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The lower Lurín Valley of central coastal Peru is the area most abundant in archaeological khipus. The montane upper Lurín is the area most abundant in patrimonial khipus. What could this mean? The Quechua-language mythohistory of the Lurín Valley written c.1608 limelights high-Andean herders as protagonist yauyos. Fighting down the Lurín Valley they master lower- and mid-valley yunca settlements, even to the outliers of Pachacámac, where their Inka allies would build religious hegemony. Yet the Huarochirí Manuscript is really more a yunca-oriented work than a yauyo-centric one; yuncas get 38 mentions, Inkas 33, and Yauyos 11. Now that the archaeology of the Lurín and nearby rivers has become profuse, we wonder who ‘conquered’ (atiy) whom. Was khipu use imposed on late prehispanic Yauyos by the Incas of Pachacámac? I will argue instead for a more complex, earlier history involving the coastal culture known as Ychsma. Ychsma also created khipus – “anomalous” khipus, whose peculiarities give clues about ethnographic khipus’ puzzling non-Inka attributes.

Frank Salomon, ethnographer and ethnohistorian of the Andes, is the author of At the Mountains’ Altar: Anthropology of Religion in an Andean Community (2017) as well as other books including The Huarochiri Manuscript, a Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion (1991), the Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas – South America (1999), The Cord Keepers (2004), and a forthcoming book on the Quechua-language songs of Rapaz village. A past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory, he has held NSF, Guggenheim, SAR, and NSF fellowships. He received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Frank Salomon is the John V. Murra Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.