JUNE JOURNAL ENTRIES

05 June 2005

Greetings from the Petén.  The weather here is hot, humid, hot, sunny, and hot.   And hot.  

We arrived here on Monday, and felt pretty good, despite spending two days in transit, moving stuff and getting set up.   The trip was more or less uneventful, with a couple of stops along the way.  We picked up obsidian from a known prehispanic source called El Chayal, and got some good pieces.   Matt and I got into Flores Monday night, after a long trip from Antigua, and stayed at the Hotel Santana for the night.  Ingrid and Jeanette took the night bus and arrived at 5 a.m. on the 31st.  I picked them up and brought them back to the hotel, where they showered, changed, and had a chance to sleep or eat before we put them on the boat to the site.   Matt and I drove around the lake.

The camp is beautiful, and the hammocks on the lanai are just wonderful.  I slept pretty well the first night, after spending most of the first day setting up tents (Jeanette and Ingrid sleep in tents out back, and will be joined by two Guatemalan students who are expected to arrive tonight), and after wiring and roping and staking and digging and trenching and climbing and staking some more, a couple of the guys – Benito and Carlos – came by and cut some stakes and retied the guy wires and made the tarps covering the tents work to repel rain.    In half an hour they transformed our four-hour long effort at slap-dash tent-raising effort into a set of bungalow condominiums. 

The rest of the day was mostly playing politics and setting up camp.  Took a swim after everything was done, and the water was perfect.   Nice way to bathe, particularly considering the heat, and the view is simply stunning.  The kids from next door came and took their baths with us, at a safe distance.  

On the way to eat the first night, we stopped at Don Jorge's house (he is the most experienced and coveted of the workers).   He is now known to me by his new nickname, Papadulo.  His granddaughter was there, and she calls him Papadulo (Papa Arturo) and she is precious.   I definitely got in my kid fix that night. 

We still have no excavation permits (expected this coming week), and so we are mapping and clearing and doing a lot of the groundwork (hiring workers, talking to landowners, etc.) necessary for a successful field season.   And the worst part is dealing with the guy that has squatter's rights to the land at Trinidad.  He does not want us there – our walking around tears up the stuff his cows eat (and mostly, he and Matt do not get along).   And the amount he asked Matt for last year as recompense for those damages was outrageous.  So this year Matt, in an attempt at a pre-emptive first strike, went to see the mayor before talking directly to him.   The deal is, the guy with cattle on the land does not own Trinidad.  It is owned by the town – he simply has usufruct rights.   So he can't deny anyone access, especially not someone who has government permission and is hiring half the town. 

But the mayor (alcalde) is in a tough spot, too.  He can't really afford to publicly side against a local resident in favor of foreigners.   When we arrived at his office, he had "another meeting" that he was on his way to – he had no time for us.  But later...

Later did not happen that day, despite Matt's persistent presence in his office foyer.  Best guess is that he went to talk to Don Juan, the antagonist, before talking to Matt.  A Monday meeting is expected to clear the path for our work.

The work itself has progressed in fits and starts.  Mapping, after an initial day of error messages and arguments, proceeded well; they will finish up the mapping of Jeanette's site of Buenavista on Monday.   I "supervised" a defoliation project near the harbor of Trinidad on Friday and Saturday.  I did cut a little bit of foliage both days, but I also know to stay out of the way while cutters are at work.   My addition to the defoliation campaign, amounting to a total of three hours of hard labor, resulted in saving them five minutes of work. 

I am not sure where to buy a light saber like the ones they use, but I really need to get one.   The blades they use look like regular machetes, but with a negligent flick of the wrist, they touch an area covered with bramble and thorn and the entire forest splits to permit them passage.   Meanwhile, I struggle with my titanium-reinforced blade of grass I am trying to cut with a butter knife.  The jedis come by and:

One, two, one, two

And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker snack

Seriously, the guys came behind me and in five minutes had cleaned up the area I had worked in for two hours.     And in the next five doubled the area. 

Don Tirso, one of the older members of the team, has worked in the area for decades.  He worked at Tikal, at Yaxhá, at Uaxactun and Aguateca.  And he has worked with Matt and company for years now.  He worked clearing with me on Friday (Saturdays he has off to go work at the newly incorporated fish farm cooperative), and we sat and talked for a while.   When we left to take him home, I handed the keys to the fifty-year-old grandfather of four and told him he was driving. 

