Object–Literature Parallels

The KBCR might be considered an extension of a literature review or bibliographic database and could be created by anyone using tools as simple (and labor-intensive) as a listing written on paper or as sophisticated as a relational database structure. It was created prior to investigating whether similar resources existed; however, these are worth briefly considering for context and contrast.

Unfortunately, there are few avenues for discovering resources like KBCR made by individual researchers or collection managers for their own or their teams’ use. With respect to public websites that link literature to specific objects, some of the sciences have found such a resource important to develop and maintain. For example, BioNames (bionames.org) has been connecting taxonomic names (life sciences) to literature for more than a decade (Page Reference Page2013, Reference Page2018, Reference Page2023), and Simbad (simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad) has undertaken similar connection-building for astronomical objects for over 20 years (Wenger et al. Reference Wenger, Ochsenbein, Egret, Dubois, Bonnarel, Borde and Genova2000). Both incorporate elements of cross-referencing multiple identifiers for the same species (BioNames) or astronomical object (Simbad). Differences between these and KBCR include the scale of both the material and contribution teams, maturity, and that identifying individual objects (and thus a survey count) is not relevant for BioNames. Another parallel (and inspiration for KBCR future presentation and collaborative input development) is the Electronic Literature Knowledge Base (elmcip.net/knowledgebase), which has been connecting individual creative works with critical writing about those works for more than a decade (Rettberg Reference Rettberg2013), though it might be said that creative works might rarely face the issue of multiple or changing identifiers. Turning to the archaeology field, while there are many websites publishing databases of distinct object types—for example, Plain of Jars (plain-of-jars.org), and the Espirit collection of engraved prehistoric plaques of Portugal and Spain (iberian.its.uiowa.edu)—the author is yet to find a publicly available resource that connects an entire class of archaeological objects to all relevant literature.

Literature

The literature table has one row for each piece of literature reviewed for the KBCR. Along with a formally structured citation and links to an online source, where available, the information collected includes author(s), year published, language, and whether it is a reprint of a previous publication. Each piece of literature is given a unique literature-reference code, which is used in the connection table (described shortly). Each chapter in an edited book is given its own unique code and entry in the literature table, alongside a standalone entry for the edited book.

The KBCR creator is monolingual, and reliance was placed on Google Translate for literature written in languages other than English. This was considered suitable for this purpose but would not be appropriate for heavily technical language or if nuance or sentiment analysis were required. Only the most recent literature was in digitized form, which could be put through Translate as a full document. Earlier literature was available as photocopies, scans, and occasionally as photographs of the material, and in these cases the text was handtyped prior to translation. This might have been sped up by applying OCR (optical character recognition) software, though its efficacy would have been minimal for text from the 1800s, particularly for low-resolution renderings of German gothic typeface, for example.

For the field of khipu research, the KBCR contributes to the body of work gathering and systematically analyzing literature following (in the original order of publication) Locke (Reference Locke1923), Radicati di Primeglio (Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008a), Ascher and Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1972), Urbizagástegui Alvarado (Reference Urbizagástegui Alvarado2014), and Medrano and Brokaw (Reference Medrano and Brokaw2023). In the 2014 bibliography listing, over 800 pieces of literature were identified as relevant to khipu study; of course, more has been written since. The KBCR differs from preceding overviews in that it is focused on connections to real khipus (further described shortly). Literature is now published predominantly in English and Spanish, but older publications covered various languages, and KBCR compiles all of these to uplift awareness of the vast record beyond linguistic boundaries.

Connections

The connection table has one row for each khipu mentioned in each piece of literature reviewed for the KBCR. The core data for each connection are the literature-reference code and the khipu-code (described shortly). Other information collected includes the page(s) the khipu mention occurs on, whether the mention is text and/or includes a full or partial image, and data to aid unique identification, such as museum and identification number and provenance, if known.

