String Theories: Astral Numerology, Scientific Internationalism, and Inca Quipu Decipherment at the Göteborg Museum, Sweden

Archaeological decipherments have long conferred immortality upon those credited with unlocking ancient messages. Yet might decipherments conceal or obscure when they purport to clarify and reveal? This essay reexamines a theory of Inca quipus (Andean knotted-string records) that enjoyed decades of acclaim before its rejection as unfounded. In 1925, Swedish anthropologist Erland Nordenskiöld announced that quipus found in Andean graves were astronomical talismans, displacing secular interpretations advanced by Peruvian archaeologists. Subsequent criticisms of Nordenskiöld’s astral numerology have overshadowed why it achieved authority. Investigating the entangled histories of science and archaeological decipherment provides a response. Appeals to expertise in the physical and mathematical sciences, the alignment of quipu decoding with interwar scientific internationalism, and the appropriation of research on Mesoamerican astrology coalesced, convincing Nordenskiöld – and much of the world – that the Inca enigma had been solved. It is of decipherment’s allure that his (mis)readings of Andean strings still have much to say.