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Introduction

cestors are kept with the living they can participate in

the decisions and thus become important in community

and political life. Thus there is a link between the re-

mains of the dead, the architecture that contains them,

and the veneration of the dead. This is most clearly il-

out the landscape as part of the mallkis realm. Theseplaces were associated with the dead, making not only

the bundles and their contents, but also these places

powerful memorials that evoked access to the spirits of

fertility and regeneration. Such territorial cosmology

was hard to eradicate (Abercrombie, 1986). Thus we

haeo* Fax: 1-510-643-8557.The important, provocative book by Isbell (1997) on

ancestor veneration and ayllu formation has crystallized

a series Andean discussions over the creation of Andean

life and society. In his book he proposes that highland

ayllus are truly formed only after the rst great highland

states, in the Late Intermediate Period (also called the

time of Se~nnorios, or Regional States). With much detailabout chullpas and other above ground structures that

enclose the dead, he makes a case for why, when an-

lustrated in the mummy bundle (mallki) veneration of

the Inka (Arriaga, 1968 [1621]; Doyle, 1988; Rowe,

1946, 1995; Salomon, 1995). Spanish accounts document

these powers of the sacred ancestors and their place as

heads of lineages and stewards of the landscape. Two

hundred years later the Spanish set out to destroy these

ancestral mummy bundles, once they realized that the

dead themselves were worshipped. What the Spanish

religious authorities had not planned on was the fact

that people also worshipped named locations through-Abstract

In the Andes of South America, the ancestors have been known to be an important font of power and perpetuation

since the Spanish began writing about the area. The question of the prominence of ancestral worship in early settled

communities and its role in societal formation has been an ongoing discussion for Andean archaeologists. Recent

archaeological research in the Titicaca Basin suggests that this dynamic was important in the earliest societal formation.

This thesis is based in part on the evidence that early architecture was for civic memorials rather than domestic

habitation. In addition the artifactual remains suggest these constructions were in part for ancestor veneration.

Community creation and social experimentation charged by ritual are illustrated at the Formative site of Chiripa on the

Taraco Peninsula in Bolivia. To demonstrate this thesis of community creation through rituals surrounding ancestral

energies, the role of relational personhood, kinship, and social memory in community construction, based on practice

theory is rst outlined. Next the place of burials in the Andean world and the creation of ancestors are dealt with.

Finally the ritual and memorials as seen in the archaeological evidence spanning 1500 years is traced.

2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Keywords: Social memory; Memorials; Ceremonial architecture; Formative period; AndesCommunity with the ancememory in the Middle Fo

Christine

Department of Anthropology, University o

Received 8 July 2002

Journal of Anthropological ArcE-mail address: hastorf@sscl.berkeley.edu.

0278-4165/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All ridoi:10.1016/S0278-4165(03)00029-1rs: ceremonies and socialative at Chiripa, Bolivia

Hastorf *

lifornia, Berkeley, CA 94720-3710, USA

sed 3 February 2003

logy 22 (2003) 305332

www.elsevier.com/locate/jaalearn from the 16th century that resources, lineage, and

ghts reserved.

claims of the descent groups (Josephedes, 1991). It will

306 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332memory were intimately linked. We can assume that

these relationships were built up over many years, be-

coming interwoven in Andean political and social life

in various political settings. When and how did these

temporal, spatial and material relationships develop,

and what role did they play in Andean social cohesion

and political formation?

At the time of the Spanish conquest, ayllus were

corporate landholding groups that had mutual obliga-

tions with the dead ancestors concerning care of the

territory, resources, and their descent group (Rowe,

1946; Salomon, 1991; Spaulding, 1984). They were po-

litical entities on the ground, the smallest social au-

thority. When Albor~nnoz (1989) and Cobo (1988 [1653])wrote about religious activities in the 16th century they

noted that there were certain types of huacas, sacred

places, where mummied corpses of former leaders were

worshipped and revered. They were talking about a

form of worship, specic to the ayllu, or family group

that descended, truly or ctively, from the ancestors.

They note that the descendents curated the bodies with

great care between walls, including clothes, adornment,

and goblets, and bring them out to eat, drink, and dis-

cuss matters of political interest. Other documents de-

scribe the places where the ancestors were kept as

modied caves, small houses, rooms, chapels or temples.

Some ancestors were buried under the oor or within the

house walls. In these descriptions, we see how enclosed,

dark, small spaces that can be visited by the living were

places for the most special ancestors during the 16th

century. These houses for the dead were always ac-

companied by an open place where the worshipers of the

dead could gather, called a cayan (Doyle, 1988, p. 111;

Moore, 1996, p. 125). These ancestral shrines therefore

included enclosed spaces for the rituals with an accom-

panying small enclosure for the dead. As Moore points

out, these spaces reect the need to constrict but not

prevent access to the mallkis while allowing the gath-

ering of a small social group (Moore, 1996, p. 126). It

was during the visitations with the mallki that people

came together, performing rituals of care and commun-

itas (Turner, 1969). Such community conrmation still

happens in places of pilgrimage like Copacabana in the

Lake Titicaca area and at annual community festivals.

These rituals not only reenact political relationships of

superior and inferior but also are times to reorder the

social fabric that has been ruptured by death.

Isbell suggests that such veneration, through mummy

presentation and their associated places of encounter, is

rst evident materially in the Andes in the Early Inter-

mediate Period (200 BC to AD 600). Elaborate marked

burials however seem to be evident with the rst sign of

territoriality in the Andean region. Rivera (1995) and

Arriaza (1996) note that, as early as 7000 BC, people

have been caring for the dead along the northern Chil-ean coast in the Chinchorro culture. In this preceramicbe through the changing burial and architectural evi-

dence that we can track the change and elaboration of

ancestor veneration and in turn the use of collective

memory to maintain a larger group.

Our western intellectual tradition increasingly places

the individual at the center. Today an individuals ac-tions and intentions drive society, while most objects

have been alienated from their histories (Thomas, 1996,

p. 72). For those who work in non-western traditions,

we have barriers to cross in our understanding and

empathizing with past lives, meanings and understand-

ings of relationships. While individual people created the

archaeological record by their activities, their inter-

connectedness with those objects and their intertwinedforaging and shing society, there was even embalming

and mummication of the ancestors, including both

adults and children. Arriaza (1995) conrms that over

hundreds of years some of the Chinchorro mummy

bundles were periodically extracted out of the tombs,

redressed, and replaced. Such care suggests the memory

of the dead person remained in the family, the larger kin,

and even the whole group. This care suggests that re-

wrapping and curating were acts of remembering, while

revisiting the rupture brought on by death to reorder the

living (Humphreys, 1981; Rowlands, 1993, p. 144).

Memorials are often used for such realignment of the

social world. Thus we see both building memory and

society in these Chinchorro bodies.

Memory of family

Before we follow the changing patterns of ritual that

accompanied increasing formalization of the Formative

architecture in the Titicaca Basin, I explore three main

notions that participate in social development. First is

the concept of relational personhood, where individual

identity is formed by the relations between people and

things that circulate within their world (Strathern, 1988;

Thomas, 1996, p. 73). These relational systems form the

social and political fabric of the lineage. The second

notion is that the actions of people are tethered by the

modes of possibility and circumstance, by their daily

practices that are both intentional and unintentional

(Bourdieu, 1977; Dobres and Robb, 2000, p. 5; Giddens,

1979; Hodder, 2003). The third notion is the role of

social memory as it activates social relationships and

moral authority through activities in designated places

with specic material culture. Memorializing social re-

lationships and authority through the deceased trans-

mits meaning while providing a promise for the future

(Bradley, 1990; Rowlands, 1993; Whittle, 1996). These

memorials are the materializations of the sociality as

well as a locus for maneuvering the future politicalsocial contexts formed a network of energetics and

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 307qualities that transferred meaning between the involved

things and people, worlding the objects as Thomas

calls it (Thomas, 1996, p. 72, 153). In this setting, rela-

tionships among people and things are social. Thus

objects, homes, and land that people live among become

the web of signication that builds identity within a

maze of kin and material.

Students of agency theory have been eager to place

individual actions in the forefront of past study in our

likeness (Dobres and Robb, 2000). It might be helpful to

realign this notion of agency a bit by shifting the center

of action to what was more likely the dominant social

force in daily life, a person acting in a collective web, in

relation to their living (and deceased) kin. Marx (1963,

p. 15) focused our attention on the situational reality in

which individuals exercise choices (make their own his-

tory) within the limits of their circumstances that are

created by their past. Choices of action were as they are

for us, not innite, and agency was not free-oating.