If the khipu is present in the KFG, the unique khipu-code in the KBCR reflects how that khipu is identified in the KFG database. While this is usually the same identifier (beginning with “KH” standing for khipu) used by the Open Khipu Repository (OKR; see Brezine et al. [Reference Brezine, Clindaniel, Ghezzi, Hyland and Medrano2024] for an important discussion on naming conventions), there are some khipus in the KFG that are not in OKR and do not have a KH identifier; in these cases, the unique KFG identifier is used. Where there are other historic identifiers, these are included in the KBCR khipu-code for completeness. For the khipus that are not in OKR or the KFG, a unique khipu-code has been created specifically for use in the KBCR. This code uses the year the khipu first appeared in the literature, and often the museum identifier or find place.

The first time a khipu is mentioned in literature was a point of interest, and the count of first mentions effectively counts the unique objects. When a new connection was made to a khipu already in the listing, care was taken to check against previous or subsequent connections to be sure the first mention was accurately marked, and (for those not in the KFG) to adjust the khipu-code if necessary. If the information in the literature was insufficient to definitively establish that the khipu was the same as one already identified in the KBCR (e.g., a museum identifier, a KFG code, an image, or a description), it was given a unique khipu-code. However, it must be acknowledged that some of these khipus may already be listed elsewhere in the KBCR; but without detailed information to permit cross-reference confirmation, they necessarily remain uniquely identified and counted.

Authors regularly refer to groups of khipus without discussing the individual objects, such as the Santa Valley group (e.g., “a set of six colonial-era khipus found together in a tomb in the Santa Valley” [Hyland Reference Hyland2016:503]) or those from the Lake of Condors (e.g., “quipus found at Laguna de Los Cóndores” [Hamilton Reference Hamilton2016:92]). It was decided it was inappropriate for the KBCR to assume that each khipu in the collective description was being individually mentioned, and so groupings or bundles were created. A bundle is given a unique bundle-code (each begins with “_bundle_”), which is used in the connections table instead of listing individual khipu-codes.Footnote ²

The goal of KBCR specifically was to connect real khipus to the publications that mention them. Therefore, paper khipus—data reconstructions of khipus from information in transcriptions or textual evidence (Medrano Reference Medrano2021a:290)—were not included. Both modern-day funerary khipus (e.g., Tun and Zubieta Núñez Reference Tun and Zubieta Núñez2016) and khipu boards (e.g., Hyland et al. Reference Hyland, Ware and Clark2014) were also excluded. Two khipus from the earliest literature, while considered apocryphal, are in the KBCR: that described by Sansevero di Sangro in his 1750 Lettera Apologetica, and the Strong khipu first published in 1827. These were included because historical literature regularly interleaves discussion of these with real, archaeological khipus. Other than these special treatments, all objects identified as khipus are included (for the khipu specialist, this includes Inca-style, Wari, canutos, etc.).

Making the Object-Literature Connections

Reading. In choosing how to approach over two centuries of literature for the KBCR, surveys of previous literature and khipus were taken as the starting point: in the original order of publication, Locke (Reference Locke1923), Radicati di Primeglio (Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008a), Ascher and Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1972, Reference Ascher and Ascher1978, Reference Ascher and Ascher1988), Urbizagástegui Alvarado (Reference Urbizagástegui Alvarado2014), Urton (Reference Urton2017), and Medrano (Reference Medrano2021b). The work began with the earliest literature and worked forward in time. References and citations from each publication were added to the literature listing, and the earliest reviewed before moving forward in time again. This was useful in building an understanding of the chronological development of the field, which was especially relevant to the first mention data field. Where a piece of literature was found not to refer to real khipus, it remained in the listing as evidence of review.

Building the connection table combined close reading with scanning and skim-reading of the literature. Sometimes a khipu was referred to using a museum identifier, or a researcher identifier like those first developed by Marcia and Robert Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1972) and adopted by many subsequent scholars, where a khipu was uniquely identified in their study cohort by using two letters derived from their name followed by a number representing study order; for example, AS11, UR67 (Gary Urton), or HP10 (Hugo Pereyra) (see Brezine et al. Reference Brezine, Clindaniel, Ghezzi, Hyland and Medrano2024). However, not all literature used this convention, most obviously the literature prior to the 1970s.

