tukapu

This paper explores what Guaman Poma communicates about tukapu and native modes of discourse through the illustrations and format of the Inca section of his chronicle. Building on seminal work of other authors who have recognized "the pattern of spatial signification" (Adorno 1986: 89) in Guaman Poma's drawings, I argue that Guaman Poma spatially connects particular tukapu with different divisions and groups within the Inca Empire. Using the key illustration of the Inca and his Royal Council, I examine Guaman Poma's nested expressions of socio-political organization in the tukapu tunic of the Inca and support the connections with ethnohistoric, ethnographic and archaeological data.

In this paper, I propose that tukapu are diagrammatic frameworks that embed relationships in the configuration of their graphic properties. Using formal analysis, I describe the major characteristics of the code (the properties, formats and entities) and illustrate systematic operations that appear to generate variants and navigate between them. I apply this method to several tukapu and illustrate the congruence between graphic relationships in the tukapu and the relationships that underpin several spheres of Inka socio-political organization.

Page 1. 25 What Guaman Poma shows us, ... Propongo que Guaman Poma informa con agudeza al observador acerca de los tukapu por medio de la ilustración de una prenda de tukapu de codificación genuina, contextualizada en una escena compleja. Guaman Poma (ca. ...