cord-keepers in regional administrative centers; down to local, village-level
cord-keepers. Some evidence for the standardization of recording techniques is
provided by Spanish chroniclers, who state that a school for administrators was
set up in Cuzco. The curriculum involved a four-year program, the last two years
of which involved the study of quipu recording and reading methods. The
quipucamayocs were responsible for maintaining records of all matters that
concerned the state, including census records, tribute accounts, and records of
goods stored in and redistributed from state storehouses.
The Spaniards were highly impressed by the record-keeping capacities of the
quipu. One early chronicler, Cieza de León, states,
In each provincial seat there were accountants called quipu-keepers who, by their knots, had the record
and accounting of what was owed as tribute by the people from that district, including silver, gold,
clothing and livestock down to firewood and other, lesser items, and by means of the quipu, arriving at
the end of the year, or of 10 or 20 years, in the accounting of the one who was commissioned to make
the accounting, there would not be lost [from the accounting] even one pair of sandals. . . . And in each
valley today they keep such an accounting, and there are always in each place of habitation as many
accountants as there are lords and every four months they close out [rectify] their accounts in the
aforesaid manner. (Cieza de León 1967 [1553])The Spanish Colonial administrators recognized from the earliest days
following the conquest that the quipucamayocs retained in their knot records a
host of information that was critical to the reorganization and running of the
Spanish Colonial administration. Therefore, they had transcriptions made of
many of the quipu accounts from Native cord keepers’ readings that were
translated into Spanish and recorded by scribes. Researchers are at work today
studying the surviving quipu transcriptions in an effort to try to understand how
the original knot-based information may have been recorded.
Further Reading
Arellano Hoffmann, C., and G. Urton, eds. Atando Cabos. Lima: Ministerio de Cultura, Museo Nacional de
Arqueología, 2011.
Ascher, M., and R. Ascher. Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,
1997.
Brokaw, G. A History of the Khipu. Cambridge Latin American studies, 94. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010.
Cieza de León, Pedro de. El Señorío de los Incas. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1967 [1553].
Julien, Catherine J. Reading Inca History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.
Locke, L. L. The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record. New York: American Museum of Natural
History, 1923.
Mackey, C., H. Pereyra, C. Radicati di Primeglio, H. Rodríguez, and O. Valverde, eds. Quipu y yupana:
Colección de escritos. Lima: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 1990.