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Excvations at Chiripa: Monticulo
William T. Whitehead
Excavations at Mont 1
In the 1999 field season, excavations were again focused on the area east of the mound called Montíclo 1. The strategy was to open and re-examine the 1998 excavation area and extend the area to follow the wall discovery by Bandy (Hastorf et al. 1998: pg 13). With that primary goal in mind we have were able to identify a corner and second wall, an occupation surface associated with the walls, an interesting burial, and a refinement of the stratigraphy in this area.
The new excavation units were placed at the southern and western edges of the 1998 excavation pit. A 2 by 4 meter unit was placed in the previous excavation unit at N976-978 E1040-1044, which was at the bottom of the 1998 pit. The southern extension was a set of two 2 x 4 meter units placed at N970-972 E1039-1043 and N972-974 E1040-1044. The western unit was a 2 by 1 meter unit placed at N974-976 E1039-1040. This strategy was undertaken because of the fence encircling the Montículo limited the western extension and a modern football goal post was placed in the Mont 1 excavation area.
The first layer excavated across the entire area was defined as an event of historic fill composed of Montículo slump soils and fill deposited over the hacienda road (D10) previously reported by Bandy (see Figure 4). All the historic period events are grouped into Level 1 for analytical purposes. The turf was broken and this historic soil was not screened, but was set aside till backfilling was started. The next event was the historic road itself (D152), after photographing the surface of the road it was removed and the stone placed in a large pile to be used for modern construction activities in the museum building sponsored by TAP, DINAAR, and the community. Under the road was a layer of mixed fill determined to be composed of the D152 road construction fill and the layer underlying it D160, a Late Chiripa construction fill. The road was constructed by cutting the surface of the Late Chiripa platform (D160), grading this cut then placing the stones tightly together with a center line of north-south oriented stones and the pavement of east-west oriented stones, effectively creating a small two lane road.
The next level excavated was defined as Level 5, Late Chiripa soils and events. The primary Level 5 event was D160 a Late Chiripa terrace fill, constructed for the placement of the lower house level of the Montículo. In this fill a burial of Late Chiripa origin was encountered, a child with several whole llamas and copious amounts of ash, broken artifacts, rock and bone. This burial was oriented with the body supine, face down, on a bed of matting, in an east-west direction (feet-east, head-west). The head was not attached to the body in a conventional way but was either removed and placed with the face oriented to the west and looking over the back or was snapped and bent to create this un-natural position. The burial was complete and in fair condition, but due to the age of the child the bone composition was not dense and most of the articulor ends were unfused and loose in the soil. Sex and age was not determined in the field. Underneath the child was an adult female llama, inferred by the presence of a fetal llama in the stomach region of the adult. This llama was very old indeed, there were signs of osteo-arthritis and bone tumors on the long bones. The llama was not butchered but flexed tightly and placed with its spine curved around the eastern end of the pit with the head facing west.
The next cultural level is Level 6, Middle Chiripa events. The majority of the Middle Chiripa events are the remnants the D151 wall, from erosion and settling. The primary task in excavating the Level 6 events was the definition of the wall and the surface it was laying on, D166. Most of the soils in this level were very similar in color and texture (D161, D165, and D175) with a complex layering of these events and patchy distribution across the excavation area. However after removing these overlying layers we succeeded in exposing a new wall that intersected the previously known wall D151 at a right angle forming a well defined corner, in the southern excavation units. The walls are now defined as being at the least an L shaped structure, to see if we could find a northern corner we opened an extension to the north over the wall at the end of the excavation pit. We succeeded in finding the upper portion of the eastern wall running 4 more meters to the north.
The surface the wall was sitting on seems to be a grayish fill with many bones, lithics, and ceramics embedded in the surface. After an extensive flotation sampling of this surface we will be able to give more details of the activities that occured prior, during, and after this surface was place, used, and abandoned.
The last cultural layer to be excavated was a layer of Early Chiripa fill (Level 7: D168), only excavated in the N974-976 N1039-1040 unit. This fill had no features or other distinguishing attributes other than it was a homogeneous layer with a low density of artifacts. In this level decorated Early Chiripa ceramics were found and several obsidian projectile points.
The 1999 field season succeeded in confirming and extending several of the
observations Bandy made in the 1998 excavations. We were able to define 6 more
meters of wall making the overall length of the eastern wall, in Mont 1, at
least 12 meters long with a southern wall at the end running for at least 4
meters west directly under the Montículo. We were able to define an occupation
surface the wall complex was sitting on and refined and clarified the stratigraphy
in many areas that caused much confusion in the 1998 field season. An interesting
Late Chiripa burial was excavated and Early Chiripa decorated ceramics were
recovered extending the range of type found by TAP.