My Blazer is automatic, and is about as easy to drive as anything can be.  But Tirso was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs – he was tickled to be driving for the first time, but scared stiff.   After not shedding one drop of sweat after working in the direct sunlight in 100% humidity for eight hours, he broke into a cold sweat behind the wheel.  After the third time I explained that you use the same foot for both accelerator and brake (response: "Yes, I understand"), I finally physically picked up his foot and put it on the brake.   His response: "Yes.  I understand."

At the end of his white-knuckled journey (about half a mile of empty road), he turned to me and asked "So, do you need a new chauffeur?"  

"Not now, I don't," I told him.  "It looks like I got a new one today."

I have seldom seen anyone quite so tickled.

We met with the cooking lady, and I held the negotiations with her.  She's here on a trial basis for a week.   After a week, if she is unhappy (she was not looking forward to walking up and down the steep driveway at 5 every morning and was unwilling to stay over) or if we don't like the food (which is not a problem ) or with how prompt she is (she arrived at 4:40 every morning) than we part ways happy.    Otherwise, she makes breakfast and dinner and something to carry with us for lunch. 

The first day was pretty tough – we got scrambled eggs for breakfast and lunch, all made at the same time – but since then she has gotten into a rhythm with us.   The meals have all been tasty, and are served with handmade tortillas – a real draw for us.

Ingrid, who was out with me on Friday, explored the harbor area with me, and was with me when I spotted a feature just out in the water.   About twenty feet from shore, at a depth of three feet, was a circular pile of rocks that looked suspiciously different from everything else around.   I took some pictures of it, and took them back to Matt and Elly to see, since they had both worked in the harbor area two years ago. 

They were angry that I had found something that had gone unnoticed in the previous field season.   I, of course, was rather pleased with myself, and wore my cheesy grin for the whole rest of the day, all the while envisioning how cool it would be to have discovered an underwater prehispanic shrine.

And then I went back on Saturday and asked the guys who live there about it.  "Oh, that thing?"   Valentin grinned between swipes with his light saber.  "That was made last year by my two little brothers."

I am the proud discoverer of the modern Maya equivalent of a sand castle.   I might live it down someday.  Meanwhile, I will just keep working with the machete.   I am sure I can find some cooked broccoli to practice on.

 

12 June 2005

Howdy, folks!  My name is Clorox Laptop!

I finally have been given an apodo – a nickname.  I survived one Campeche, one Veracruz and three Yucatecan field seasons with my only apodo being güero – the light-haired guy.   But in discussion with people this week about how to pronounce my name (the "Cr" is even more difficult for Latinos than for gringos), they decided that Crorey is pronounced "Clory".   And the way to remember that is that it sounds like Cloro (AKA Clorox). 

Jeanette, the project co-director, was talking to me a few days ago, and in a stern voice, said, "Lapton, this is how it is supposed to be!"   I didn't even blink – my name has been pronounced so many ways, I just respond to whatever.  But the second time she said it, Matt heard it and burst out laughing.

So Clorox Laptop it is.  

Apodos are ubiquitous.  Some of the names are derived from the original.   Don Tirso, one of the workers, has his name shortened (?) to Ticho.  Valentin is Ting.  Oscar is Oca (foreshortened by his niece).   Others are because of physical appearance or some past action.  Gerson, one of the Guatemalan archaeologists, is named Venado – Stag.  Pretty sad: he got his apodo because in the next village over, another guy is also named Gerson, nicknamed Venado.  So obviously when a new Gerson shows up on the scene, he will have to be known as Venado, too.

The week has been frighteningly non-productive.  I led the machete crew for Monday through Wednesday, which meant I did very little else, except sleep.   Between the 45° temperatures and the hard work of a variety to which I am unaccustomed, I pretty much ate, slept and chopped. 

Then nothing.  We are still in the middle of bureaucratic purgatory, where nobody will even try to get us to the field.   And we have no sway with the government at all – we are a small project whose director is not in the field. 

Matt finally signed the convenio yesterday, and the director signed it as well.  That means that we could go to the field as early as Monday.   And that is exactly what some on the project will do.  For the Trinidad people, though, it means we will be talking to the alcalde again, this time in front of an audencia.

Our story, O Best Beloved, begins with the conflict.  Wednesday, after I got everyone started with the clearing at the southern edge of the road, Matt grabbed me to go and talk to Don Juan, the irascible man with usufruct rights to Trinidad's site center.   He has been described as difficult, grumpy, grouchy, rude, angry, mean, and surly.  He was worse.  He never once looked up, never shook hands, and snarled his answers.   His wife was nice, but he started off with "No."  And it got uglier from there. 

Matt:    Don Juan, we'd like to start work at Trinidad today. 

DJ:       No.

Matt:    Why not?

DJ:       Because I don't want you to. 

