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Heritage science contribution to the understanding of meaningful khipu colours

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Date
01/03/2023
Author
Milillo, Lucrezia
Hacke, Marei
Norrehed, Sara
Degano, Ilaria
Gherardi, Francesca
Gunnarsson, Ellinor
Keywords
Khipu
Wari
Textiles
Dyestuffs
Heritage science
Multiband imaging
X-ray fluorescence
High-performance liquid chromatpgraphy
Mass spectrometry
F1201 Latin America (General)
GN Anthropology
CB History of civilization
E
NIS
MCC
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Abstract
This work is the first scientific study of khipu dyes and inorganic mordants and auxiliaries, paving the way for a new approach to understanding khipus’ meaningful materiality, technology, and colours. Khipus have usually been described as “Andean knotted records”, but they are much more than complex knotted cords: a great part of the information encoded resides in khipus’ incredible colours. The objects of this study are two Wari khipus, 1932.08.0001 and 1932.08.0002, now at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. After a morphological study of the khipus, the objects were imaged with multiband imaging (MBI) as an aid for the sampling decisional process. The khipus were then analysed non-invasively by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy on selected areas of particular interest. The khipus were consequently sampled for elemental characterisation by micro-XRF, and liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC–HRMS) for characterising the organic dye composition. This paper presents a part of the results of the project “Meaningful materials in the khipu code”, with the intent to shed light on the difficulties and possibilities of investigating khipu colours and dyestuffs. MBI and XRF revealed unforeseeable structural characteristics, such as remnants from a heavily degraded thread in an area of missing thread wrapping and a dual-coloured thread that was previously deemed single-coloured. The organic dyes identified by HPLC–HRMS comprised indigoids, cochineal, and an unknown flavonoid-based dyestuff. XRF of the inorganic components revealed associations of several elements with specific colours.
Citation
Milillo , L , Hacke , M , Norrehed , S , Degano , I , Gherardi , F & Gunnarsson , E 2023 , ' Heritage science contribution to the understanding of meaningful khipu colours ' , Heritage , vol. 6 , no. 3 , pp. 2355-2378 . https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6030124
Publication
Heritage
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6030124
ISSN
2571-9408
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Description
Funding: Financial support by the Access to Research Infrastructures activity in the Horizon 2020 Programme of the EU (IPERION HS Grant Agreement n.871034) is gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported by The Wolfson Foundation, whose Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities is acknowledged with appreciation.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/27022

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