Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies Gary Urton has studied the Inkan khipus - knotted strings that recorded quantitative and narrative information about the great Andean empire - since he started studying Andean culture as a doctoral student. This instrument, made of strands of knotted and often dyed wool or cotton, registers various types of information: numeric, demographic, calendrical, narrative and tributary. Working closely with Urton, the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art and Harvard University's DRCLAS organized an exhibition, "Khipus: Counting Knots in the Incan Empire," from July 2003 through March 2004 in the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile. It was the first ever exhibition devoted entirely to khipus and one of the most popular exhibitions in the museum's history. As a result of this research and joint work on an exhibition, there are continuing collaborations between researchers at Harvard and at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino on Pre-Columbian art and archaeology of South America.

Participating Harvard faculty: Gary Urton, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies.

Collaborating Institutions: Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, http://www.precolombino.cl