Close reading was necessary to recognize descriptive references. For example, “dos quipus calendáricos” (two calendrical khipus; Zuidema Reference Zuidema and Hoffmann2014:397) refers to khipus with the identifiers KH0242 and KH0113. This could be quite challenging where an author referred to a khipu without discussing it in detail. For example, in the preface to his first publication, Erland Nordenskiöld lists the khipus he had access to but did not publish in detail; for example, “I have borrowed from the Linden Museum two well-preserved quipus” (Reference Nordenskiöld1925a:4). One of these Linden Museum khipus appeared again in the literature only once, in 1969 (Menninger Reference Menninger1969:253), where it was presented as a photograph without further textual elucidation. For the KBCR, it was matched to khipu MM020 in the KFG by morphology.

Images. Images of the khipus, and any morphological descriptions or the presence of identifying features, were important for verifying which khipu was being referred to. There was a surprising number of errors in the literature, where the text or caption had the wrong khipu museum identifier or researcher-specific khipu-code (e.g., in Urton [Reference Urton2017], four plates [9, 10, 11, 12] are captioned with the incorrect identifier). These were corrected in the KBCR where it was obvious, which was usually where an image was also present; however, misidentifications may remain in the KBCR where information in the text was not sufficient to recognize an error.

Consequently, an image bank—a collection of all drawings and photographs from the assessed literature—developed into a crucial component in the process of populating the KBCR connection table. In earlier literature, visual representations of khipus were often inadequately identified, with some presented without a caption. Determining which khipus were represented sometimes required detailed visual investigation, either relying on the image bank or on making a comparison with the schematics in the KFG.Footnote ³ The image bank was also required for recent literature, where errors in captions and text mentions were more prevalent than expected.

Underdescribed Objects. Some literature referred to the existence of khipus without further elucidation. Where the count of khipus was modest, these were added as connections; for example, if there were 10 khipus found at an archaeological dig, each was given a unique khipu-code and added to the connections table. Subsequent literature occasionally gave more detail, from which individual khipu-codes could be updated.

However, it became evident that creating these placeholder khipu-codes for large collections was too onerous and error-prone. This situation was faced in assessing literature that worked with whole collections, or surveyed extant khipus (e.g., Ascher and Ascher Reference Ascher and Ascher1978, Reference Ascher and Ascher1988; Medrano Reference Medrano2021b; Urton Reference Urton2017). For example, Medrano (Reference Medrano2021b) counts 402 khipus in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin (EMB) (via Loza Reference Loza1999) and 256 for the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú (MNAAHP) in Lima (via Adawi Schreiber et al. Reference Adawi Schreiber, lzquierdo, Mejía Pérez, Rojas Leiva, Hoffmann and Urton2011). For the KBCR, it was decided that khipus from the EMB and MNAAHP collections that are alluded to but not individually identified would not be entered into the connection table. That is, only unambiguously identified khipus were included for these two museums. A similar decision was made for the “examined but not detailed” and “unexamined” khipus in Ascher and Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1978, Reference Ascher and Ascher1988) and the “unstudied” khipus in Urton (Reference Urton2017).

Findings from the KBCR

At the time of writing 599 pieces of literature, published up to the end of 2024, were assessed for the KBCR,Footnote ⁴ from which 3,886 connections were made to khipus or bundles. Of the connections so far made between literature and khipus (visualized in Figure 2):

• • 1,141 (637 + 504; 30%) of these represent the first time a khipu is mentioned; there is one first mention per khipu, and this is effectively a count of unique khipus.

• • 2,454 (63%) are subsequent mentions, following the first mention.

• • 291 (7%) are references to bundles (groups of khipus, not individual khipus).

Figure 2.

Makeup of all KBCR khipu connections.

Patterns in Published Literature. Data from the KBCR allow for analysis of patterns in publication of information about khipus over the years.Footnote ⁵ For example, as shown in Figure 3, there has been a significant increase in literature mentioning real khipus since the early 1980s (also observed by Medrano Reference Medrano2021b).

Figure 3.

Count of all literature reviewed to date for the KBCR, by publishing year.

