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Dyed cords carrying category.
Also known as: Quipu colour system
The Andean knot record's use of cord colour to distinguish the category of the thing counted.
Distinguishes the category of the item counted on each cord.
Contexts: Mathematics, History
The knots carry quantity and the colour carries what is being counted, so the two dimensions together do the work a written table does with numbers and headings.
Contexts: Mathematics, History
Which colour meant which category is not recoverable in general: the correspondence was known to the keeper and is not encoded in the object, which is why most surviving quipus cannot be read.
The colour-to-category mapping is not preserved and is generally unrecoverable.
Contexts: Mathematics, History
Cords spun from undyed and dyed fibres in solid colours, in twisted two-colour combinations, and in coloured bands running along a single cord.