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Chronology, Succession, and Sovereignty: The Politics of Inka Historiography and Its Modern Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2006

R. Alan Covey
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University

Abstract

Western scholars have long identified the existence of writing systems as a near-universal characteristic of high civilization, with Tawantinsuyu, the Inka empire, representing the only significant exception.1 Although writing was absent in the pre-Hispanic Andes, there existed the means of recording administrative information and preserving narratives of the past. Inka imperial overseers and specialized record-keepers produced tribute levies, population counts, and assessments of provincial development potential, using a system of knotted cords (a khipu) as their principal device.2 Such records fulfilled bureaucratic and administrative functions that were satisfied in other societies by writing; however, the maintenance of narratives of the Inka past contrasts with these practices in its hybrid use of oral tradition in consultation with similar record keeping devices.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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