This situational boundedness is the basis of many con-

cepts in Anthropology, from Barths ethnic identities(1969) to agency theory (Dobres and Robb, 2000).

People live relationally through time, altering their in-

teractions and attitudes to those around them as they

grow.

It follows from this relational web of persons and

things that some knowledge was maintained through the

remembering of those persons; remembering stories,

myths and morals through the visual clues of daily

practice and ritual performance. In societies where a

relational rather than individualized notion of person-

hood prevails, both persons and things circulate in ex-

changes, which contribute to the formation of the

identities of each (Thomas, 1996, p. 73). It is these re-

lational identities, formed by meaningful action with

things and people that maintain cultural traditions of

identity as well as become the locus for manipulation

and change. These notions of interconnectedness be-

tween people and things allow cosmology and commu-

nity history to become visible in material and therefore

patterned (Strathern, 1988; Thomas, 1996, p. 153).

People, in their daily lives are routinized, gaining

knowledge as well as social skills through experience and

observation (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1979). Bourdieu

is not the rst person to notice this. Every mother and

father learns that children feel secure as well as learn

most easily with routines, not just temporal and spatial

routines but routines of meaning (Barrett, 2000; Dobres

and Robb, 2000). Just as practical competence is passed

on to children through the enactments of daily chores,

activities, stories and justications, so too are the com-

munity values of production and worldview (Bourdieu,

1977). Repetition of actions and their recursive mean-

ings allow a groups traditions (unreexive knowledge)to be passed down in instruction and memory (Giddens,1979; Hodder, 1986, 1987; Pauketat, 2000, p. 115).Through this practical enculturation, it is possible to

instill a whole cosmology,. . .a political philosophy. . .(Hodder, 1986, p. 76). These practices also transfer a

moral order that is imbued in the activities and events.

Bourdieu emphasizes how these routines create hab-

itus, the unspoken way of doing things in a personsdaily world (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 94). They help control

the uncertainty and the chaos of the day and season,

grounding actions from the past to help people move

into the future. Each new event requires a response that

will be both a version of past responses as well as an

alteration of the present circumstances. Agency there-

fore is individually constructed, operating within a his-

tory that is directed by the desires and meanings of the

moment (Barrett, 2000). Each action, Butler (1993, p.

15) argues, is only an imperfect citation of the norm,

which is created through past practices and remem-

brances of the way to do things. Within the routines,

slippage occurs in the completion of tasks, hence, people

(agents) change these tasks over time, through their

practices (situations and meanings) of the routines

(structures). This discrepancy between practice and

norm, as well as the lapse in recall that occurs between

one practice and the next over time, allows for forgetting

(strategic remembering) and thus shifting of the norms

while adding new directions and, at times, enhanced

meanings (Rowlands, 1993, p. 141). Unintended out-

comes occur not simply when an actors plan goes awry,but with imperfect knowledge and reproduction of the

social contexts (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 52, 65; Dobres and

Robb, 2000, p. 10).

The point of practice theory is not only to explain

change over time through this individual slippage, but

also to understand the continuity and cohesion that

occurs through the maintenance of certain cultural

practices. Some practices breed strong connectedness

that supports communal association (Milner, 1994;

Pauketat, 2000). Regardless of diering goals and the

varying knowledge of the participants, there can be a

voluntary collective action that renews the group and

the participant. This action creates solidarity and

meaning. Repetition invokes the original meaning but

under slightly dierent circumstances each time. We can

study these circumstances archaeologically and through

that, the strength of the associated meanings. It is

through the acts and commitments of those involved

that the past meanings are transmitted into the future.

How do such activities renew group cohesion?

The role of memory

Events that invoke the ancestors through social

memory operate on multiple levels that can be channeled

to unite the community (Connerton, 1989; Rowlands,

1993). Connerton tells us Concerning social memory,we may note that images of the past commonly

308 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332legitimate a present social order. It is an implicit rule

that participants in any social order must presuppose a

shared memory. (1989, p. 3). He reminds us too that

peoples memories vary. This divergence (slippage) canmake complete communality dicult. Therefore events

may be periodically enacted to help realign members

of the group. Valued experiences must be shared. A

powerful and socially oriented path to communality is

through ritual.

Rituals are events that construct a symbolic system in

a dierent space and time (Leach, 1968). They promote

shared memories through incorporated practices that

link generations while being inclusive for each member

(Bell, 1992; Turner, 1969). Ritual performances there-

fore convey acceptable social knowledge by drawing

upon past bodily social memory (Connerton, 1989, p. 4).

Ritual acts become important loci of cosmological, so-

cial and political order. Even the domestic can be ritual.

This places ritual centrally in an active role of commu-

nity creation. Places where ritual occurs therefore can

evoke important collective memories, renewed through

codied remembering.

Oral societies often bring a group together through

recitation of their origins and histories, through propi-

tiation of the spirits, and through communing with the

ancestors. These stories and their associated rituals,

performed in certain settings with specic valued objects

in a repetitive, stylized form oer ways to renew and

realign social identities and lineages. These situations

allow for maneuvered change as well as continuity

through selective memory (Hendon, 2000, p. 49). In this

way social memory creates a moral authority of a group

that goes beyond place, object, and act.

Connerton goes on to suggest that individuals locate

their own memories within the mental and material

spaces of a group, as the group shares its memories

(1989, p. 37). Therefore societies that operate with re-

lational personhood have stronger links to group

memory. In these settings, the creation of self is rela-

tional, which is sustained through ritual performance.

One powerful locus of group solidarity is the use of

icons and memorials that recall past authority gures

(Dillehay, 1990; Rowlands, 1993). Objects, natural

forms and built architecture create a setting that con-

cretizes rituals, calling up past practices as well as cos-

mologies. Ritual performances therefore send out webs

of meanings throughout the participants (Deleuze and

Guattari, 1988). It is through these remembered histories

and associated performances that meanings are trans-

mitted from one generation to another, often jumping a

generation (Rowlands, 1993, p. 141). This transference

of social memory can be remarkably persistent (Conn-

erton, 1989, p. 40). Memorials establish a temporal

continuum between the living and the larger powers

embodied in the sacred space (Milner, 1994). As Thomaspoints out The presentness of things is as signicant astheir evocation of the past (Thomas, 1996, p. 81). This

is why certain objects can hold signicance, stimulating

connectedness through their histories (Apadurai, 1986;

Strathern, 1988). Memories can be jogged and authority

called up by these physical places and associated objects,

making memory visible (Bradley, 1990;Hendon,

2000;Rowlands, 1993; Thomas, 1996).

Ritual performances renew social relations, rearm

lineage membership, recruit new members, regulate land

use rights, and monitor authority (Dillehay, 1990).

Thus, certain places and things become mnemonic de-

vices for communitas (Turner, 1969). World War me-

morials that are placed in the center of every town in

England are mnemonic devices that draw in the viewer

to remember and thereby to enact a sense of past com-

munity, while the memory remains (Rowlands, 1993;

Thomas, 1991, 1996). Meaning therefore is constituted

in memory.

Ritual spaces are formally dened because they allow

for basic knowledge communication between members

and between these members and the cosmos (Moore,

1996, p. 137). Formal repetition can make a

mark archaeologically, seen in the repetitive build-

ing and internment styles within phases and hori-

zons. Such charged locales tend to be demarcated

(Hendon, 2000).

With funerals that memorialize the dead during a

time of social rupture, there is the need for rearmation,

where the power of the person is transferred to the larger

social order (Chesson, 1999). Such materialization of

social memory has been studied by Dillehay, 1990 in the

Chilean Mapuche. He found that ceremonial mound

building revolves around burials. Ethnographically,

Dillehay found that the renewal of these mounds during

a funerary gathering became a locus for changing social

relations within kin-group alliance building. The cere-

monies during these mound renewal events also involved

recruitment in to marriage alliances, trading partners,

land use rights and the regulation of outsider incorpo-

ration into the group (Dillehay, 1990, p. 225). In these

actions we see Connertons social memory enacted in thebodily performances of Mapuche mound renewals

(Dillehay, 1990). Such places become material indicators

of collective action, the lineages authority directlyconnecting with the powers of the dead (Deleuze and

Guattari, 1988). In this way the agency of the group is

grounded in collective memory, activated by the rupture

of the dead.

Memorializing the dead

Parker Pearson (1993, p. 203) has noted that when

there is evidence of increasing incorporation of the dead

into the world of the living, there is a growing concern

with lineage and ones place within society. In these sit-uations the living conrm their social relations through

concrete example. Their memory was in part maintained

through the situated relationships of specic family

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 309their relationships with the dead, done in object and

in deed. The formality of the architecture reecting

repetitive burial rituals allow archaeologists to investi-

gate the dead and their place in social formation

(Rowlands, 1993).

