The first published indication that there were ancient remains of
antiquarian interest on the Taraco Peninsula came in the Boletín
de la Sociedad Geográfica de La Paz in 1920.![[*]](file:/usr/share/latex2html/icons/footnote.png){kind=icon}
In this volume, Padre Pedro Marabini described the mound at Chiripa
in the following terms:
Se trata aqui de un pequeño cerrito ó en su circular enteramente rodeado de menhires profundamente plantados en el suelo del que sobresalen medidas desiguales, debido quizás a la desigualidad de la erosión por las diferentes clases de piedras. (cited in [Ponce Sangines 1957])
We are speaking of a small mound entirely encircled by columns deeply set in the earth; these project to different heights, owing perhaps to unequal erosion of the different stone types.He also described another ``cerrito'' about 2 kilometers away, in the direction of the lake. Given that the mound is currently less than 1 kilometer from the lake, it is not clear to what he was referring. Elderly residents of the area have informed me that the lake level was very low in the 1920s. Perhaps, then, this reference is to the site of Chiaramaya, approximately 2 km to the east, on which is located a substantial prehistoric mound construction. He concludes with a suggestion that scientific work be conducted on the mound:
... no dudamos de que también aquí como en Huacullani una excavación metódica pudiera ser de muy buenos resultados para la ciencia arqueológica. (cited in [Ponce Sangines 1957])
... we do not doubt that both here [Chiripa] and in Huacullani a methodical excavation could produce very good results for the science of archaeology.It would be 14 years before Marabini's suggestion was taken - though probably unknowingly - by Wendell Bennett. Bennett was at the time employed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His Bolivian expeditions of 1932 and 1933-34 included excavations in numerous regions ([Bennett 1933,Bennett 1934,Bennett 1936]). In the altiplano, he excavated at Tiwanaku, Pajchiri, and Lukurmata, and on several islands in Lago Wiñaymarka. He stayed in Chiripa - on the Taraco Peninsula - for five weeks, living in the now-ruined hacienda house. Using the materials from his Tiwanaku excavations, Bennett elaborated a three-phase ceramic chronology: Early Tiwanaku, Classic Tiwanaku, and Decadent Tiwanaku ([Bennett 1934]). These phases correspond roughly to what I call the Late Formative, and to the earlier and later parts of the Tiwanaku period (see Figure 2.4).
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Bennett recognized that the ceramics of the Chiripa culture were different from those he had excavated at Tiwanaku. At first he though they should be placed between Classic and Decadent Tiwanaku. This was based on a stratigraphic column he excavated on the island of Pariti in which ``the Chiripa level [was] ... above a Classic Tiahuanaco grave and below a Decadent Tiahuanaco level, thus establishing its chronological position'' ([Bennett 1936]: 451). However, the work of Kidder in the northern Titicaca Basin caused Bennett to revise his sequence, placing the Chiripa culture before Early Tiahuanaco. With the publication of this revised sequence, the chronology of the southern Titicaca Basin assumed roughly its contemporary form (compare [Bennett 1948], Table 3 to my Figure 2.4). The excavations of Bennett, and his meticulous and timely publications provide the baseline for our knowledge of the Chiripa culture.
The next persons to carry out archaeological work on the Taraco Peninsula were Maks Portugal Zamora and María Luisa Sánchez Bustamente de Urioste. There is some confusion as to the exact date when these two carried out excavations at Chiripa. This is compounded by the almost anecdotal evidence that their project did, in fact, take place. This work is known, to my knowledge, only through a four-page 1940 report to the Bolivian Minister of Education entitled Los Hallazgos de la Hacienda Chiripa ([Portugal Zamora 1940]). This report was used by Portugal Ortíz ([Portugal Ortíz 1992]) in an article published in the Universidad Mayor de San Andres's journal, Textos Antropológicos. In addition, Javier Escalante has published a plan derived from these excavations ([Escalante Moscoso 1994], Figure 56). The work is also referenced in an unpublished report by Gregorio Cordero Miranda.
