Hello my name is Cecilia Pardo I’m the lead curator for the upcoming exhibition
Peru a journey in time. Welcome but this is not my corner.
Today I’m in the conservation studio with this remarkable object called a khipu which is being
currently prepared to be displayed in the show. So what were the khipus and what were they used for?
Khipu comes from the word ‘knot’ in Quechua which is the main language used by the Incas during the
Inca empire but that language has endured and it's still used and practiced in many highland
communities in Peru. So khipu were the main record-keeping device in pre-Columbian Andes
it was used and introduced by the Wari culture towards 600AD but it was more widely used by
the Inca and I think it was one of the main reasons why they could expand and conquest
such a vast territory in such a small time. So the main structure of the khipu consists of a
main chord and then we have pendant chords which register the information in knots. What the Inca
did is they established a decimal system, so we have knots from 1 to 9 and then we have knots that
register the tens the hundreds and the thousands. For example in this khipu the information is
registered in different levels, so the position of the units comes here and the positions of the tens
comes here. We now know that not only knots were giving us information but spaces between
the chords also registered information. A chord without a knot was probably registered as zero.
And the way the pendant chords are tied to the main chord also registers important information.
Also in some cases there's a chord that goes up and it's summarizes all the information
recorded in one khipu. By comparing the use of khipus in modern communities, scholars also are
trying to decode the different colours that we have in khipus. So for instance if you have here
different colours set up in bands for example beige, beige, beige. Brown, brown, brown.
Black, black, black, apparently that information was related to people; individuals.
When the information was recorded like in series like beige, brown, black, beige, brown, black;
they were recording information on communities, on groups of people. Today we account for more
than one thousand khipus housed in different collections in museums around the world. However
there are some khipus that have recently been found in archaeological sites which provides us
with context in order to better understand how these elements was used. For example there's a
site called Incawasi in the Canete valley in the south coast of Peru, that tells us about the way
the Incas conquered the coast. In that site khipus have been found in direct relationship
with different crops in a storage area. So for instance the archaeologists found khipus
related to chili peppers to beans and two kinds of peanuts. So then we know that they were totally
related to accounting information on their storage facilities. The Inca empire controlled around 12
million people and provinces and different regions were organized in groups of 50, 100 500, 1 000.
People in local provinces in smaller communities recorded information and they were then
transmitted into a higher hierarchy and then into a higher hierarchy up until it arrived
to the chief of the four main regions of the Tahuantinsuyu which is the Inca empire
and finally to the Inca. How were they used by the Incas and their predecessors? According to
the images that we can find in written documents dating to the 17th century we can interpret them
as a device that was used in a quite performative way. So it was displayed and read probably in a
public scenario where there were a lot of people and then, they were rolled and taken to the other
place. It's like a portable archive of information that was used to register different type of
information into a database. And then you can have different pages in your main database. Not every
one in the Inca empire was trained to understand, to read, but also to produce a khipu.
So the persons that were trained and spent years in training to understand the way they should
be done and read were the quipucamayocs; the readers of the khipus. The readers of the knots.
They were special people within the Inca empire with the capability and responsibility
of not only producing them but sharing them. There are many sizes of khipus. Very small hippos
huge khipus. there's one khipu, one of the biggest ones that comes from the region known
as Chachapoyas that it's called the astronomical khipu. According to specialists they register
a calendar year based upon 28 days each month. And how big roughly is that khipu?
Like this, like this, huge! For me the khipu is a very special object because it relates to
the organization of a society, such an important society like the Andean societies. But also
it addresses the importance and relevance of the raw materials, cottons and Camelid fibres which
were key and instrumental in the development of Andean societies. So I feel the khipu is a great
object that tells a lot about Andean societies in many ways but also one of the main objects
that have served as inspiration for modern contemporary artists. So we have khipus nowadays
in different realms of Peruvian society. From the khipus that's still being used in highland
communities in a more symbolic way but also in contemporary artworks reflecting upon their
relevance for contemporary societies. I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about the khipu if you want
to know more visit the upcoming exhibition at the British Museum. And next week Nicole conservator
at the BM will talk us about the way she has prepared and conserved the khipu to be displayed.