I am not claiming that as archaeologists we can un-

derstand the multiple meanings of these embodied places

nor know the memories that were evoked by these pla-

ces. Nor can we begin to locate all of the named and

valued places in the landscape, let alone the objects that

circulated through such social rituals. But by charting

and detailing the characteristics of the sacred communal

places we can begin to recognize ritual in the material

record (Dillehay, 1990). As Jerry Moore so aptly points

out, [these] ritual spaces are distinguished from other

constructed environments in that they are special and

unique. . .. Change in size, function, and organization ofmonumental constructions reect. . .changes in the na-ture of social power. (1996, p. 139). Shifts in con-

struction style, scale, material (permanence), size, access,

and visibility all give us clues to the signicance of these

memorials in some of the inhabitants lives. Out of these

details can come a better sense of intentions, values, and

community relations.

While many memorials are not focused on the dead,

as with storage (Hendon, 2000) or trade items (Weiner,

1992), many rituals evoke the past. The development of

centralized burial practices mark a form of social

memory of community formation materially, and thus

the web of group solidarity as well as group strife

(Pauketat, 2000). What is particularly signicant about

the dead and their burials is the potential for making the

dead visible through the memorials that can be built as

an extension of the body (Parker Pearson, 1982, 2000;

Rowlands, 1993). The dierent styles of civic space and

memorialization reect not only the scale of the collec-

tive but also the levels of access and therefore the layered

knowledge experienced by the participants.

Burials and their placement within communities il-

lustrate how the living used the dead (Moore, 1996).

This socio-spatial dynamic is cogently tracked in the

European Neolithic evidence by Alisdair Whittle where

he nds new forms of community created through ritu-

als and feasts for the ancestors in association with the

spread of the Linear Band Keramik culture (1996). In

the LBK data there is a clear placement of the graves in

separate cemeteries adjacent to the living compounds.

With this more formal grave placement Whittle claims

there was an accompanying sense of sociality reected in

the beginnings of descent and veneration of the dead.

Whittle claims the layout and scale of the interments

suggest that the Neolithic rituals surrounding the dead

were celebrating a timeless past while creating group

cohesion (Moore, 1996).

The inhabitants of the Andean region and indeedSouth America also used the dead (and the ancestors) asmembers who became ancestors. This is visible with the

increasing formalization of the civic architecture sur-

rounding burials in many Andean sequences.

It is not simply that there were burials and bundles in

structures that could be visited throughout the South

American coast and highlands, but that these buildings

were constructed such that they marked the social group

on the landscape. These ancestors could then be invoked

to participate in the renewal of the group, in the re-

alignment of power and the legitimization of political

claims, creating social dierence simultaneously with

solidarity (Milner, 1994; Pauketat, 2000). If we assume

that community cohesion can be linked to such vener-

ation in the Andes, we should be able to identify social

process when we study burial shrines, especially located

in non-domestic architecture. How far back might such

community creation be visible archaeologically? When

did it begin and what did the material changes suggest

about veneration participating in societys cohesion?I propose that early highland Andean community life

was punctuated with periodic rituals, tying the family to

the landscape, as the concept of territoriality was in-

creasingly active. The changes that occurred in such

rituals can be illustrated at Chiripa, Bolivia a location of

early architecture in the region. This history began with

burials, usually with women as the central gure. Such

memorials helped to create a more sedentary lifestyle

that was associated with increasing population on the

peninsula. Thus, lineage solidication (with associated

recruitment and restriction) through ancestor veneration

became evident in civic building on the landscape.

The place of Andean kin

Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980) portrayed the daily

life of Andean people in an attempt to make these

people real to the distant Spanish monarch. He drew

Andean residents enacting activities that were proper for

each age group; children carry water, women weave,

boys tend ocks of llamas. He portrayed the lived ex-

perience of people, highlighting the stereotypic life cycle

stages, and associated activities of highland dwellers. Atimportant links to the landscapes powers and resources.There are innumerable ethnographic, historical, and

archaeological examples of this relationship. While I

agree with Isbell (1997) about the role of ancestors in kin

creation and political maintenance, I would like to leave

aside the specic issue of the ayllu and its temporal ex-

istence as a political construct, whilst studying these

earlier times. Rather I would prefer to focus on the

broader role of the ancestors in the construction of the

collective memory and continuance of the society in onethe end of his lifecycle portraits is a mummy bundle of a

310 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332dead elder. Interpersonal relationships and age classes

did not stop with death. Tales of past acts were told to

grandchildren while remembering the dead. We our-

selves receive histories of past family members. These

stories frame our path in life and not of ourselves. In

South America, the active role of the dead in the family

is part of the living culture. With death, a person is

transformed, gaining a new level of inuence and a new

ownership of resources.

In the Andes, the dead live in a world that parallels

the living. There is a world of farming and herding that

the dead undertake while the living sleep. In addition to

this parallel daily cycle, the deceased, the Machukuna,

have great inuence on the living, the Runakuna. All

deceased, not just the important people (the mallkis)

inuence the living (Allen, 1988). They cause animals to

visit the hunters, they cause both sh and storms that

visit the shermen and, by bringing rain, they make the

crops grow. As Tarlow (2001) noted, contrary to some

archaeologists perspectives about the dead, the recentScottish dead, like the Andean dead, continue to be

active in peoples lives and decisions. The living act asadvocates for the recently deceased among the living,

while the dead are advocates for the living with the

spirits of the earth.

Andean belief systems are lled with animism. Part of

this resonating force is expressed in the idea that all

material things have a living essence, especially if items

have been crafted or cared for (Allen, 1988, p. 179).

Even things that are dead hold this essence. These dead

include not only humans but also plants and animals.

Things like wooden tools or harvested crops are dead

but still interact with the living (Allen, 1988, p. 186).

When physically present, the dead can participate in the

decisions of the living. The living most often commu-

nicate with the dead through eating, which opens the

channels between the two worlds. Allen insightfully re-

ports on how force-feeding and intoxication open com-

munication between the living and the dead that allows

for a ow of energy and support. Such communication

ministers care to the dead, which calms them. Because

they are slightly resentful of the living, the dead can

become angry and cause harm. Therefore, they require

regular feeding. Such requirements allow the dead elders

to continue their inuence in a cycle of power relation-

ships within a community, which in turn provides

potency to the living who are feeding the dead.

This power of inanimate things, of the mallkis as well

as their resting places, highlights the corporeality of

ideas in the Andes. It is through communication with

these dead ancestors that the living maintain community

well-being, particularly for the productivity of crops and

animals (Allen, 1988, p. 183). What is the locus of

transmission with the elders? It is the bodily remains of

the ancestors, the bones, clothing, and their images.Catherine Allen notes that the people of Sonqo, Peru seethe bones of their dead as a locus of power as well as of

their own identity, Kept in a niche of a storeroom wall,

a skull is said to provide khuyay (protection and care)

for the room and its contents (Allen, 1988, p. 184). This

power can also be gained from small stones, shaped like

animals or potatoes. These small objects carrying this

inanimate essence are called illas (little carved animals

out of clay or stone), conopas (carved stones in the shape

of food stus), enqaychus (carved stones into heads and

potato shapes), and the living ones (Allen, 1988;

Doyle, 1988, p. 66). Today, such skulls or carved stones

are periodically honored with presentations and oer-

ings (Astvaldsson, 1994). These objects hold power over

the fecundity and the well being of the living, through

their association with the dead. Through these ethno-

graphic examples, we see how the social identity as well

as the economic power base (the animals and crops) are

signied in and transmitted by the ancestors and their

bodily essence.

To pursue an understanding of the creation and

maintenance of past social relations we must consider

the strong emotions that would be present in settings

where the dead were buried and periodically visited.

Rituals that include the dead, naming them and recalling

their memory, are full of feeling, not only due to the

sadness of the departed, but also due to the power that

the deceased can emit (Allen, 1988; Bell, 1992; Dillehay,

1990). People are not just driven to communicate with

the elders for resources and land. They are also moti-

vated by the emotional attachment to them as symbols

of group existence (Geertz, 1963). The dead therefore

should be included in the Andean life cycle as the ulti-

mate elders.

The messengers to the telluric deities are not always

grandparents. During the time of the Inka, children also

gained power for the lineage when they were sacriced,

forging a strong link between the living and the spirits.

We see this most clearly with the Inka ritual of ca-

pacocha, where young children of elites were left on the

top of mountains to reify their lineages (Guaman Poma

de Ayala, 1980; Reinhard, 1992, 1999). In this ritual,

children were oered to the mountain spirits, the elders

of the landscape. Through this sacrice, they became

messengers to the spirits for the living.