According to the Portugal Zamora report, he and Sra. Bustamente were sent on a reconnaissance expedition to the Taraco Peninsula by the Bolivian Ministry of Education. They were charged specifically with investigation of Chiripa and of Huacullani, and of prospecting for additional sites in the area. Indeed, Portugal Zamora is the first to clearly mention the site of Chiaramaya, near Chiripa, which is only mentioned again in an unpublished report from the 1970's ([Erickson 1975]). They also apparently discovered the stone stela - the famous ídolo de Cala Cala - at the site of Waka Kala in the modern community of Cala Cala ([Portugal Ortíz 1998]: 102). Portugal Ortíz, who obviously was in possession of the Portugal Zamora report and quoted from it at length and verbatim ([Portugal Ortíz 1992]), states that the work took place in 1940. Cordero Miranda, on the other hand, states that Portugal Zamora and Bustamente were present in Chiripa in 1937. Given that Cordero's report was probably written in 1955 or 1956, I am inclined to credit his date and to assume that Portugal Ortíz simply took the date of Portugal Zamora's report to be the year of the excavations. In terms of the work itself, Portugal Zamora and Bustamente cleaned some of Bennett's trenches, and excavated another structure on the Chiripa mound. Beneath the floor of this structure they apparently uncovered a series of interments, some of which have been described in print ([Portugal Ortíz 1992]). Their results have never been properly published, however.
There followed a 15-year hiatus in which, to my knowledge, no archaeologist worked on the Taraco Peninsula. The next project was that of Alfred Kidder II in 1955. Kidder was employed at the time by the University of Pennsylvania, and had just completed a series of excavations at Tiwanaku. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary, and various students and colleagues, one of whom was Bolivian archaeological pioneer Gregorio Cordero Miranda.
Very little information on this project has been published. The only sources of which I am aware are a short piece by Kidder in the University Museum Bulletin ([Kidder 1956]) and the very important article by Karen Mohr Chávez ([Chávez 1988]) based on the access of that author to Kidder's unpublished material. In addition, Cordero Miranda prepared a nine-page typewritten report on his part in the excavations, which remains in typescript form, and Chávez's (then Karen Mohr) M.A. thesis ([Mohr 1966]) contains some additional information.
Kidder's project excavated portions of at least three of the Chiripa culture structures first discovered by Bennett. and cleaned the previously-excavated remains of others. Through careful observation of profiles and earlier excavations, Kidder et. al. were able to reconstruct with remarkable precision the form of the entire complex, still buried beneath a meter of later fill. Their excavations beneath structure floors also revealed a large mortuary assemblage, including some examples with relatively elaborate treatment. Finally, excavating below the upper structures, they encountered an earlier layer of structures, entombed by the remains of the later ones discovered by Bennett. Using this three-stage stratigraphic sequence (Upper House, Lower House, and Pre-Mound Levels), Karen Chávez elaborated a three-phase ceramic sequence, comprising Early, Middle and Late Chiripa ([Mohr 1966,Chávez 1988]). Though limited by very small sample sizes for the earlier phases, this was an important advance in our understanding of the Formative Period chronology of the southern Titicaca Basin.
It was another twenty years before another archaeologist was to excavate on the Taraco Peninsula. David Browman of Washington University carried out two seasons of excavations, in 1974 and 1975. He was accompanied by Gregorio Cordero Miranda, the same Cordero who had participated in Kidder's excavations. Also present were a trio of Browman's students from Washington University, Clark Erickson, Charles Miksecek and Jonathan Kent, who went on to advanced studies in Andean prehistory.
