'To reveal the Eternal' : the spiritual friendship of Margaret Cropper and Evelyn Underhill

Margaret Cropper is best known in Anglican circles for completing Lucy Menzies' biography of Underhill. Cropper's own writings, however, have been almost entirely forgotten, although she was considered one of the pre-eminent Lake district poets of her day, renowned for "her supreme skill... clear, individual voice ... and deep understanding of the [Lake] folk and their dialect". Cropper's influential friendship with Underhill has likewise been largely overlooked. The two writers corresponded frequently, sending rough drafts of their manuscripts to the other for comment and correction. Underhill stayed with Cropper at the latter's home in the Lake District on numerous occasions, and it was Cropper who recommended Reginald Somerset Ward to Underhill as her next spiritual director after Baron Friedrich von Hügel. This essay will present a brief survey of Cropper's life and career before examining Underhill and Cropper's friendship.PostprintPeer reviewe

Knot Anomalies on Inka Khipus: Revising Locke’s Knot Typology

In 2007, in the IV Actas de las Jornadas Internacionales sobre Textiles Precolombinos, Kylie Quave noted the existence of various structural anomalies in khipus presumed to date to the Late Horizon. These anomalies included the use of non-cotton vegetal fibres, the inclusion of single red strings, subsidiary cords that are plied through rather than half hitched, and the placement of long knots and figure-8 knots “in a way that precludes a numerical reading”. Since Quave’s article, there has been little examination of such anomalies, nor have scholars known whether such anomalies were to be found in khipus that had been radiocarbon dated to the Late Horizon, or whether they occurred only in post-Inka khipus. This chapter examines anomalies in a khipu radiocarbon dated to the Late Horizon (475+-26 cal BP), focusing on a specific type of anomalous knot, referred to as a “nether knot”, which occurs below the unit position on a khipu pendant in a zone where, according to Locke’s knot typology, no knot should be present. Nether knots, which are found on one or more pendants in over 20% of the khipus in the Online Khipu Repository, the world’s largest khipu database, form a significant feature of the khipu corpus. This article proposes a reading of nether knots based on ethnographic analogy with nether knots on 20th century khipus. A better understanding of nether knots allows us to provide more precise readings for the khipus that contain them, necessitating a revision to Leland Locke’s influential knot typology. En 2007, en las Actas de las Jornadas Internacionales sobre Textiles Precolombinos IV, Kylie Quave señaló la existencia de varias anomalías estructurales en khipus que se presume datan del Horizonte Tardío. Estas anomalías incluyeron el uso de fibras vegetales distintas del algodón, la inclusion de hilos rotos simples, cordones subsidiarios que están trenzados en lugar de medio entrelazados y la colocación de nudos largos y nudos en forma de 8 “de una manera que impide una lectura numérica”. Después del artículo de Quave, ha habido poco examen de tales anomalías, y los estudiosos tampoco han sabido si tales anomalías se encontraron en khipus que habían sido fechados por radiocarbon en el Horizonte Tardío, o si ocurrieron solo en khipus post-Inka. Este capítulo examina anomalías en un khipu que data del Horizonte Tarde (475+-26 cal BP), centrándose en un tipo específico de nudo anómalo, denominado “nudo inferior”, que ocurre debajo de la posición de las unidades en un colgante en un zona donde, según la tipología de Leland Locke, no debería haber ningún nudo. Los nudos inferiors, que se encuentran en uno o más colgantes en más de 20% de los khipus en el OKR (Open Khipu Repository), la base de khipus más grande del mundo, forman una característica importante del corpus de khipu. Este artículo propone una lectura de los nudos inferiores basada en una analogia etnográfica con los nudos inferiores en los khipus del siglo XX. Una mejor comprensión de los nudos inferiores nos permite proporcionar lecturas más precisas de los khipus que los contienen, lo que require una revision de la influyente tipología de nudos de Locke

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

Khipus, khipu boards and sacred texts : toward a philology of Andean knotted cords

This research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Leverhulme Trust, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the University of St. Andrews.Although the knotted cord texts known as khipus have been created in the Andes for over a millennium (ca. AD 950–1950), their historical philology has been little understood. This study, based on original archival and ethnographic research, analyzes hybrid khipu/alphabetic texts known as “khipu boards,” examining their development in colonial Peru, and their role in twentieth-century Andean rituals. Particular attention is paid to a previously unknown sacred manuscript, the Entablo, from the community of San Pedro de Casta, Peru, which describes how villagers used khipu boards in their annual religious ceremonies until the 1950s. This study reveals new insights into the social and symbolic nature of post-Inka khipus as texts, particularly with reference to gender, place, and knowledge.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Writing with twisted cords : the inscriptive capacity of Andean khipus

Two newly discovered khipu (Andean twisted cord) epistles are presented as evidence that khipus could constitute an intelligible writing system, accessible to decipherment. Recent scholars have asserted that khipus were merely memory aides recording only numbers, despite Spanish witnesses who claimed that Inka era (1400 - 1532 CE) khipus encoded narratives and were sent as letters. In 2015, the author examined two khipus preserved by village authorities in Peru. Villagers state that these sacred khipus are narrative epistles about warfare. Analysis reveals that the khipus contain 95 different symbols, a quantity within the range of logosyllabic writing, and notably more symbols than in regional accounting khipus. A shared, mutually comprehensive communication system of such complexity presupposes a writing system, possibly logosyllabic. At the end of each khipu epistle, cord sequences of distinct colours, animal fibres and ply direction appear to represent lineage ("ayllu") names.PostprintPublisher PDFPeer 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