Fortes (1965) notes that ritual recognition of the

ancestors helps construct social identity and delimit a

corporate group on the landscape. Clearly such recog-

nition will have had variable impact through time and

cultural setting. Once we include the ancestors in the

social and the physical world of the past inhabitants, we

can begin to see their active place in past social forma-

tion. McAnany (1995, 1998) nds this in Mesoamerica.

Through a series of rituals, the Maya dead provided

rights and access to resources. Such rituals placed the

dead on the landscape by their burial pit, room or houseof the dead. From there, the deceased claimed a spatial,

of sacred objects.

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 311Moore (1996) insightfully traces the diering trends

of Andean ritual architecture through time, and there-

fore I will only focus on a few salient attributes in this

architectural history that directly relate to my argument.

One of Moores main points about this sequence is theimportance given to ancestor worship (1996, p. 166). He

sees a major shift in the style spectacle in the Middle

Formative with the addition of mound building, allow-

ing for spiritual and social dierences to be made more

visible on the landscape and in the rituals. Such mound

architecture suggests that there might have been two

levels of communion with the ancestors, a small intimate

interaction within the little rooms, and a larger suprarelational, and emotional territory with the living. In the

same way, Andean people today say they gain the land

they work on and its fertility from their ancestors. This

relationship is maintained and nurtured through rituals

of visiting, sharing, and feeding the dead. Remembering

the dead and their associated telluric spirits can be an act

as large as a feast and procession with the mummy

bundle, or as small as libations to the earth, invoked

every time drink or food is shared or the earth is opened

(as with the start of every day of excavation). The

landscape then participates in the creation of the group.

Through their ties with the ancestors, there is an essen-

tial territoriality to Andean social relations.

Andean ritual architecture

Ritual architecture is the earliest known permanent

construction in the Andes, beginning in the Archaic

(Preceramic) and Formative times. The rst multi-gen-

erational evidence was delimited space in association

with small rooms (Moore, 1996, p. 132). Some of the

earliest studied examples have been found at Asana in

the south-central highlands, at Huaynunaa and Asperoalong the north central coast, and later at Huaricoto,

Piruru, La Galgada, and Kotosh in the north central

highlands (Aldenderfer, 1990, 1991, 1993; Bonnier,

1997; Burger and Salazar-Burger, 1980, 1985; Grieder

et al., 1988; Izumi and Sono, 1963; Izumi and Terada,

1972; Moore, 1996; Pozorski and Pozorski, 1987; Po-

zorski and Pozorski, 1990). The essential ingredients of

these civic places include an enclosed or demarcated

space with a prepared oor. More elaborate sites have a

change of level with the entrance into the rooms and

bodies or places that could have contained bodies (ni-

ches) within the enclosures. In the north, the earliest

rooms have sunken hearths with ventilation shafts,

reminiscent of sweathouses. In the south there are sun-

ken enclosures open to the sky. Later, mounds are built

with small rooms on the top. Most important are the

small rooms and niches that recur, suggesting curationfamilial viewing at the base of the platforms. Thus thearchitecture projected the ideal cosmic order in which

the inhabitants operated (Milner, 1994; Moore, 1996, p.

167; Wheatley, 1971). As Moore notes, this structure

continues until the Spanish arrive.

These early mounds are best illustrated at La Galg-

ada, whose twin mounds were built between 2662 and

1395 BC (Grieder et al., 1988). Small rooms built upon

the mounds had sunken central hearths with ventilator

shafts. These rooms received the dead as new structures

were built on top of them. Around 1500 BC, Kotosh,

with the same style of architectural sequence and dual

mounds dotted with small structures that contained in-

ternal hearths, displays other forms of engagement with

the human body (Izumi and Sono, 1963). In one build-

ing there are clay molded, crossed human hands placed

just below a chest high niche, implying that human

heads were kept in such niches. Coastal sites like Aspero,

dating to 27002000 BC, show a combination of small

enclosed rooms on mounds that has an open plaza area

for large group rituals (Feldman, 1980). The deads placein these early ceremonies is seen at the coastal site of

Asia, dating around 2200 BC. Engel found a cache of

eight human crania wrapped in matting under the oor

of a non-domestic room (Engel, 1963; Moseley, 1992).

Here we see a materialization of the dead, either per-

manently or periodically in enclosed rooms.

The southcentral Andes has slightly later timing and

dierent scales and styles, but essentially the same se-

quence of ingredients. Asana, a preceramic site in the

highlands, dating between 3000 and 2400 BC displays

public space demarcation, illustrating the earliest ex-

ample of community gathering in the southcentral

highlands (Aldenderfer, 1990, 1991). The site has traces

of postholes that mark a series of walled enclosures

sitting on one side of the plastered surface, along with

basins, hearths, ash lenses, platforms and stone circles

(1991). Aldenderfer calls this precinct ceremonial and

suggests that this non-domestic area of the site was used

as a dance/ritual space.

Due east of Asana, towards the Titicaca Basin, there

is evidence for human body curation. Along the south-

western side of the Titicaca Basin, up the Llave River,

Mark Aldenderfers team has identied several stonepiles that contained human crania (Aldenderfer personal

communication, 1999). While their date is not conrmed

yet, Aldenderfer believes they were constructed some-

time around 2500 BC. These rock piles were created

before we have settlements in the Basin and sets the

stage for Chiripa with its rst building at 1500 BC.

Preceramic architectural evidence on the coast and in

the highlands shows that gatherings began with marking

a space for ritual performances. This architectural ex-

pression of social relations reects a loose cohesion.

Later the space is divided up through elevation. In these

contexts, at early sites like La Galgada and Aspero,there are spaces for both large and small gatherings;

large open spaces with no hindering divisions as well as

small, more restricted gatherings in enclosures that are

entered through a series of entrances (Moore, 1996).

These features inform us as to the size and structure of

the group that congregated (Moore, 1996). This sacred

architecture was at times linked to actual bodies and/or

representations of the ancestors, like the burials at La

Galgada, the heads at Asia or the crossed hands at

Kotosh. These powerful things contained an essence that

the living desired to remember and invoke. Such con-

cepts are deeply rooted, and most probably were active

and structuring in the rst public architecture we see.

While these links to the historical beliefs about the dead

cannot be directly linked through time, there are some

continuities in the Andean tradition about ritual that

resonates with the material traits of the past.

The evidence at Chiripa

evidence highlight lineage, ancestors, and community on

the landscape. The early burials display women as cen-

tral gures. Over time the civic architecture becomes

more elaborate and segmented. At Chiripa, the burial

evidence displays a shift from walled enclosures with

below ground interment to sunken enclosures with ni-

ches, to elaborate nested chambers for curating ancestral

paraphernalia on raised mounds.

The Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) has been

working at Chiripa since 1992 (Hastorf et al., 1992,

1996, 1998, 1999), building on the work of previous

scholars (Bennett, 1936, 1948; Browman, 1978, 1986,

1991; Cordero Mirando, n.d.; Kidder, 1956; Mohr

Chaavez, 1988; Portugal Ortz, 1992; Portugal Zamora,1940). We dene the Chiripa indigenous uorescence of

the site in three phases, Early, Middle, and Late Chiripa

(Fig. 2). These phases are dened by changes in the ce-

ramic assemblage at the site, with radiocarbon dates to

anchor the sequence in absolute time (Steadman, 1996;

312 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332The rst settled communities occurred along the Tit-

icaca lakeshore during what is called the Early Formative

Phase (also called the Initial Period), between 1500 and

800 BC (Bandy, 2001; Hastorf et al., 1999; Stanish, 1999).

It is at this time that we rst see painted and incised ce-

ramics as symbolic cultural representations enter the re-

cord with civic architecture. While a series of sites have

been studied in the region, extensive excavations from

these early phases have occurred at Chiripa on the Taraco

Peninsula in the southwestern area of the little, southern

lake (Fig. 1). I want to focus on its development up until it

is drawn into the larger peninsular polity of Sonaji,

around 250 BC (Bandy, 2001).

To illustrate how the people of Chiripa constructed

their society over this time, I will track two phenom-

enathe civic architecture and burials. Both classes ofFig. 1. The Taraco PenWhitehead, 1999b). While the Chiripa phases span when

it was one of four centers on the Taraco Peninsula, it is

during the Tiwanaku I times that a peninsula wide polity

formed with the center several kilometers to the west

from Chiripa.

