Quipu

There's so many.

I'm really interested in the khipu as a specific object in the collection.

Khipu means kind of knotted cord system, which was used in the Inca Empire.

And we have an 18th century example.

And what is really interesting about it is that it's basically a tangle of knots and it's like what does each knot mean could be fishing surveys it could be more genealogical narrative stories it could be crop production but I think what's what's so fascinating is that we we can study the knots we can see the spacing we can look at the direction of spin of the thread we can look at the colour because each strand has a different colour some are red some are blue we can count how many knots are on the line but we'll never actually know what these knots are trying to say