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khipu project (was kitchens)
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khipu project (was kitchens)


  • Subject: khipu project (was kitchens)
  • From: Carrie Brezine <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:46:26 -0500

Bill Cheesman asked:

I can't tell you about the kitchens, but I'm very curious to know what the
Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Harvard might be doing with Cocoa. Is there
anything you can tell us?

--


Hi Bill,

first, I am new to the Harvard community as of last fall, and have as yet been unable to determine whether any Cocoa development is going on outside my project. Seems likely but I haven't found it yet! So I cannot speak for FAS as a whole.

My particular project is (to me) quite fascinating. I'll try to be brief. The Inkas lived in the Andes (Peru) just before the Spanish conquest of the area. They built a great empire. Unlike any other imperial force, the Inkas and predecessors never developed a system of writing. They kept track of tribute, history, myth, census, calendars, and who knows what else on textile artifacts called khipu. (If you do a web search, also try the spelling quipu. Orthographic changes for Quechua words are underway). Khipu are networks of strings with knots. Many times the knots have numerical values; in other cases the meaning is not so clear. In addition there's a multitude of meaningful textile markers-- spin direction, cord structure, color, fiber, direction of knots, ways in which cords are attached to each other. Presently there is no easily searchable body of data on these artifacts. The goal is to create a database to hold all the information we know about khipu. (Database will be FrontBase, living on an XServe). The first Cocoa objective is writing the data entry tool so a user can enter the known information into the database. I'm still not done with that. Eventually, we'd like to have a querying application that will allow researchers here and elsewhere to create their own queries against the database. Once the data is in place we hope to apply more than just queries to it-- the goal is to look for patterns, symmetries, anything that will help break the code of this information storage system. (If anyone has ideas on pattern recognition software I'd gladly hear them). I'd also like to have cocoa functions that can map a schematic of each artifact from the db information.

We don't have a web page yet. Anyone wanting more information on khipu or the project is welcome to contact me off-list.

Carrie

Carrie Brezine
Khipu Database Administrator
Harvard University Department of Anthropology
Peabody Museum 59C
11 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-496-1989
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