Sabine Hyland

Sabine Hyland (born Campbell, August 26, 1964) is an American anthropologist and ethnohistorian working in the Andes. She is currently Professor of World Christianity at the University of St Andrews. She is best known for her work studying khipus and hybrid khipu-alphabetic texts in the Central Andes and is credited with the first potential phonetic decipherment of an element of a khipu. She has also written extensively about the interaction between Spanish missionaries and the Inca in colonial Peru, focusing on language, religion and missionary culture, as well as the history of the Chanka people.

Hyland's research has appeared in media outlets around the world, such as the BBC World Service, National Geographic, Scientific American, Slate, and The Atlantic. In 2011, National Geographic filmed a documentary about her research on khipu boards as part of their series Ancient X-Files.

Life and career

Early life and education Sabine Hyland was born in Maryland in 1964. She grew up in Dryden, New York, near Cornell University where her father, Joseph Kearns Campbell, was a Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Her mother Sigrid is a German immigrant to the United States. Sabine spent some of her formative years abroad when her father was working at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the International Potato Center in Lima. The year she spent living in Lima as a teenager sparked her interest in studying Peru.

Sabine married fellow academic William Hyland in 1989. They have two children, Margaret and Eleanor. Funded by the National Geographic Society, Hyland travelled to Mangas to study the khipu. Her research on khipu boards, a herding khipu collected by Max Uhle in 1895, and other khipus surviving in Andean communities led her to argue that the ply direction of knots on khipu cords and the colour of the fibre were significant ways of encoding meaning in khipus.

Aside from her khipu studies, Hyland also worked on the history of the Chanka with archaeologist Brian S. Bauer. In 2004, she was honoured by Miguel Suarez Contreras, the head of the Chanka nation, as an honorary member of the Chanka nation in thanks for her work "on behalf of the Chanka people". She served for five years as the Director of the Centre for Amerindian Studies.

Hyland's research about khipus has featured in documentaries made by National Geographic and Discovery Channel. She has also served as a consultant for television and appeared on History Channel's series Mankind: The Story of All of Us.

Selected works 2003: The Jesuit and the Incas: The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas Valera, S.J. 2007: The Quito Manuscript: An Inca History Preserved by Fernando de Montesinos 2008: El manuscrito de Quito: Una historia de los Incas preservada por Fernando de Montesinos 2011: Gods of the Andes: An Early Jesuit Account of Inca Religion and Andean Christianity 2016: The Chankas and the Priest: A Tale of Murder and Exile in Highland Peru