The Lower House Level

The third public architectural phase at Chiripa is what Kidder called the Lower House Level ([Kidder 1956]). Before the 1996 excavations of TAP, this phase was known only through the 1955 excavations of Kidder and Bolivian archaeological pioneer, Gregorio Cordero Miranda. They - or rather, William Coe, the actual excavator - uncovered the remains of two fieldstone structures below the location of Bennett"s Upper Houses 2 and 3, on the northwest corner of the mound. The details of this excavation have never been properly published, though the structures seem to have been constructed of alluvial cobbles, as were the Upper Houses. In the 1996 TAP excavations, in a level stratigraphically below the Upper House Level, I located the remains of at least three Lower House Level structures. These three structures (see [Bandy 1999b]) were constructed primarily of adobe - encountered as both bricks and as tapia, or puddled adobe - and were superimposed one on top of another. In one of these structures, walls were covered with a thin wash of red clay, and the finds of small bits of red plaster on other floors suggests that this was the case with the other structures, as well.

These three Lower House Level structures were built one on top of the other, the upper portion of the existing structure being destroyed in order to make way for the walls of the new one. The resulting rubble was used to create a platform for the construction of the new structure. Apparently, the abandonment of one floor and the construction of another was accompanied by a specific ritual practice. First, a thin cap of fill - generally derived from midden or other cultural deposits, in one case sterile sand - was placed over the old floor. On top of this fill level, a fire was kindled. Evidence of fire is present on top of the fill levels covering at least six of the eight floors in the sequence. For the moment, we interpret these burning events as elements of a standardized ritual practice associated with the closing, or "killing," of an old floor, and the construction or opening of another. Immediately following the termination of this"burning ritual," a new floor was constructed of clean yellow clay. The floor was placed immediately on top of the ash deposit resulting from the burning episode.This cycle was repeated at least eight times in the sequence of structures, and would seem to indicate a long-term ritual use of the mound area long before the construction of the Upper House Level.

The earliest of these three structures was constructed in approximately 600 BC, and the last was abandoned in approximately 400 BC. ([Bandy et al. 1998]). This is based on a series of seven radiocarbon dates taken from the Lower House Level sequence. It appears, then, that the Lower House Level structures were occupied for approximately 200 years. Given this fact, and the fact that there are eight floors in the sequence, we can suggest that the proposed "burning ritual" - the replacement of a floor, and at times an entire structure, with another - took place at approximately 25-year intervals. The correspondence of this figure with the length of human generations would seem to be more than mere coincidence, and I propose, though I am unable to demonstrate this, that the reconstruction of these special-purpose structures was associated with generational succession; perhaps with the death of one leader and the naming of another. Since there are various Lower Houses, probably arranged in an enclosure around a sunken court, as suggested by Browman ([Browman 1978a]: 808), this would in turn imply that each structure was associated with a lineage or kin group, and that the ``burning ritual'' took place at the time of the death of a lineage elder or leader. At present, this is entirely speculation. However, it does cast an interesting light on later developments at the site.