This can be further interrogated by identifying when each unique khipu was first mentioned in the published literature. In Figure 4, each dot is a year with at least one publication with a khipu connection, and the line traces the cumulative mentions of unique khipus over time (up to a total of 1,141). The impact of individual publications can be observed as jumps in the line.

Figure 4.

Graph of unique khipus, by the year of literature they were first mentioned.Footnote ⁶

The KBCR highlights that 504 khipus mentioned in the literature have not yet been included in open khipu databases like the KFG. For example, the fact that almost as many khipus are included in the KFG database as are absent from it, and which therefore cannot contribute to investigations using data-driven methodologies (see Clindaniel Reference Clindaniel2019; Medrano and Khosla Reference Medrano and Khosla2024), is a reminder of the gaps in current knowledge and a call to a concerted effort to study and include them.

Case Study 1: Building an Object Story from Published Text and Images

As a demonstration of the insights possible from an object-literature connection resource, this case study used the KBCR to trace two khipus through the literature. Images of these khipus, taken decades apart, also record the deterioration of the object(s) through time. They also hinted that the two khipus were the same object. A subsequent interrogation of the literature suggested no other author had associated them, and this historiography in miniature reveals the difficulties in khipu care and study.

To the best of our current knowledge, the first photograph of a khipu was published in 1881.Footnote ⁷ Pacheco Zegarra represented the collector Dr. José Mariano Macedo at the Congreso Internacional de Americanistas in Madrid, and the photograph (Figure 5) was published in the proceedings (Pacheco Zegarra Reference Pacheco Zegarra1881:plate after p. 328; referred to as “1881-Macedo” in this section). The khipu is described as “Un quipu perfectamente conservado, el major conservado de cuantos hasta el presente se conocían” (A perfectly preserved quipu, the best preserved of those known to date; Pacheco Zegarra Reference Pacheco Zegarra1881:323). In the same year, the collector listed this khipu as #1497 of their collection: “Un grand rouleau de ‘Quipus’ ou écriture des Indiens formée de fils et de nœuds de différentes couleurs” (A large scroll of “Quipus” or Indian writing made up of threads and knots of different colors; Macedo Reference Macedo1881:69). Hamy briefly mentions the khipu when discussing Macedo’s collection: “parmi lesquels se trouvent deux grands quippus qui présentent un extreme intérét” (among which are two large quippus which are of extreme interest; Reference Hamy1882:1:68).

Figure 5.

Reproduction of image in Pacheco Zegarra (Reference Pacheco Zegarra1881:plate following p. 328; reproduced here under fair use).

In 1888 the Archiv für Post und Telegraphie published a line drawing (Figure 6; referred to as “1888-Post” in this section) of a khipu, from the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin (MfVB; now the EMB), with no discussion in the text (Anonymous Reference Anonymous1888). Hamy (Reference Hamy1897) briefly suggests comparing a khipu from the Musée du Trocadéro (Paris) with this line drawing: “On pourra comparer cette curieuse pièce à celle du Museum für Völkerkunde de Berlin publiée en 1888, par l’Archiv für Post un Telegraphie” (We can compare this curious piece with that of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin published in 1888, by the Archiv für Post un Telegraphie; Hamy Reference Hamy1897:110). And in a footnote in an 1897 article, Uhle rather disparagingly describes the 1888 drawing as an example of khipus “reproduced more for the sake of curiosity than with any intention of explaining them” (Reference Uhle1897:58n1).

Figure 6.

Reproduction of image in Archiv für Post und Telegraphie (Anonymous Reference Anonymous1888:plate after p. 594; reproduced here under fair use).

In Locke’s 1923 book, the 1881-Macedo khipu is listed as #35; the image in Figure 5 is reproduced on plate XLIII, with the following statement in the text: “It is not possible from the cut to determine the nature of the beads or shells used to group the strands” (Locke Reference Locke1923:29). This proposal—that the 1881-Macedo khipu has beads or shells—is repeated in Altieri (Reference Altieri1937:2), Radicati di Primeglio (Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008a:83), and Ruiz Estrada (Reference Ruiz Estrada1981:30; Ruiz Estrada in fact appears to believe that the 1881-Macedo khipu is different from that presented as #35 in Locke [Reference Locke1923]). These materials, however, are likely to have been removable elements used for mounting and display by the collector, not shells or beads.