Matt:    We talked to the alcalde – we have his permission.

DJ:       I don't want trouble.  You made all kinds of trouble last year.   Why don't you leave my land alone?  There are lots of other mounds in the monte – go study them instead!

Matt:    I'd really like to settle this between us, without involving IDAEH and the alcalde, both of whom gave us permission to work at the site.   I don't want trouble, either.

DJ:       Go study other places.  I don't want trouble. 

...and so on.  Finally, Matt gave up and we went to the alcalde's office.   The land doesn't belong to DJ, but to the town – he gets to work it as long as everyone is OK with him using it.  As soon as there is conflict, then he gets his land reassigned.   The alcalde had said that before.  So we went to make some conflict.

And the alcalde is in Canada.  

The vice-alcalde, taking on the responsibilities of the alcalde while the alcalde is out of town, was in Sta. Elena (the standard excuse when we are being avoided – I am pretty sure he was hiding under the desk).   So it would have to wait until the next day.

The next day we talked to the vice-alcalde for five minutes (who had since emerged from under the desk), and he set up an audencia with us for Monday.   Matt will still be in Guatemala City, so I will be in charge of representing the archaeologists at the meeting.  We will go in front of the whole local political hierarchy and listen to the lies that Don Juan will tell about the project.   I'll be taking a respected member of the community, the aforementioned Papatulo, as character witness for the defense.  It'll be fine.   The assembled persons already know the kinds of lies he tells, and will not be surprised to hear whatever he says.

So we took Matt to the airport to catch a flight to the capital, and did some shopping while we were there.   And began the downhill slide with the vehicle.

My poor Blazer.  It was never made to be driven on Petén roads.   It is an automatic, and is a wonderful in-the-city car.  Not intended for rugged use.  It is getting rugged use here.   Monday on the way to drop Christina at Motul, I have my head on a swivel for livestock.  I have learned to keep one eye out for chickens, another out for pigs, a third for cattle, and a fourth for horses.   The fifth is for drinking once I run the gauntlet safely.  Some drivers skip steps one through four, and start off with a fifth.   But the roads are wide, there are few vehicles, and there is almost always a way to avoid oncoming traffic, even when it weaves slightly.

But it was a horse that nearly got me; I almost decapitated one.  I'm particularly on my guard against the horses, which tend to get spooked or sometimes just stand in the way.   They are simply not terribly predictable creatures.  So I was suspiciously watching this one horse as we were approaching pretty fast.   He shook his head.  I saw something out of my peripheral vision, and as my mind was trying to make sense of it, Benito yelled from the back seat "¡LASSO!"

I slapped on the brakes and skidded to a stop just as the rope used to tie up the horse went over the hood of the car and came to rest on the windshield wipers.   Someone had tied up the horse, and left enough slack for the dang critter to cross the road.  Had I hit it full speed, the horse would be dead of a snapped neck and my car would have been wrecked, and all the passengers garroted by a horse-mounted clothesline.

Further problems resulted later that day when I decided to let the senior project member learn to drive.   Automatic transmission, easy drive, wide road, what can go wrong?  Wrong question.  We approached one of the two speed bumps in town, and he accelerated.  I asked him to slow down, which he did, but also turned off the road (like everyone else does) to go around the bump. 

What he did not do was turn back onto the road.  We went into the ditch, ¡PUM! and came out the other side ¡PAM! before he turned the wheel back onto the road.   It was like a Latin version of a Batman TV show climax (just missing the BIFF! and  SOCK!), and Tirso was the only one that was calm at this point.   I took back the wheel before he could approach the next speed bump where the kids were playing. 

In a perhaps not entirely unrelated incident, in Flores while dropping Matt off, I noticed a leak of fluid seeping out of my driveshaft.   The car felt and sounded fine (roads in Flores are better than elsewhere in Petén – you can actually hear the motor over the road noise) and so I drove to the gas station.   The attendant pronounced it safe to drive back home, which I did, so I could pick up people from the field.  I also took it by our friend in town who is a mechanic.   His prognosis was the same – it would drive back to a mechanic shop in San Benito, and we would fix it from there.

It was then that I pointed out the other problem – the steering column has been getting progressively looser, making the wheel move laterally in the hands while steering.   He took off the vinyl cover on the horn and saw the star-drive screws holding the assemblage in place.  A few minutes of whispered conversation later, they began working to extract the screws.   Everyone claimed he was an amazing mechanic, so I left it with him.  I heard some banging, and was concerned, but didn't supervise.   I just couldn't watch while he took a hammer to the guts of my steering wheel, so I walked away.