Chiripa is located on a low slope o the lake plain,

facing north towards the glaciated Cordillera Blanca

mountain chain across the lake. The site sits upon three

culturally contoured terraces, rising up from the lake

(Fig. 3). These terraces were accentuated, receiving ar-

chitectural alteration throughout the sites existence. The

architectural sequence begins in the Early Chiripa phase

(15001000 BC) with a plastered surface within an en-

closing wall on the lowest terrace (in the Santiago area

of Fig. 3). In the Middle Chiripa phase an enclosure is

built on the middle terrace, reminiscent of the Santiago

plastered surface with surrounding mudbrick wall.insula study area.

It is during the Late Chiripa phase, spanning over

500 years, that the rst group of buildings is built on top

of a new platform mound on the middle terrace. During

the Late Chiripa Phase 1 we know that a series of stone

and mud brick rooms were built on the mound. While

we do not know their full extent, these structures could

have spanned across the whole mound top area, and

probably were laid out in a rectangular organization,

facing the lake to the north. The structures were rebuilt

several times, eventually stopping with the Late Chiripa

phase 2. At the height of Chiripas inuence, the resi-dents constructed a mound in this same spot with an

integrated group of two sets of seven structures sur-

rounding a sunken court on the top and a new sunken

enclosure was built (illustrated in Fig. 3). These struc-

tures have burials under the oors, as well as niches and

secluded chambers.

Sometime around 250 BC, the social and political

worlds of the residents of Chiripa altered. Political ex-

pansion was afoot around the lake basin. It is during

this Tiwanaku I phase that we see political consolidation

of the western peninsula (Bandy, 2001). The peninsula

shifted from a series of segmented, independent com-

munities to a centralizing inuence of one center, Kala

Uyuni, on the southwestern end of the Peninsula, called

the Taraco Peninsula Polity. This larger political entity

Fig. 3. The architectural evidence from the excavations at Chiripa. Th

site datum.

Fig. 2. The temporal phases at the site of Chiripa and the

Taraco Peninsula.

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 313e site grid coordinates position the excavation units to the main

Tiwanaku periods. The likelihood is that simple organic

structures were constructed out of mudbrick with stone

foundations, or constructed of sod and reeds (wattle and

daub) and that these small, humble structures were then

covered up with domestic midden when they were

abandoned.

The Early Chiripa period

Several areas of the site have Early Chiripa phase

evidence (Fig. 4). The densest use is recorded in 1m of

Early Chiripa domestic material deposited on sterile in

the Santiago area. On top of these midden layers is a

series of white and yellow plaster surfaces laid down

within a mudbrick wall. Across this plastered and fairly

clean surface were placed at least six cobbled and un-

lined interment burial pits, some adjoining each other

(Alconini and Rivera, 1993; Dean and Kojan, 1999,

2001; Hastorf et al., 1992). On the uppermost terrace a

314 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332aected the ritual identity of the Chiripe~nnos, and is re-ected in new ceremonial architecture.

The Taraco Peninsula Polity was only one of several

such political entities that existed in the Titicaca Basin

during the Tiwanaku I phase. Other multi-community

polities, albeit smaller in scale, were most likely centered

at Tiwanaku itself, Kanamarka/Lakaya (Bandy, 2001, p.

196; Stanish et al., 1997), and Palermo (Stanish et al.,

1997), and potentially at Titimani (Portugal Ortz, 1988;Portugal Ortz et al., 1993) and Kallamarka (Albarricin-Jordan et al., 1993; Leemuz Aguirre and Paz Soria, 2001;Portugal Ortz and Portugal Zamora, 1977). These pop-ulation centers each contained a mound and sunken

court. Thewhole of the Titicaca Basinwas notmade up of

such multi-community polities however. A wide range of

alternative political forms existed at this time, including

non-hierarchical village systems present on theAchacachi

(Leemuz Aguirre, 2001) and the Copacabana Peninsulas.There also was the development of the much larger polity

at Pukara, that dominated much of the northern Titicaca

Basin by the end of the Tiwanaku I phase (Chaavez, 1992;Cohen, 2001; Kidder, 1948; Klarich and Craig, 2001;

Mujica, 1978; Plourde and Stanish, 2001). In this time of

political expansion, the ancestorswere harnessed to larger

supernatural powers by the burgeoning politicians. The

semi-subterranean enclosure at Tiwanaku reects this

clearly. It was constructed during the Tiwanaku III phase

(Kidder, 1956; Ponce-Sangines, 1975). The stone faced

walls were lined with carved tenon heads. These heads

were most likely the enqaychus of the local ancestors of all

lineages drawn into the growing Tiwanaku sphere. Here,

we see the essences of the ancestors brought tooneplace to

be propitiated, honored, and controlled at one time. Such

was the path to political power that the Chiripe~nnos, theKala Uyuni~nnos and the Tiwanakota in turn used to greateect, as the spiritual world of ancestral power was

harnessed in the political power over the living.

Our recent work has uncovered a total of 12 Chiripa-

phase burials in o the mound pits (Blom and Bandy,

1999; Hastorf, 1999). The earlier excavations by Ben-

nett, Kidder, and Portugal found a total of 34 burials in

the Late Chiripa mound (Bennett, 1936; Kidder, 1956).

Theirs were all in burial pits, with no visible evidence in

any of the niches or bins, unlike the skeletal evidence

that has been found at Pukara in both Pre-Pukara (BG

sector) and Pukara (BB) phase ceremonial enclosures

(Chaavez, 1992; Kidder, 1948; Mohr Chaavez, 1988;Wheeler and Mujica, 1981).

We have uncovered little primary evidence for do-

mestic architecture but layers and pits of domestic rub-

bish. To the east of Santiago we encountered an Early

Chiripa curved domestic wall that was surrounded with

later material (Dean and Kojan, 1999). The excavated

data suggest that people resided on all three terraces

at the edges of the ceremonial architecture. Laterphases have more midden evidence, especially from theFig. 4. The extent of Early Chiripa occupation uncovered to

date. The large central cloud is from our systematic surface

collections. The smaller zones are excavations. The site grid

coordinates position the excavation units to the main sitedatum.

pit lled with Early Chiripa midden has also been lo-

cated (Paz Soria, 1996, 1999). We also have a locus of

early use marked by the surface ceramics. These units

Fig. 5. Plastered oors in the Santiago area. The light gray is

the preserved remains of the plastered oor. The dark gray are

the burial pits. The black is the mudbrick wall traces.

Fig. 6. Two Early Chiripa cooking vessels form burial locus

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 315are dated by their associated ceramics and absolute

carbon dates (Steadman, 1999; Steadman and Hastorf,

2001; Whitehead, 1999b).

The deposition history tells us that this plastered area

was constructed towards the end of this 500 year se-

quence. Two of the six pits have multiple bodies. These

multiple burials include one wrapped adult woman at

the base of the pit, with additional bodies added later,

evidenced by their position and their disarticulation

(Dean and Kojan, 1996, 1999; loci 1404 and 1236/7).

The accompanying bones are of dierent ages, but most

are children. The relatively complete articulated female

in locus 1404 is accompanied by several adult crania

(possibly female, Blom, personal communication, 1999),

as well as a secondary burial of a child (Blom and

Bandy, 1999, appendix 5). This female received a whole

ceramic bowl plus a stone tablet in her grave. We have

no visible evidence to clarify if it was used for snu and/

or paint. The female also had beautiful blue sodolite

beads around her neck. The accompanying crania and

children are more likely to be oerings rather than a

family burial. The second multiple burial, loci 1236/1237

contained evidence for four interments in a cobble-lined

pit. The primary burial in the tomb again was a 4455-

year-old woman, wrapped, exed, and lying on her left

side. She too received sodolite beads, one mano and two

basal grinding stones, with the more worn basal stone

placed over her head. On top of her lay a foetus, one 2

4-year-old and an older person (Blom and Bandy, 1999,

appendix 5). These additional bodies might have been

later oerings, along similar lines of the capacocha In-

kaic ritual. Both of these burials suggest that the origi-

nal, wrapped person was remembered through receiving

oerings over time. This is our rst evidence for the

lineage-ancestral focus around the females.