According to Browman, the work consisted of "two seasons of clearing at the temple of Chiripa, including three stratified cuts testing earlier deposits" ([Browman 1978a]: 807). Interestingly, this was the first project at the site which did not excavate any of the ``Upper House Level'' structures originally discovered by Bennett. Instead, Browman devoted his efforts to the clearing of the sunken court located in the center of the mound - from which some 1450 cubic meters of fill was eventually removed ([Browman 1978a]: 811) - as well as to the excavation of a several deeper test pits. Despite heavy disturbance related to recent stone robbing, Browman was able to associate the upper sunken court with a Late Formative occupation. He also discovered another sunken court below the visible on, which he assigned a Middle Formative date. He argued that this earlier structure was contemporary with the occupation of the Upper House Level. Like earlier investigators, Browman continued to think of the Chiripa mound as a small villages of 14-16 houses. However, he did interpret at least the later sunken court as a special purpose structure - a ``temple'' - and identified an associated Late Formative 2 (Tiwanaku III) habitation area in an off-mound area.
Although Karen Chávez never actually conducted research in the area - she worked instead with Kidder's collections - no account of Taraco Peninsula research would be complete without mentioning her very important 1988 article ([Chávez 1988]). This article singlehandedly and completely changed archaeologists' conceptions of Chiripa. Where other scholars had interpreted the mound with its enclosure of structures as a small village, Chávez interpreted the mound, enclosure, and sunken court together as a ``temple-storage complex'' ([Chávez 1988]: 17). In an exhaustive analysis, she argued that these structures were not in fact used for habitation. Rather, their architectural properties, together with their associated sculptural, ceramic, and botanical assemblages all indicated use for storage and ritual. Further, a careful consideration of stylistic relationships indicated that the Chiripa complex was antecedent to the temple structures of the later Pukara culture. She also associated Chiripa ceramics, architecture and sculpture with the early Yaya-Mama stone sculptural style ([Chávez and Chávez 1970,Chávez and Mohr Chávez 1975]). Together, all of these features comprised the ``Yaya-Mama Religious Tradition'' ([Chávez 1988]: 17). At a stroke, the ``houses'' of Bennett, Kidder, and Browman became special use structures, employed for the storage of ritual goods, foodstuffs, or even ancestral mummies, and central to the ceremonies and rites which unified ancient Titicaca Basin populations. The Upper House enclosure was no longer a village, but rather a public ceremonial complex located at the center of a village, the remains of which were scattered in the surrounding agricultural fields.
Following the established frequency of one archaeological project
every 15-20 years, the Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) began work
on the peninsula in 1992. This project, directed by Christine Hastorf
of the University of California, Berkeley, excavated in 1992, 1996,
1998, and 1999 at Chiripa. TAP began excavations, as noted, only four years after the publication
of Chávez's article, and the excavation strategy was guided by
her conclusions. Excavations were designed to recover the remains
of domestic houses and middens ([Hastorf 1990b]), and for this reason
were all initially located off-mound. While ample evidence of domestic
occupation was encountered - in the form of refuse deposits and middens
- poor preservational conditions made it impossible to excavate domestic
architecture. What was preserved, however, was a series of public
architectural constructions which predates the Upper House Level enclosure
([Bandy 1999b,Bandy et al. 1998,Dean and Kojan 1999,Paz Soría 1999]). Over four
seasons of excavation, TAP has managed to define a sequence of 5 separate
public architectural complexes beginning as early as 1000 B.C. This
sequence is described in some detail in section 6.3.
Almost seventy years of sporadic archaeological research has therefore demonstrated that the Taraco Peninsula was an early locus of settled village life. The region also saw very early development of public architecture and ritual paraphernalia. Many of the features proved to be very long-lived, far outlasting the culture that invented them. Echoes of Chiripa Culture art and architectural practices can be discerned in the later Pukara, Tiwanaku, and even perhaps Inka corporate styles. However, all research had been conducted at the site of Chiripa itself. Many questions remained regarding the regional context of these developments. A longitudinal study of settlement and demography on the Taraco Peninsula promised to be relevant to questions of the development of social complexity and social evolution generally. I resolved to undertake such a project; this document reports its results.
