Books by Frank L. Salomon

Based on the analysis of community records in a Peruvian village, The Lettered Mountain tells how Andean peasants thought to be illiterate appropriated the Roman alphabet long ago.

Examines how Amerindian graphic codes interacted with alphabetic writing in the colonial polities of the Americas. This title focuses on colonial interactions in North America, Mesoamerica, and South America, and on how both alphabets and indigenous systems helped form the basis of colonial control and resistance.

The Inkan empire did not have writing as it is usually understood. The Inkas kept track of information - including their social and political organization - on khipus, knotted cords of cotton or wool. This book offers a reading of the khipus of one Andean village, where villagers have conserved a set of these enigmatic cords to the present day.