The 1888-Post khipu is separately listed in Locke (Reference Locke1923) as #36, and the line drawing in Figure 6 reproduced on plate XLIV titled “A Fine Drawing of Quipu No. 36 and a Section of the Same Quipu.” Radicati di Primeglio also refers to 1881-Macedo and 1888-Post as two different khipus in both his 1951 and 1976 publications (respectively, Radicati di Primeglio Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008a:82–83, Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008b:305), the latter also included a reproduction of the image in Figure 5 (Radicati di Primeglio Reference Radicati di Primeglio and Urton2008b:307).

Upon closer examination of the two images, it is evident that the morphology of the objects is consistent. That is, the 1881-Macedo and 1888-Post khipus are the same khipu. Figure 7 shows the top part of each khipu, with the 1888-Post khipu flipped along both the vertical and horizontal axis for easier comparison: the red arrows identify striking similarities in the cord groupings along the primary cord, and the boxes highlight particularly a remarkable alignment of knot patterns. Figure 8 shows the similarity in the patterning of the cord lengths. In reading both diagrams, it is important to be cognizant of the fact that one is a drawing and that its fidelity to the referent is unprovable.

Figure 7.

Comparison of 1881-Macedo, bottom, and 1888-Post, top; composite drawing made by author.

Figure 8.

Overlaying 1888-Post over 1881-Macedo (flipped on vertical axis), detail; composite drawing made by author.

Other literature tells us that the khipu was in Macedo’s collection in 1881 but in the MfVB by 1888. It has been noted elsewhere that Macedo sold much of his collection to the MfVB in this period, this becoming the museum’s second khipu (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:150, 153), and that Macedo donated a khipu to the MfVB in 1884 (Loza Reference Loza1999:53). The latter publication is the first time a museum number was ascribed to the 1881-Macedo khipu(s) (three associated objects, VA4319a-c),Footnote ⁸ accompanied by an image of a set of three khipu fragments (Figure 9A). As Loza refers to the 1888-Post khipu as “a drawing of a fully displayed quipu that had originally been in the hands of Théodor de Ber” (Loza Reference Loza1999:61; information attributed to Hamy), it appears that Loza considered them to be two different khipus.

Figure 9.

(A) Reproduction of image and caption in Loza (Reference Loza1999:54); (B) reproduction of image in Gänger (Reference Gänger2014:102), noted as accession number VA4319 (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:155n219). (Both images originally from Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, therefore reproduced here under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Returning to Gänger, Macedo’s collecting history is detailed in a chapter (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:101–159), and an image of the khipu from the MfVB is included (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:102; Figure 9B). While a footnote in the text (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:155n218) refers to the 1888 Archiv für Post article while discussing Macedo’s khipu, no explicit connection is made between the 1888-Post and 1881-Macedo khipus. It is also stated that “Macedo’s notebooks retain detailed descriptions and measurements of the khipu in his collection” (Gänger Reference Gänger2014:127), giving hope to the possibility that the original khipu data could be reconstructed. Such a reconstruction of data would give us more information about this object than is available in its current state.

This case study has shown the value of tracing an object through a comprehensive literature survey—it has generated new knowledge about this khipu that had been treated as two different and separate objects until now. The partial loss of this khipu over time serves as an acute reminder of the fragile nature of khipu materiality and the challenges that collections face in their storage, care, and conservation. This exercise may not in itself be novel—many researchers undertake similar in-depth object- and literature-based investigations; however, the innovation is that the KBCR has facilitated the finding of all relevant literature in a way that was less time-consuming than a traditional research approach (recall FitzPatrick’s [Reference FitzPatrick2024] difficulties).

Case Study 2: Revised/Updated Object Survey

As a second demonstration of the insights possible from an object-literature connection resource, this case study describes the revision/update to the count of known khipus. The detail will be of interest to khipu researchers, and the methodology and considerations are generalizable for any similar exercise with any other object-literature dataset.

