Mackinley FitzPatrick | Voices: From Flock to Footnote

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is pleased to share a recent feature by Mackinley FitzPatrick (Archaeology Ph.D. Candidate) in the Penn Museum's Voices. Titled "From Flock to Footnote," the feature examines a rare khipu in their collection—an ethnographic example from Bolivia accompanied by a full, documented translation. FitzPatrick co-authored the story with Jeff Splitstoser as part of their ongoing work on khipu documentation and interpretation.  

Read the full feature here.  

Mackinley FitzPatrick is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology specializing in Andean archaeology, with a focus on khipus (or quipus)—Andean knotted records best known for their use in the Inka Empire. He has conducted research in both Peru and the U.S., working closely with khipu collections including the Penn Museum’s, featured in this article. His research combines material analysis and computational methods to investigate how these complex objects functioned as systems of information storage. To learn more about FitzPatrick's research, check out his Harvard Horizons talk (Empire of String: Unraveling the Enigma of Inka Khipus).