The Chirpa Montículo: a geoarchaeological study

Nichole Shannon Bettencourt

The Taraco polity of the southern Lake Titicaca Basin emerged as a center of aggregated settlement and developed religious centers during the Early Formative (1500-1000 BC). The Taraco polity was a precursor of Tiwanaku, which was the first major urban center of the Southern Andes (Hastorf 1999). This thesis presents geoarchaeological data generated from 2006 excavations of Chiripa, Bolivia. Specifically, I employ earth science methods to examine the pattern of construction and burning events on the Chiripa Montículo in an effort to shed light on how construction projects were organized and carried out, I am testing two social organizational models the "segmented construction-labor tax model" and the "task differentiation-labor tax model" to answer the questions. I provide characterizations of the composition of adobes used to build the structures that helped create the tell mound of Chiripa. In addition, the fills and floors uncovered during 2006 excavations will be described more precisely. I will also try to distinguish between high intensity and low intensity burning events, in order to examine and identify the social context of burning events that occurred at the site. Archaeological evidence indicates that a complex series of construction events took place at Chiripa. Building materials recovered point to the use of local sediments and organic temper in the construction of civic architecture at the site. The differing compositions of adobes indicate that there were at least two separate suppliers of mudbricks for the civic architecture (in the form of House 4) on the Montículo. In addition, architectural events on the Chiripa Montículo are burnt with varying degrees of intensity; current theories explaining the burning of the Montículo include opportunistic burning during warfare (Stanish 2003) and the ceremonial closing of buildings (Hastorf 2003). Rubified soil, elevated pH and EC values, and low percentages of organic matter and carbonates indicate that "burnt deposits" found at Chiripa represent high intensity burning events, thin section analysis supports these findings, as adobes are dark red and the b-Fabrics indicate that high temperatures modified the fabric of the adobes. This data strongly suggests that Chiripa sediments were burned intentionally, supporting Hastorf's theory about ceremonial closing of buildings.

The Chirpa Montículo: a geoarchaeological study

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