---
title: "Tocapu"
description: "Tocapu are small geometric designs woven into squares or bands on Inka textiles, especially tunics; their meaning has not been deciphered."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/tocapu
published: 2026-10-14
updated: 2026-10-14
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Tocapu

*Tocapu are small geometric designs woven into squares or bands on Inka textiles, especially tunics; their meaning has not been deciphered.*

Tocapu (also spelled t'oqapu or toqapu) are small geometric designs, usually set in squares, woven into Inka textiles. They appear most often as the waistband of a standard tunic and, in colonial pictures, on garments of the Sapa Inca, the ruler.

## Can they be read?

No reading is accepted. Scholars have debated since the 1970s whether tocapu were a form of writing, heraldry or decoration. A 2004 study of the portraits in Guaman Poma's Nueva corónica proposed that some tocapu were tied to specific rulers, and called its own results preliminary. The Dumbarton Oaks all-tocapu tunic is the most extreme surviving example.

## Where do they appear?

The Cleveland Museum of Art calls the t'oqapu waistband and deep V-yoke standard decorations of Inka [unku](https://teazle.art/glossary/unku.md). They continued into the colonial period, mixed with new motifs.


## Sources

1. [Half Tunic (1951.393)](https://clevelandart.org/art/1951.393). The Cleveland Museum of Art
2. [Eeckhout and Danis on tocapu in Guaman Poma (2004)](https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/boletindearqueologia/article/download/2020/1953). Boletín de Arqueología PUCP
3. [The Mystery Behind an Incan Tunic](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/index%2ephp/2024/07/woven-tunic-inca-textile). Harvard Magazine

Canonical: https://teazle.art/glossary/tocapu