While the exact number of khipus to have survived to the present day is not confidently known, early work by Ascher and Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1978), and updated in Ascher and Ascher (Reference Ascher and Ascher1988), estimated the khipu count to be around 560. In 2017 Urton updated this to 923, though when corrected for some errors (detailed in the Supplementary Table 1) this becomes 918. The most recent formal survey undertaken by Medrano (Reference Medrano2021b:147–162) greatly expanded the publicly available information about khipus with confirmed collection locations, and increased the count to 1,386.

The data collected for the KBCR were compared with Medrano’s survey (the detailed revised survey and reconciliation is provided as Supplementary Table 1). Before comparing the numbers, it must be acknowledged that the 2021 survey was focused on counting khipus in collections. To that end, it is understood that several khipus in the KBCR were known of but not included in the published listing because their location could not be established. Concomitantly, it is important to state that for the KBCR data the location of a khipu (with some exceptions, which will be described shortly) has been taken directly from the literature and has not been independently confirmed. Additionally, more than 40 of the khipus in the KBCR have first appeared in the literature since 2021, after the Medrano survey was published.

This updated khipu count includes three special treatments. The first: direct adoption of Medrano’s count for the two largest collections (item B2 in the numbers in Figure 10; for reasons already described). The second: direct adoption of Medrano’s count where they were based on documents or correspondence that were not consulted for this study (items C2 and D2). The third treatment refers to three museum counts that were supplemented by additional information obtained by the author. The khipu count for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) was revised based on information from their collections database,Footnote ⁹ which indicates they hold 105 individual khipus (not including fragmentary cords; split in Figure 10 by Medrano count [s1], additional in KBCR [s2], and the balancing count [s3]). The khipu count for the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology was consolidated using information from the museum,Footnote ¹⁰ and that for the Herrett Centre for Art and Science was based on a visit by the author (together making up item X1).Footnote ¹¹

Figure 10.

Reconciliation of updated/revised khipu survey counts.

The resulting count of khipus with location information, including private collections—which started with Medrano’s listing and added data from the KBCR and above—is revised/updated to 1,656 (item H). The difference is made of (1) 54 from the AMNH, in addition to those listed in Medrano (items s2 and s3); (2) 104 from other collections where the KBCR count is different to the Medrano count (item F2; detailed by collection in Supplementary Table 1); (3) 53 from collections not in Medrano listing (item G); and (4) 55 additional khipus gleaned from a review of online museum collection data (item X2).

This total count increases if the 25 khipus identified in the KBCR as being in community (item I), such as those in Tupicocha and Rapaz, are added (noting that Medrano’s listing was not intended to include this subset, and Rapaz is counted as one object for this purpose).Footnote ¹² Similarly, the additional 40 khipus in the KBCR without museum information (item K) are not present in Medrano. The total count then increases to 1,721 if these two sets are included and the 10 apocryphal khipus and quipolas are excluded (item J), and this might be considered the maximum count of unique khipus based on the data. Figure 11 graphically maps the numbers in Figure 10, building the revised/updated survey count (middle column) by beginning with Medrano data (left column) and supplementing with new information (right column).

Figure 11.

Explanation of elements of revised/updates khipu count.

However, a count of 1,721 is almost certainly an overstatement. As previously discussed, it is likely that some khipus currently uniquely coded in the KBCR are already listed but cannot be linked owing to insufficient information; that is, they are counted more than once. Further, it is possible that a portion of the khipus labelled as “unstudied” or “unexamined” by Aschers and Urton have since been accounted for in the KBCR. If half of these elements (items C2 and F2)—as an exaggerated portion, for the sake of argument—were possible duplicates and removed from the count, it falls to around 1,650. The likely reality is somewhere between 1,650 and 1,721, and “around 1,700” may be a suitable approximate count of khipus as supported by the information from Medrano and the KBCR data sources. The actual count of extant khipus is potentially higher, for there may still be unidentified khipus held in collections.