Three of the four single burials contained juveniles

(Fig. 5). One well-wrapped 610-year-old had several

strings of lapis lazuli and sodolite beads (locus 871). The

most elaborate of these interments, was a 12-year-old

(Blom and Bandy, 1999), virtually an adult in that cul-

ture (loci 565 and 2055). This youth had very worn teeth

suggesting much work, processing reeds or hides. The

interred also had two manos, bone tools, and an ac-

companying raptor. This burials importance is reectedalso in the adjoining white plaster lined chamber con-

taining two lovely cooking vessels. One is a small family

sized cooking vessel and the other a larger supra-familial

cooking pot1 (Fig. 6). This person received not only

special animals to accompany it, but also a second small

1 We hope to run a DNA sample on this person to learn if it

is a female or male. I predict that it is female, based on the toothwear and accompanying artifacts. 565/2055. The larger cooking pot is unusually large.

constructed on the peninsula, and by several absolute

dates (Hastorf, 1999; Steadman, 1999; Whitehead,

1999b). We have uncovered two architectural features

built between 1000 and 800 BC, a sunken enclosure and

316 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332chamber with cooking vessels. Such bi-cameral tombs

are common later on the Peninsula (Janusek, 1999;

personal communication, 2001). The nal unlined burial

pit contained one male adult, 2535 years old, no of-

ferings have preserved with him (L 1404).

All articulated burials were exed andwrapped in reed

mats. Most importantly, the two multiple burials each

contained one intact body and several secondary, partial

burials above or next to the main skeleton. This deposi-

tional pattern suggests that the burials were periodically

reopened to attend to the bodies andmake oerings. Both

of thesemultiple burials focus on an adult female who had

sodolite beads and worn grinding or pallet stones as of-

ferings. Two also contained whole bowls, the only com-

plete bowls in any of the Chiripa phase burials we

excavated (L. Steadman, per. comm., 1999). Perhaps not

what we normally think of as elders today, the two single

juveniles seem to have been treated with as much rever-

ence as the elder women encountered in the burials sug-

gesting that they were considered adults in their

community. This area was not a community cemetery but

rather a place for honoring certain individuals.

The data we have suggest that the early residents of

Chiripa and others on the Taraco Peninsula began to hold

periodic gatherings surrounding some of the female dead.

During these rituals, these pits would have been reopened

to feed and tend the dead, as we see with the earlier

Chinchorro burials (Arriaza, 1996). The ceramics asso-

ciated with the plaster surfaces and the burials are pre-

dominantly serving vessels, mainly bowls and small jars,

such as would be used in public ritual consumption or

feasting, dierent from the mixed assemblage of cooking

and serving wares from the middens (Steadman and

Hastorf, 2001).

Very few people were actually buried in this enclosure,

suggesting that these few were designated as ancestors.

This is not the same veneration that we see in the later

adult male chullpas, for a start this is curation with a

distinctly female focus. While it is almost a clichee to notethat females often are associated with propagation and

fertility, this early burial evidence does suggest that the

lineages that were rst memorialized on the Taraco

landscape were maternal. These central bodies are the

strongest indicators of the use of the female line in this

initial social consolidation, associated with increased se-

dentism and territoriality on the Peninsula. It is possible

to suggest that females were the initial focus of Titicaca

ancestor veneration, a precursor of the female super nat-

urals to come with the stone representations in the Late

Chiripa times (Lyon, 1979). By the Tiwanaku imperial

times, the veneration has shifted over to the males.

The Middle Chiripa period

The Middle Chiripa phase is identied by a change inceramic style, the rst semi-subterranean enclosurea walled enclosure. One semi-subterranean enclosure

was constructed in the Santiago area (Fig. 7). Associated

with the plastered surface to the east. This plastered area

received at least four Middle Chiripa multiple and single

burials. We have also identied a second enclosure that

is now mainly under the mound on the middle terrace

(Whitehead, 1999d).

The sunken court adjoining the previously demar-

cated enclosure suggests that the residents were experi-

menting with new forms of social interactions and

rituals.2 The form and frequency of red ceramics ex-

panded along with their surface decoration (Steadman,

1999). This was a time of relatively rapid social change,

albeit at a small scale in a modest population. The

density of people on the Peninsula, while substantial

enough to have regularly spaced communities through-

out had not as yet pressured the social environment

enough to warrant major societal shifts in political or-

ganization (Bandy, 2001). That comes later. At this time

we see an interest in accentuating social cohesion with

more elaborate ritual participation. Renewal of collec-

tive memory through ceremony could build lineage co-

hesion as well as become a locus for maneuvering

political claims in the descent groups (Dillehay, 1990;

Hendon, 2000).

The Santiago area continues to be a focus for ritual

activities involving communion with the dead. More

lenses of white plaster surfaces were laid down in this

eastern area. These surfaces had some evidence of food

preparation, with ashy pits of sh and meat (Dean and

Kojan, 1999; Moore and Hastorf, 2000). These fairly

clean lenses reect preparation and consumption rather

than production or processing. The three burials asso-

ciated with this surface are all in unlined pits (Fig. 7).

One, locus 789 is a multiple burial, in this case centered

on a male individual of 3555 years of age (Blom and

Bandy, 1999, appendix 5). The oering of a 0.71.3-

year-old infant is suggested by its crania placed inside a

large, sooted cooking pot (Steadman and Hastorf,

2001). The second burial, loci 761/768 is an adult female,

aged between 50 and 80 years old in a south facing,

exed position (Blom and Bandy, 1999). She had local

style cranial deformation, determined by Deborah Blom

who has studied the southcentral Andean head treat-

ments. This elder female was wrapped in a reed mat and

accompanied by three worn grinding stones, one mano,

three duck crania, and a whole cooking pot. As in the

2 While we have no evidence for it, there might have been an

earlier, smaller sunken enclosure where the Middle Chiripa one

was placed, which would have been completely destroyed in therebuilding.

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 317Early Chiripa phase burials, this well-used cooking pot

continues the association of feeding with the ancestors.

The third burial (locus 816) was a single adult, only

partially exposed and therefore its sex was not deter-

mined (Hastorf et al., 1992).

The Choquehuanca semi-subterranean sunken en-

closure built in the western part of this area measures

14 13m and forms a trapezoid (Fig. 7). The founda-tion for the enclosure was cut through the Early Chiripa

layers down to sterile. Rounded river pebbles were ini-

tially laid down (Hastorf et al., 1992; Whitehead,

1999d). The walls were built of river cobbles with gray

plastered mud, smoothed, and painted red and yellow.

While most of the walls have been destroyed down to

one or two courses, the portion seen in Fig. 8 demon-

strates that it was originally six courses tall. A ll layer

of gray clay was placed throughout the interior and

covered by a very ne yellow plaster. A thin use surface

on top of this is evident only microscopically. Micro-

morphological analysis indicates that this surface

was not heavily used, but did have water percolation. In

Fig. 7. The Choquehuanca sunken enclosure. The Middle Chiripa bu

excavation units to the main site datum point.other words, it was exposed to the elements and without

a roof. From the one sediment block studied, there is no

evidence of burning or res on the surface (Goodman,

1999; Wendy Matthews personal communication, 1997).

The ceramics on the Choquehuanca enclosure oor re-

ect a narrow range of activities. The predominance of

small jars and bowls, more common here than elsewhere

at the site at this time suggests a focus on food con-

sumption, including one special ware that suggests chi-

cha beer (Steadman personal communication, 2000;

Steadman and Hastorf, 2001). The oor surface was

covered over quite rapidly with Late Chiripa midden.

The evidence suggests that food was prepared in the

upper enclosure for presentation and consumption in the

sunken space, depicting a more formal separation of

activities in this phase.

Important in the history of ancestral worship on the

Taraco Peninsula is the identication of a niche, about

90 cm in length, located on the eastern side of this

enclosure (Fig. 9). This niche can be compared to the

later niches in the sunken enclosures at Pukara, where

rial pits are shaded gray. The site grid coordinates position the

318 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332Kidder found a human mandible (Chaavez, 1992; MohrChaavez, 1988). Another example of niches for the deadand related icons was also uncovered at Pukara, in the

small niches of a pre-Pukara rectangular structure in

sector BG. While two of the niches near the door were

empty, the other two on the opposite wall held a

painted stone head in one and a stone human gure in

the second (Wheeler and Mujica, 1981, p. 29). We can

also refer to the ve more humble but earlier niches

found in the Formative structure 3-A at La Barca to

the south (Rose, 2001). Two of these niches have

human burials in them.

Fig. 9. The niche along the eastern wall of the Choquehuanc

Fig. 8. Choquehuanca wall plaster, seen on the lower portion oIf we assume that the residents of Chiripa periodi-

cally placed signicant items in this niche, like people

did slightly later at Pukara, we can suggest that this

Choquehuanca niche is the rst evidence of ancestral

presentation at Chiripa, dating to between 1000 and 800

BC. The placement of a body in a niche can be seen as

intermediary between the multiple burials pits of the

Early Chiripa phase and the entirely above ground

burial-chambers of the Upper Houses in the Late

Chiripa phase 2.

