Style and rebus in an emergent script from Bolivia : the Koati variant of Andean pictographic writing

Research for this article was supported by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and by grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the National Geographic Society.Andean pictographic writing, once considered the creation of foreign missionaries, is now recognized as a series of locally developed scripts that emerged after contact with alphabetic writing. However, the role of stylistic variation within the Andean pictographic scripts is little understood, nor has the rebus-based glottography of the system’s phonetic signs been fully studied. This article examines the Koati variant of Andean pictographic script from Bolivia’s Island of the Moon, based in part on a newly found pictographic manuscript preserved on animal hides in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. It analyzes how script styles in the Titicaca area correspond to regional groups and explores the nature of rebus signs in the Koati variant, identifying the principles underlying successful homonymic equivalences. Many of the characters in Andean pictographic writing appear to draw upon a repository of Indigenous visual signs that predate the Spanish invasion; research into the emergent pictorial scripts of Peru and Bolivia may provide insights into the meaning of visual signs in other forms of Andean inscription, such as ceramics and khipus.PostprintPeer reviewe

How khipus indicated labour contributions in an Andean village: an explanation of colour banding, seriation and ethnocategories

This research was supported by a Global Exploration Grant from the National Geographic Society (GEFNE120-14).New archival and ethnographic evidence reveals that Inka style khipus were used in the Andean community of Santiago de Anchucaya to record contributions to communal labour obligations until the 1940s. Archival testimony from the last khipu specialist in Anchucaya, supplemented by interviews with his grandson, provides the first known expert explanation for how goods, labour obligations, and social groups were indicated on Inka style Andean khipus. This evidence, combined with the analysis of Anchucaya khipus in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología y Historia Peruana, furnishes a local model for the relationship between the two most frequent colour patterns (colour banding and seriation) that occur in khipus. In this model, colour banding is associated with individual data whilst seriation is associated with aggregated data. The archival and ethnographic evidence also explains how labour and goods were categorized in uniquely Andean ways as they were represented on khipus.PostprintPeer reviewe

Recognizing speculative language in biomedical research articles: a linguistically motivated perspective

We explore a linguistically motivated approach to the problem of recognizing speculative language (“hedging”) in biomedical research articles. We describe a method, which draws on prior linguistic work as well as existing lexical resources and extends them by introducing syntactic patterns and a simple weighting scheme to estimate the speculation level of the sentences. We show that speculative language can be recognized successfully with such an approach, discuss some shortcomings of the method and point out future research possibilities.

Knot direction in a khipu/alphabetic text from the Central Andes

Khipus are knotted-string devices that were used in the Inka Empire for communication and for recording information. We recently analyzed the names and associated khipu cords in a newly discovered hybrid khipu/alphabetic text from the Central Andes. Results indicate a significant relationship in the text between knot direction and a form of social organization known as moieties, in which S-knots correspond to the upper (Hanan) moiety and Z-knots correspond to the lower (Urin) moiety. This relationship suggests that knot direction was used to indicate moiety in Andean khipus and, as such, may represent the first decipherment of a structural element in khipus since the decoding of the number system in the 1920s.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Chankas and the priest:a tale of murder and exile in highland Peru

This work presents the story of the Chanka people of Peru, from the 15th to the 18th century, told through a narrative of the crimes committed by a monstrous priest, Juan Bautista de Albadán, in the early 1600s. Part One explores how the biography of this priest – his atrocities, lifestyle, and ability to evade justice -- illuminates daily life in rural Peru in the 17th century. This tale about an evil cleric and his victims serves as a window through which we can view life in a Chanka village in colonial Peru. Unpublished documents from archives in Spain and Peru, including a cache of personal letters to Albadán from his family, reveal the priest’s innermost thoughts about his crimes and his ties to powerful members of Spanish and Peruvian society; these documents also provide descriptions of daily life in the countryside, from hospitality to books to funerals. In Part Two, the narrative turns to focus on the Chankas and their history from the Inka conquest to the mid-18th century. This half of the book analyses the world of the Chanka leaders who tried to stop Albadán. Who were these native Chanka lords, men such as Don León Apo Guasco, and how were they destroyed in their attempts to bring Albadán to justice? How did Albadán’s counterattack against Don León Apo Guasco disrupt Chanka political and social history for the next 125 years? Most importantly, this history will be analysed through the Chanka’s own concepts of kinship – the ayllu – and of the Andean binary political structure – the saya (moieties) of hanan (upper) and urin (lower). Focusing on these Chanka ethnocategories, rather than solely on the more familiar Eurocentric concepts of class and economy, reveals new insights about change in Andean society throughout the Spanish colonial era. Until now, virtually nothing has been known about the political intrigues among Chanka elites in the Spanish colonial period. Part Two demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, ayllu and moiety rivalries continued to dominate the politics of indigenous Chanka elites well into the 18th century, drawing creole landowners, with whom the Chankas had intermarried, into these native feuds on the eve of the “Age of Andean Insurrection”

Khipu Historiography

This article considers the historiography of khipus, the corded fibre technology used in the Andes to record information such as demographic data, inventories, labour tribute, histories, genealogies, biographies and missives. An overview of archeological and ethnographic khipus is first presented. This essay then addresses the following two questions: (1) how can khipus inform us about Inka history; and (2) how do modern khipus serve as sites of memory and identity?Cet article porte sur l’étude des Khipus, assemblages de cordelettes utilisés dans les Andes afin de noter des informations telles que des données démographiques, des inventaires, des tributs, des histoires, des généalogies, des biographies, certains pouvant être considérés comme des lettres. On brosse tout d’abord un panorama des khipus anciens et de ceux qui sont encore en usage puis deux questions sont abordées : (1) Que peuvent nous dire les khipus de l’histoire incas (2) Quels liens les khipus actuels entretiennent-ils avoir la mémoire et l’identité 

The Jesuit and the Incas

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71816/1/jlca.2005.10.2.453.pd