empire—is usually thought of in terms of its display of signs (e.g., cord groups and color differences denoting categories of objects; knot clusters signifying decimal values). In this chapter, however, it is argued that both in their materiality, which in a few cases includes iconography, and in the elaborate displays of khipus by the cord-keepers (the khipukamayuqs) during cord-reading performances, there were numerous symbolic elements at play as well. This description and analysis of signs and symbols in khipus and khipu-reading performances provides the setting for comments on the relationship between signs and symbols in pre-Columbian Andean art and material culture more generally.