Upslope on the middle terrace, later covered by the

platform mound, we found traces of a large enclosure,

a enclosure. The stick in the photograph is 20 cm long.

f the stonewall. The stick in the photograph is 50 cm long.

sitting directly upon leveled Early Chiripa midden

(Fig. 10). Only one corner of the wall has been exposed,

an L-shaped portion of a large trapezoidal enclosure, of

at least 12 5m (Whitehead, 1999a). This wall was builtof in situ 70 30 cm red pillow mud bricks. The innerwall surface was washed with mud, having no sign of

colored plaster (Whitehead, 1999a). A scattering of an-

imal bone, lithic tools and ceramic fragments were em-

bedded in the surface.

Before 800 BC we have evidence for at least two civic

areas that reect the ceremonies at Chiripa. Not only are

there multiple burials in an enclosed sacred space, it is

associated with a formal gathering place. While we do

not know what was kept in the niche, there is evidence in

the Andes for their use in ancestral presentation. The

large middle terrace enclosure was another ceremonial

gathering area. The architectural evidence illustrates the

increasing concern with performance space for gather-

ings of up to 50 people at a time (population estimate

using 3.6m2/person from Moore, 1996, p. 149). These

ceremonies, perhaps with processions and certainly with

feasting, would cement the social group, rearming

lineage if not community identity. This dual ritual space

of platform and sunken enclosure is the beginning of a

trend that continues for two thousand years, until the

end of the Middle Horizon (Kolata, 1993; Stanish,

1997).

The Late Chiripa period

Between 800 and 250 BC, Chiripa grew to 7.5 ha

(Bandy, 1999). This was a dynamic time with an accel-

erated elaboration of the ceremonial precincts. Karen

Mohr (1966), who completed an MA thesis on Kiddersexcavated ceramics separated the upper and the lower

mound levels using ceramic style. These data, along with

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 319Fig. 10. The Middle Chiripa enclosure excavation on the middle terrace.

a series of absolute dates both on and o the mound,

direct us to the two phases in this period, named the

Lower and Upper Houses by Bennett. At this point we

feel secure that the two phases on the mound do repre-

sent a scalar shift in social cohesion, and this shift is

visible both stratigraphically and absolutely.

We know of at least three new precincts from this

time, a sunken enclosure at Llusco on the uppermost

terrace, the Quispe enclosure and the canal at Alejo,

both on the lowest terrace (Fig. 3). The carbon assays

suggest that Llusco was built between 800 and 750 BC,

contemporaneous with the Lower Houses (Whitehead,

1999b). The Quispe enclosure was in use later in phase 2,

around 390 BC, when the Upper Houses were built

(University of Arizona AMS Facility, 2002).

Phase 1

The early Llusco trapezoid enclosure (800750 BC),

13 11m, running northsouth,could comfortably holdaround 40 people (Fig. 11; Hastorf et al., 1992; Paz,

1996; population estimate using 3.6m2/person from

Moore, 1996, p. 149). While there is midden material

deposited on the oor, the evidence suggests non-do-

mestic use. The structure was not roofed. A clay base

was laid down after the stone foundation stones were

packed into the sloping U shaped trenches cut into

sterile soil. On top of this ll, there was a white plas-

tered oor that is now only partially preserved (the

shaded area on Fig. 11). The few artifacts that were

found sitting on the surface suggest ritual and food

consumption activities. Decorated ceramics were the

most common, including a nice fragment of a trumpet

with mottled camelid heads (Steadman, 1999, Fig. 27d).

Trumpets are considered to have been blown in cere-

monies, like the large Strombus shells portrayed in

Moche iconography and found at the Formative (Early

Horizon) site Chavn de Huantar (Lumbreras, 1989).Such a trumpet would have called people, both alive

and dead to the ceremony designating ritual time as

well as space. Fragments of braziers (incense burners)

were uncovered on the oor, often used to cleanse as

well as call the deities with the smoke (Groom, 1981).

Cooking and food presentation vessels suggest feasting

(Steadman, 1999).

. Som

320 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332Fig. 11. The Late Chiripa phase 1 Llusco enclosure foundationcanal extending out from the northwest corner.e foundation rock is present along the northern wall. Note the

The stone lined canal in the northwest corner of this

structure is only 24 cm wide and would not have moved

much water (Fig. 11). Rituals surrounding water

movement in canals are common in the Andes, enacted

to bring the rains at the beginning of the planting season

(Sikkink, 1997). The sound of water has been noted as

important in rituals at sites like the contemporaneous

Chavn de Huantar, where there is an elaborate undermound canal associated with the older temple area

(Lumbreras, 1989). Evidence of ritual water movement

is also present at Tiwanaku. Both of the major mounds,

Akapana and Pumapunku have large, well constructed

canals that move water only a short way down the

mounds, while creating a rumbling sound from within.

Themiddle terracewas redesigned around 800BCwith

the building of a raised platform. The carbon assays date

this Lower House level to 900600 BC (Whitehead,

1999b). The construction began with a pit oering of an

adult with a foetus and a pregnant camelid, in a pit lled

with ash and carbon, burnt oerings (locus 3511). The

human was buried face down with its head removed from

its spine. The llama was not butchered or consumed, but

sacriced whole. On the platform a series of stone and

mudbrick structures were built in two building sequences,

with three structures superimposed in the northern area

and two superimposed structures in the southern area

(Fig. 12, ASD 13, 14, and 15; Bandy, 1996; Bennett, 1936;

ne water laid lenses external to these structures, dem-

onstrating that there was some distance between these

buildings (Goodman, 1999).

In the northern group, the cobble walls and oors

were covered with multiple layers of a light-yellow

plaster. These structures are small, being only 2.5m

across holding only 35 people at any one time. Several

small hearths were found on these oors. Some of these

small ephemeral hearths were used for food preparation

while others received oerings for burning, including a

range of wild non-food taxa (Moore and Hastorf, 2000).

There was a closing ceremony with each room renova-

tion. After a thin cap of midden ll or sterile sand was

laid down, a re was kindled across the surface with

wood and straw. This re evidence is present on top of

the ll in at least six of the eight oors in the sequence.

The rst Lower House structure was constructed around

600 BC, and the last was abandoned by 400 BC

(Whitehead, 1999b). Bandy notes that if we divide the

200 years of use by the eight oors, we nd that there

was about 25 years of use for each oor, equal to about

generational replenishment (1999b).

Further south two superimposed structures were also

uncovered. These had more sturdy double coursed walls

and were not plastered. The lower structures that Coe

excavated in 1955 on the northwest corner of the mound

display yet a third type of construction. These structures

ures,

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 321CorderoMirando, n.d.; Kidder, 1956). There is a series of

Fig. 12. The Prole of Mound 1-A excavations. ASDs are struct

between D-52 and D-62.have many round river cobbles embedded in a clay

Ds refer to stratigraphic units. Note the sequence of thin oors

322 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332matrix (Kidder, 1956, Fig. 14). While the architecture

suggests a set of buildings on one platform, the buildings

were not in the same style nor were they all rebuilt si-

multaneously. This separate construction is similar to

the early levels at Kotosh (Izumi and Terada, 1972).

Despite this fairly independent construction style, their

angle of orientation and placement, along the sides and

at the corners of the platform suggest that these lower

structures were generally oriented in a ring around a

sunken enclosure. Browman calculated a central sunken

enclosure encircled by these structures, based on the

excavation of an interior test pit (1978). These rooms

around a court could have been for small, separate

lineage rituals, suggested by the small oertory res.

This standing architecture, replacing the pit tombs as the

lineage memorial, would have helped make the dead

visible on the landscape (McAnany, 1998).

Beck (n.d.) has recently excavated a Late Chiripa

phase 1 site, Alta Pukara, 4 km to the east of Chiripa.

The ceramics, architectural attributes and absolute dates

determine that these are contemporaneous with the Late

Chiripa 1, ranging between 790 and 450 BC (Beck,

personal communication, 2002). That ceremonial sector

is a small platform with two rectangular rooms, one

facing east and one west. These structures, most similar

to the southern Lower House Chiripa architectural style,

suggest a similar community ritual coordination oper-

ating, all be it on a much smaller scale than at Chiripa.

The Chiripa mound architecture reects a new two-

tiered level of lineage ritual ceremonialism, moving away

from the more collective nature of one enclosure

(Moore, 1996). This evidence implies a segmented or-

ganization of ritual space, with the dierent lineages

having discrete, private chambers. It further reects a

dierence of knowledge and access within the lineages

not between them, as all of the rooms are more or less

the same. The clean plastered oors with their lack of

domestic evidence suggests periodic ritual use. The ar-

chitecture implies that some items were curated above

ground, as with the earlier Choquehuanca niche. These

buildings could hold only a small number of people at a

time. Did the whole lineage meet together in the inner

courtyard? Llusco provides us with contemporaneous

evidence for larger ritual performances, perhaps even

receiving processions from the mound. We still do not

know if Llusco was only for one lineage group, was it

used serially by the dierent lineages, or used only be-

fore the Lower House platform mound was completed?

