Resumen

ROBIN, A; BECK, Jr  y  PLAZA MARTINEZ, Victor. COMMUNITIES AND PUBLIC RITUAL SPACE IN THE FORMATIVE: EXCAVATIONS IN ALTO PUKARA, 2000-2001. Textos Antropológicos [online]. 2005, vol.15, n.2, pp. 23-38. ISSN 1025-3181.

The excavations completed in Alto Pukara - a Middle Formative period (800-200 B. C.) site located in the Lake Titicaca Basin - exposed a 72m2 centralplatform, including two ritual rooms that are among the earliest of such structures discovered in the southern Andes. These stone rooms - measuring approximately 5.5m x 4.5m - were cardinally oriented and probably were used on a small scalefor ritual activities of extendedfami lies. Although similar rooms werefound at the site of Chiripa in 1955, these were buriedby the Upper House complex; curiously, no such analogy exists for this great complex in Alto Pukara construction. Such a pattern suggests that an important social transformation tookplace in the Middle Formative; through time communal ritualism was replaced by regional ceremonialism focused on the Upper Houses at Chiripa