KH0696/AK001 - Ascher Decreasing Groups

Fieldguide Notes:

This khipu was part of the Maiman collection, a set of khipus gathered from deaccesioning of the Haifa museum as well as other sources. Another khipu in the collection is referenced in Bat-ami Artzi's article The Secret of the Knot: Khipu No. 936 from the Maiman Collection. The collection is also described in the book Weaving the AfterLife. The khipu has been heavily studied by almost all the members of the KhipuFieldGuide Affiliate team.

The khipu has the following notable features (notes by Karen Thompson):

1. Appears to be a low-level mostly banded khipu, of good construction.
2. Many plied cords, low-magnitude knots/cords, and a predominance of banding indicating a low level khipu.
3. A group of Verso cords on the left, followed by Recto cords on the right, followed by a terminating looped pendant group.
4. A looped set of pendant cords at the right, whose values are the sum of cords to the left (Left-handed sums). The leftmost looped pendant, a white cord, also sums to the next two white pendants.
5. Many cords have knots in non-canonical numerical order, and therefore numeric interpretations have been made, specifically:
   1. p₇, p₈ and p₉ all have Single knots that have been interpreted as value=1 given their register (not as the more normal value of 10)
   2. p₁₂ / 6L, 2L / set to value=8
   3. p₁₃ / 2L, 4L / set to value=6
   4. p₁₅ / 2L, 8L / set to value=10
   5. p₃₄ / 8S, 1S / set to value=81
   Because so many reasonable sums pop out when this reading is made, there is confidence in this reading.
6. There is a relatively rare spiral knot on p₁₇, value=5
7. The sum of p₁—p₈ and p₉—p₁₅ both equal 29
8. The sum of p₁₆—p₂₂ and p₂₄—p₃₁ both equal 44