Phase 2

Around 400 BC this architectural trajectory becomes

more formalized. The mound was renovated, a new

enclosure was built on the lowest terrace. The Quispe

enclosure on the lowest terrace also dates to 390 BC,

initiated in this new phase of building and ritualelaboration (Paz Soria, 1999). A new addition to thisarchitectural style is an internal chamber, approximately

2m in size (Fig. 13). While now melted, the mud wallsprobably originally formed an inner compartment for

we can see the corners in the slump (Roddick, 2002).

Although the gray clay base was trampled and exposed,

it was homogeneous and bioturbated, suggesting that it

was unroofed and not heavily used (Goodman, personal

communication, 2001). On the oor surface, Paz Soria

found quite dense material, including ceramics, food

remains, bone tools, and lithics. There were polychrome

incised ceramics reecting ceremonial presentation and

evidence for food presentation in the enclosure. In the

inner chamber stone working tools and exotic turquoise

clustered, suggesting that long distance wealth items

were curated and processed there.

Directly to the east of Quispe, a well-formed drainage

canal that slopes down at least 7m was found in the

Alejo sector (Paz Soria, 1999; Fig. 14). At the beginning

of the canal there is a large worn out grinding slab

through which the water entered the canal. We found no

evidence for a preserved enclosure associated with the

canal. Similar subterranean canals exit in the ceremonial

precinct of Tiwanaku. This area extends the ritual pre-

cinct across the eastern part of the lower terrace in this

Late Chiripa phase.

At the same time as the Quispe enclosure was in use,

the people of Chiripa rebuilt the mound in a uniform,

coordinated manner, increasing the sense of hierarchy. It

was in use between 400 and 250 BC, contemporaneous

with the Titicaca Basins Yayamama Religious Tradition(Mohr Chaavez, 1988). Based on recent Chiripa moundexcavations, it is now clear there were two openings, one

to the north, down slope, and one to the south, upslope

(as Bennett originally thought) with seven structures on

each side (Fig. 3). The 14 coordinated, rooms are uni-

form in construction style, some sharing outer walls. The

rooms encircle a large 25m wide sunken enclosure, lar-

ger than all other recorded sunken enclosures at the time

(Moore, 1996, p. 148). This area could have held about

200 (population estimate using 3.6m2/person from

Moore, 1996, p. 149), more than what the 14 rooms

could hold. Each room was larger than the earlier

structures, measuring on average 8 5m. More elabo-rate as well, these structures had nine interior bins,

making each interior space only about 6 3m (Fig. 15).The oors and cobbled walls were plastered with several

colors. Unlike the earlier level however, these structures

were not renovated or rebuilt throughout their use. Gi-

ven that they were built as one, their architecture reects

how the participating groups planned and worked to-

gether in this central construction.

Their conception and use of ritual space is clear, with

some of it designated for communal activities in the

center, with the smaller rooms for more secretive activ-

ities. Like the previous phase these data strongly suggesta two-tiered level of ritual activity at Chiripa. Further

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 323evidence of a shift from collectivity to selective control

at Chiripa is seen in the rooms entrances. These struc-tures have doorways with slots for sliding woven mat (or

Fig. 13. The Late Chiripa Quispe enclosureless likely wood) doors. This sealing o entrances is

unusual in the Andes. This could be to keep people out,

restricting who could enter. Likewise, it also could be to

with canal extending to the northwest.

324 C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332keep those inside in, reminiscent of subterranean tombs.

These entrances reect a social control as well as a sa-

cred hierarchy. This size dierence between the small

rooms and the mound courtyard supports the notion of

inequality in access to the memorials. There were those

who could go into the rooms and be with the most sa-

cred, but the majority participated or watched in the

plaza, or perhaps even o the mound.

Niches are regularly placed throughout each room,

like the Kotosh and La Galgada rooms (Fig. 15). Dif-

ferent from these sites are the well-formed antechambers

(bins) with constricted openings at Chiripa. Archival

photographs from Kidders excavations illustrate thatthese openings were restricted not only by raised lips but

also by at stone slabs on the top, making them almost

impossible for an adult to enter without some disman-

tling (Kidder, 1956, Fig. 15). These basal ledges were not

worn, suggesting what was kept inside tended to remain

there. These above ground chambers, like other small,

dark places, could have held wrapped mummy bundles.

The niches could have held small, carved stones like in

the Pre-Pukara phase niches at Pukara. Such

storage would allow for the smaller sacred items to

be taken out periodically, similar to the later rooms

Fig. 14. The Alejo Late Chiripa canal. Scale is 1m long.and niches at many of the Inka sites like Coricancha or

Machu Picchu.

Six otation samples analyzed from a chamber in

house 5 indicate that they had sparse charred plants

relative to the middens, but included tubers, Chenopo-

dium quinoa, and wild seeds (Whitehead, 1999c). None

of the taxa were in dense enough quantities to be the

remains of burnt food storage but could have been burnt

oerings that are regularly burned in ceremonies today,

or simply be the remnants of the closing res. Kidder

reported that at least three of the structures were burnt

at the end of this phase. Perhaps, like the earlier mound

structures, these rooms were purposefully burned before

they were closed for the next ceremonial construction.

While we do not have any direct material evidence for

mallki storage in these antechambers, many lines of ev-

idence suggest that these were above ground chambers

for the sacred. As Julia Hendon notes in Mesoamerica:

these rooms combined the material with the moral in a

specic and highly signicant place (2000, p. 47).

Thirty-four Late Chiripa burials have been excavated

from sub-oor pits (Bennett, 1936, 1948; Kidder, 1956;

Portugal Ortz, 1992; Portugal Ortz, 1992; PortugalZamora, 1940). Two of the burials excavated by Bennett

were associated with the closing of the lower structures

(CH-H2-C and CH-H2-A in Fig. 15). Bennett excavated

17 Upper House burials (12 complete and 5 fragmentary,

Fig. 15). Kidders team excavated seven sub-oor UpperHouse burials and Portugal Zamora unearthed 10 buri-

als. Their reports provide data from three of the Upper

Houses. Each house had at least ve burial pits. Some of

these were multiple body burials with elaborate and ex-

otic goods, including one double adult burial under

House C (Portugal Zamora, 1940). Most pits were un-

lined. Some pits held only crania. Some of the bodies

received quite elaborate grave goods, including golden

plaques, copper, beads, and decorated Late Chiripa

vessels. Bennett noted straw lined graves on the

mound, which was probably the reed wrapping of the

bodies, as noted in the Early and Middle Chiripa burials.

Without secure sexing I cannot say if these were female

focused burials or not. The bodies were placed near the

structure entrances and in the corners of the inner rooms.

There is no evidence that bodies were buried beneath the

bin chambers. Given that the rooms were probably in use

for over 100 years (400250 BC), the multiple burials and

disturbed bones suggest that the pits were reopened pe-

riodically to add oerings. Several of these burials had

extra crania. Contemporaneous cranial oerings have

also been found on the Chilean coast in a Formative Alto

Ramirez site in the Azapa Valley, a continuation of the

Chinchorro tradition (Rivera, 1976). This phase ends

around 250 BC when the central enclosure was

expanded, but the encircling separate rooms for the

dierent lineages were not rebuilt. Now there is only awell-formed stone lined sunken enclosure.

C.A. Hastorf / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2003) 305332 325There was at least one sunken enclosure and a plat-

form mound in each Late Chiripa sub-phase. There is an

architectural precedent for ritual precincts to have sun-

ken enclosures and mounds, the earlier coastal sites of

Aspero and Huaynunaa have them, as do the later centersin the Tiwanaku phases in the Titicaca Basin (Kolata,

1993; Stanish, 1997; Wheeler and Mujica, 1981). This

pattern suggests a tiered set of rituals that build from

small family or elder gatherings in the inner chambers

with iconic memorials, on up to large community events

that could be seen if not joined. This provides us insight

into the form of socialization at least some in the com-

munity were envisioning, stressing a closed lineage

through the small memorials, while also desiring larger

group solidarity with the larger events.

Iconography at Chiripa

Accompanying this architectural elaboration in

the Late Chiripa phase 1, Browman (1972), Cordero

Fig. 15. Upper House 2 on the Chiripa mound with the suboor buriaMiranda (1977), and Ponce-Sangines (1990) note that

stone carvings began to enter these ceremonial precincts.

These stone carvings are most dense aroun