Half an hour later, he still had not succeeded in removing the plate.  After pronouncing it fixable by the same friend – he couldn't get the plate off -Tono went with me on Friday to the mechanic's shop.   The mechanic replaced the o-ring on the driveshaft that had cracked (and told me to keep it in case we needed it later).  The parts store sold him one that was too small on the outer dimension, so he shimmed it out using a cut-off hacksaw blade.   Petenero adaptability is pretty amazing.   

While he and Tono were going off to get the O-ring, the other guy watched me flint knap for a while (I spent about six hours knapping that day, and have blisters to prove it), then asked: "Did you have somebody in the US work on this problem with the steering column?"

I explained that it had not been a problem until this week, so no.  He said that I must have.  I responded that I would not be likely to have fixed a problem I didn't have.  His response?  "Well, somebody beat it with a hammer long enough to where we can't get the center post to turn loose."

Ahh.  Tono, I explained.  "Tono?   What was he doing fixing your car?  He knows nothing about cars!"  The end result is that I learned what I already knew: no hammers as part of car repair.   And ask Tono for advice, but don't let him touch.

The column wiggle thing is not dangerous, and is the result of a problem with the gear shift, not the steering column itself.   A retaining ring will fix it, but none is available right now.  The mechanic will be back in touch when he finds one (or a viable substitute made of old beer cans and a piece of string).   And I was presented with a bill.  Three guys, all putting in a full day's work on my car, including parts, costs Q120.   15 dollars.

I gave him thirty.

Sundays we have to leave the camp by noon so that the owner can use it.  It is, after all, his vacation home, and that was the one condition he stipulated for its rental.   And after the week we had, we figured it was OK to sleep in AC for one night.  So we all piled into the much-abused Blazer and headed into Flores for the night...  

...Only to find that there were periodic power outages in Flores.  And, therefore, no AC to be had.   The rooms were hot, the streets were hot, the tiendas and restaurants were hot, and we had visions of cool rooms dancing in our heads.  The let down was painful.

Even after power came back on, we couldn't get the AC to actually pump cool air out.  After switching rooms (which came as a bit of a surprise to Ingrid, who was in the shower at the time), we went out to get dinner, leaving the room to cool, AC on full blast.  Dinner was nice, and when we came back to our nice, icy cold room....

...it was hotter than it was before we turned on the AC.  We had inadvertently turned the knob the wrong way.   And it took until 6:30 this morning to properly cool the room.  I woke up at 4:30 still drenched in sweat.

But the room is cool now, and I have been spending much-needed time in a cool spot writing.   The feeling is delicious.  And I don't have to look out for horses while I am doing it.

Best,

Cloro Laptop

 

18 June 2005

WORK HAS BEGUN!!!!

On Thursday, I started my first test unit at Trinidad.  It has been a long time in coming, and only time will tell if it was worth it, but at least the work has been started.

Now, this does not mean that the week was easy or that things went off without a hitch, but for me, working is much better than not working.   I am content with even small bits of progress.

The week started out a little scary.  Matt did not come back in time for the meeting with the grumpy landholder, so I volunteered to stand in.   Matt thought about it and sent Jeanette along, as an official Guatemalan project member (and nominal co-director).  Before the meeting, she started to talk to me about what I should and shouldn't say, and how I should act and finished by telling me that she wasn't really going to speak – she would let me do the talking, and only come in for a problem.

At that point we had a problem.  I am the most junior member of the project, I don't know the local or national politics, I have no experience in this sort of conflict resolution, and my Spanish ability is the least of all the members of the project.  

The operating principle, of course, was that I am male.  In Latin interactions, that is often the overriding hierarchical factor.   As a woman, even though she is co-director of the project, Jeanette does not have necessary equality in a room full of men.  Unjust, but true.   And when she explained that to me, her reluctance to speak made sense.

It made no difference anyway – five minutes before the meeting, his sons barged in to the Alcalde's office and said that their dad, Don Juan (hereafter DJ), had only this morning received the note inviting him to the "sit down" with us.   It had been sent to his house the previous Thursday.  He would be out in his milpa and not able to attend the meeting.

We met with the Vice-Alcalde (Alcalde is still in Canada getting body massages) and he agreed that we were within the law, and also agreed to write the letter giving us permission, and promising legal problems if we were not allowed to proceed.  

