Encyclopedia of the Incas

41 (9 + 9 + 9 + 14) ceques. For calendrical reconstruction here, we assume that
the number and arrangement of ceques in suyu IV was ideally like that of the
other quadrants.
The ceque system arrangement outlined above was the framework for the
“ceque calendar” in Cuzco. Located along the 41 ceque alignments were 328
sacred places, or huacas. The ceque calendar followed a count of days (one
day/huaca) through the sequence of huacas from one ceque to the next; the count
of days/huacas in the hurin half of the system proceeded in an ascending order;
those in hanan were counted in descending order. To the total of 328
huacas/days was added an additional period of 37 days that was not formally
counted in the ritual calendar (328 + 37 = 365). The 37-day period began after
the day marking the end of the harvest in Cuzco (at the end of April, in the
Gregorian calendar) and ended with the first preparations for the next
agricultural season, in June. While the Spanish chroniclers all state that there
were 12 months in the Inca calendar, they left uncounted the extra (37-day)
period. Ten ranked groups of Inca high nobility, the panacas, were responsible
for one or another of the months of the ceque calendar. The panacas were in
charge of the tasks, rituals, and myths associated with their respective period in
the calendar. The ceque calendar documented an annual sequence of events that
took into account a variety of solar, lunar, and stellar events, otherwise described
in their own regular calendars.
One medium of calendar records was in textiles, as seen particularly clearly in
those of the Chuquibamba style, which were produced in the southern Inca
quarter of Cuntisuyu, in the Pacific coastal highlands. The organization of
elements in the Chuquibamba textiles displays clear principles of Inca
calendrical organization and appears to document integrated periods of the ceque
calendar. Calendrical periods are registered in the Chuquibamba textiles by
means of rows and columns of small worked squares in groups of days organized
in “weekly,” “monthly,” and “yearly” periods. While the ceque calendar in
Cuzco at first sight may seem irregular, it combined and integrated periods that
are, in fact, convincingly documented by the textile calendars.
One of the Chuquibamba textile calendars contains a solar year calendar count
with months of 30 or 31 days woven into a male tunic with squares laid out in
vertical rows. In addition, three different kinds of lunar and stellar calendars
were woven into female mantles, using horizontal rows. One mantle appears to
derive from observing the 27.3-day movement of the moon from a star or
constellation through the night sky and back to that star or constellation, a period