The Formative site of Chiripa, Bolivia, is located on the shores of
Lake Titicaca. The lake is surrounded by extensive reed beds, and crop
land and pastures slope upwards to gentle hillsides
overshadowed by magnificent, snow-capped peaks. The site has a complex
history as a
ritual and ceremonial center whose significance has long been known
to archaeologists.Now, our task is to understand the organization and pattern
of the daily life that must have surrounded the building and maintainence
of these impressive mounds and plazas. Our work in the past
five years has centered on collecting bones of llamas and fish, and charred
seeds, tubers and wood from hearths and dumps. Archaeologists first start
with the world of the present when we attempt to reconstruct the prehistoric
ecology of a site.As we gather more insights in the history of change in
the region, we must learn to "see" aspects of the landscape that are no
longer present, and to stop "seeing" things that would not have been present
5000 years ago. Similarly, we must learn to see new aspects of the archaeology
of the site and its deposits to "see" the fishing and herding people who
once built this religious center
Katherine Moore received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in
1989, for work on the prehistory of hunting and herding in Peru.
She worked out the archaeological record of the
domestication of the llama and alpaca at the site of Panaulauca, in
Junin Peru. Since that time, she has gone on to work at the Formative
site of Chiripa, on the shore of Late Titicaca in Bolivia. Her research
interests in cultural ecology most often involve the analysis of animal
bones from
archaeological sites, but she also studies prehistoric food webs using
chemical analysis of human and animal bone She has worked in North America
and Central Asia as well as South America, and has analysed material from
Europe, Africa, and Mexico. As a schoolgirl in northern Delaware,
she first visited the University Museum in 1967, and now is currently a
Research
Associate in the Museum's American section and adjunct associate professor
in the Department of Anthropology.