Khipu (Quipu) Field Guide

Khipu Field Guide is a comprehensive digital resource that documents, renders, and analyzes Inka khipus (knotted-cord records) with an emphasis on accessibility and computational study. It houses the world’s largest curated digital database of Inka khipus - 703 entries - presented as schematic, symbolic renderings rather than photographs, and offers searchable tools (by name, image, and data), interactive graphics, and browsers like the Fieldmark and Ascher Sum explorers. The site organizes material into a Guidebook for newcomers, a Sketchbook of visualized khipus, a Notebook with technical analyses, a Textosbook translating colonial-era “paper khipus,” and a Databook that explains the painstaking digitization workflow. Endorsements from scholars highlight the resource’s value for visualization and data-driven inquiry.

Analytical work emphasizes pattern discovery and decipherment: collaborative research by Ashok Khosla and Manuel Medrano demonstrates recurring sign distributions and decoding patterns, summarized in a peer-reviewed article arguing that data science can advance understanding of the khipu code. The databook details methodological challenges - restoring malformed digitizations, hypothesizing reversed recordings, and reconstructing cord order - and explains rendering conventions and tools used to standardize and correct records. The project presents concrete findings (statistical, relational, and analytical fieldmarks), practical methods for researchers, and promises additional decipherment breakthroughs.