A Comparison of Two Knotted-Cord Fabrics: An Inka Khipu and a Costa Rican Census

• Published in: Textile Museum journal Vol. 49; no. 1; pp. 134 - 157
• Main Author: Splitstoser, Jeffrey C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Texas Press 2022
• ISSN: 0083-7407; 2475-8825; 2475-8825
• DOI: 10.1353/tmj.2022.a932845

This article presents information about two knotted-cord fabrics: one is an Inka khipu in The Textile Museum Collection (TM 2002.33.43), and the other is a late nineteenth-century census made by Indigenous people of the Talamanca region of Costa Rica, which is also discussed by Scott Palumbo et al. in this volume of The Textile Museum Journal . The author compares and contrasts these two objects, focusing on their formal and structural attributes including dimensions, cord structure, color, and knotting patterns. The author uses these data to infer ideas not only about how these objects were made but also about how information was recorded in them. He also considers the kinds of information the Talamanca census might contain in addition to recording a straightforward count of the Talamanca region’s population. Ultimately, this article asks if the knotted-cord device from Costa Rica represents a knotted-cord tradition that might have functioned like Andean khipus .