The Upper House Level

After the final abandonment of the uppermost structures of the Lower House Level, a thick layer of intentional fill was placed over their remains, creating a roughly level earthen platform. This is the first example of true platform architecture at the site. It should be noted, however, that there were no true ``mounds'' on the Taraco Peninsula until the Late Formative period. The Chiripa mound in the Middle Formative was more properly a monumental terrace. That is, it was a large roughly level terrace, the upslope side of which was a ground level. As the terrace is located on a slope, however, and since the structure was approximately 30 meters from north to south, the downslope side of the terrace was probably elevated 2.5-3 meters above the natural ground surface. This was still an imposing structure when viewed from downslope, and would have required steps or a ladder to climb the facing wall. And these structures were built to be viewed from downslope. In every well-preserved case the terrace is located in the highest area of the site, with the bulk of the habitation areas located downslope.

On top of this monumental terrace, the Upper House Level structures were built. This almost certainly took place relatively soon after the abandonment of the Lower House Level structures, or sometime around 400 B.C. The Upper House Level complex was first discovered by Bennett, who excavated Houses 1 and 2 ([Bennett 1936], see Figure 6.6 for excavation locations on the Chiripa mound). Other houses were subsequently excavated by Portugal Zamora ([Portugal Zamora 1940,Portugal Ortíz 1992]) and by Kidder ([Kidder 1956]). The houses excavated by Bennett have proven to be representative of all of the Upper Houses so far discovered, as they seem to be highly standardized.

Figure 6.6: Upper House Level with excavations (T-1, Chiripa)

The Upper Houses are rectangular structures made of rounded cobbles set in a mud mortar. The plan of the structures is unique, and may be appreciated on Figure 6.6. The structures are all double-walled, with an empty ``bin space'' between the inner and outer walls. The bins were partitioned by a series of short crosswalls connecting the inner and outer walls of the structures. Access to these bins was through elaborate windows or niches, decorated with molded plaster step-fret motifs on their upper corners. The house were colorfully plastered in red an yellow, as were the Lower House structures, and were almost certainly thatched with totora reeds. Apparently at least a part of the courtyard enclosed by the structures was also surfaced with colored clay. Under the floors of at least some of the structures were found numerous human burials (13 in the case of House 2 [[Bennett 1936]: 432-433]; none in House 1), frequently accompanied by wealth items including gold and copper objects. Also uniquely, the Upper Houses seem to have been equipped with sliding doors. To one side of the principal entryway of each structure is a deep, narrow groove which would have held a recessed panel, probably of wood and reeds or cloth. These panels could have been pulled from the grooves to close off the entrances.

The number of house in the Upper House complex has been the subject of some controversy. Bennett originally estimated that there were 14 of the structures ([Bennett 1936]), Kidder estimated 15 ([Kidder 1956]) and Browman went as far as 16 ([Browman 1978a]). It is now possible to say with reasonable certainty that Bennett was in fact correct, and the enclosure consisted of 14 structures with openings to the North and South. This is so because:

1. Bennett excavated Houses 1 and 2.
2. Portugal Zamora excavated House C, bringing the count to 3.
3. Kidder and Cordero Miranda excavated House 5 and portions of Houses 3 and 4, bringing the count to 6.
4. Alan Sawyer, working on Kidder's expedition, cleared House C, and exposed portions of Houses B, D, E, F and G, bringing the count to 11.
5. Geophysical survey on the mound carried out by TAP in 1998 (Johnson in [Hastorf et al. 1998]) clearly indicated the presence and positions of the as-yet unexcavated Houses 6, 7 and H. This study also indicated that no structure was present between Houses 7 and H. The enclosure was therefore open to the South. This conclusion was strengthened by excavations by myself and Christine Hastorf in the Montículo 2 area in 1996 (contra Bandy in [Hastorf et al. 1998]) and 1999, which failed to yield any evidence of a collapsed structure in this location. This brings the total count to 14.
6. Karen Chávez (pers. comm. 1999) has pointed out that Bennett's plans show that the eastern wall of House 1 was in fact finished on the exterior. Therefore, it was not connected to another house to the east, as, for example, Houses 4 and 5 are connected and share a common exterior wall. This means that the enclosure was open to the North, with no structure located between Houses 1 and B. The count remains at 14.

It should also be noted that, as shown in Figure 6.6, the Upper House complex is in the form of a trapezoid opening to the South. It is not, after all, a rectangular enclosure. This is of particular interest, since the Choquehuanca structure is also trapezoidal ([Dean and Kojan 1999]: Figure 10), and the Llusco structure may be. The trapezoidal arrangement of the Upper Houses was portrayed correctly by Karen Chávez ([Chávez 1988]: Figure 3), though she did not remark upon it. It is also interesting since the later Enclosure 2 at Pukara is likewise trapezoidal in plan ([Chávez 1988]: Figure 9), yet another point of similarity between the Pukara Kalasasaya enclosures and the Chiripa Upper House complex.

The labor and care invested in the construction of the platform, the fourteen structures, and probably in the sunken court in the center of the enclosure ([Browman 1978a]) represents a substantial elaboration of public architectural space above and beyond any Lower House Level precedent.

The form and function of the Upper House Level structures has been considered most systematically by Karen Chávez ([Chávez 1988]). She argues that the fact that the 'bins' in the structures take up close to half of the potential interior floor space indicate an unusual focus on storage as opposed to habitation, while the very ornate decorations and elaborate construction, together with 'ceremonial' sculptural and iconographic associations, suggest a non-domestic use. I agree completely with her on these points, and would add that her reasoning has been confirmed by the very high frequencies of decorated pottery associated with mound structures relative to quotidian domestic middens. It has become clear the Bennett's interpretation of the compound as a circular village - which was subsequently echoed by Kidder and Browman ([Browman 1981]:414, [Kidder 1956]) - is untenable. The Upper Houses are not houses after all. Chávez suggests rather that the Upper House complex as a whole represents a ``temple-storage complex'' ([Chávez 1988]: 25).

I agree with Chávez's assessment, and it is wholly compatible with my own views concerning the intensification of competitive feasting and commensal politics throughout the Middle Formative. I would add to her observations that the architecturally redundant nature of the Upper House complex - multiple nearly identical structures, symmetrically arranged - seems to suggest that the structures and the activities which were carried out in and around them, represent a segmentary social structure. That is, each structure would be associated with a lineage, kin group, or other kind of social segments of the village. If this is in fact the case, then it is interesting to observe that while the Upper Houses themselves are all basically identical, they differ in the number and in the richness of their associated burials. Thus some structures have more burials than others, and some have none at all. The burials from some structures contain more wealth items than burials from other structures. If the structures were indeed associated with different lineages then this seems to indicate that leaders and their constituencies had begun to differentiate, with some commanding more wealth, labor, prestige and authority than others. Again, this is consistent with my hypothesized intensification of commensal politics and status competition.