We then sent Jeanette off to her site, and did some small pending activities (one of which involved getting chased off of another plot of land rented from DJ), before heading back to the municipio to get the letter.   We had also made arrangements to get the director of monuments to meet with us at the site and explain things to DJ.  So when we showed up in the alcalde's office again, we had bigger guns with us.   After getting a copy of the letter, Don Pedro escorted us out to the house of DJ, and we met with his wife.  She is a very nice lady who did not marry well at all.   After explaining the situation to her, we followed her directions on a wild goose chase to find DJ.  We went first to one field, and then to another, in a vain attempt to talk directly to DJ; I am half convinced he was hiding under the desk in the alcalde's office.   Or maybe he has his own desk.  The only good things that came out of the meeting was that I got to know Don Pedro a little, and I helped him abscond with some cooking firewood from DJ's field.

Finally, we made arrangements with the police to come with us to the site (with visions of mapping between armed guards), and went to meet with the judge (already gone for the day), should a court order eventually be necessary.  

Tuesday we went and talked to the police, and hit up the judge again.  He was in the alcalde's office, and when we went there, we sat in the office for ten minutes before DJ and his two sons showed up, cut in line in front of us, and went in to talk to the vice-alcalde.   We waited, and after about an hour, followed suit. 

"In the red corner, weighing in with letters and proclamations and degrees and the power of the law behind us, sat Jeanette, Jorge (Papatulo) and Clorox Laptop.   In the blue corner, snarling and making no eye contact at all, are the male members of the DJ family."

We faced off, and Jeanette opened (so much for her not talking).  We have our permits, signed by the government.   We have permission to work, and a letter from the municipio, also giving us permission.  We are hiring a number of local workers (who also vote, by the way, Mr. Vice Alcalde), and we have all of the force of the law behind us.

They responded with a story about a tail-less cow that somehow our workers are responsible for (untru), a calf that fell into a pit and was irreparably harmed (but for which evidence was never produced) and another (true) story about the destruction of zacate – the preferred grass for grazing (we probably carved up an area of 100x100m total in a pasture measured in kilometers).   We countered with stories of destroyed test units and harassment of our workers and a daily ritual of intimidation and aggravation.  My favorite moment of the day came when we spoke of the destruction of the test units from 2003 – "someone" had come in at night and dug through a stucco floor and carved up the profile of the unit, destroying the record completely.   I was interrupted at this point to be told that hunters, without permission, often come on the land with their dogs (one of our workers hunts with his dogs and is another of DJ's enemies) and they are likely responsible for the destruction of the units.

I raised my eyebrows and asked, "Could they also be responsible for cutting the cow's tail?"

Not much of a way he could respond to that.

Finally it came to a head.  DJ wanted money for the destruction of his zacate.   We offered to replant.  He did not want somebody else botching the job; he wanted to be paid for the destroyed zacate.  We said we didn't have to pay, and were not allowed to pay.   Countered with an offer to ask for permission to pay for a replant.  DJ requested that we build fences around the excavation units while they are open to keep the cows from getting hurt.   We agreed.  He wanted us to avoid cutting down trees.  That is a bit sticky – we are mapping, and simple sight lines will not suffice.   But we agreed to take Taca (Number 2 son) out and show him where we would be working. 

By the end, we had agreement from pretty much everyone, and, if not happy, the participants were at least satisfied that they had been heard.   So our next stop was to the police, who seemed disappointed that they were not needed, and the judge, who was glad to be left out of it.

So at that point, all we had to do was start digging.  And although that did not start until Thursday, it was a wonderful feeling to actually make progress.   Since beginning, Matt has encountered a garbage dump on the back side of the group I am digging and there is a lot of stone tool debris in it.  My test unit in the platform is intended to date the structure.  The ceramics in the fill are pretty sparse, but I have great preservation of a bunch of stucco floors – six total.   This makes Elly happy, because she takes samples of each one, thin-sections it, and looks at it under the microscope to see its composition and any interesting features.  She is also working this year to see if she can directly date the charcoal found in the floor.

So everybody is working and seems happy, if a little bit stressed.  The food situation is getting to critical mass.   There is simply no variety and little nutritional value in what we are eating (pasta, anyone?) for most meals.  Our cook is wonderful – she works really hard, comes early and stays late, but most days we eat noodles for lunch and breakfast.   Sometimes eggs for both meals.  One day lunch was a spoonful of mashed potatoes – very tasty, but not nearly enough.   We keep making suggestions that she ignores. 

To be fair, Jeanette has been in charge of buying vegetables, and she has now been relieved of that task.   She makes sure that not one piece is bruised and that all of our vegetables look good, but she is accustomed to buying for one or two people.  Not eight.   We would much prefer throwing away some spoiled veggies at the end of the week to having no veggies remaining at the end of the week. 

It was also beginning to affect our interpersonal relationships.  When you see a co-worker as potential competition for scarce resources ( i.e., do you plan to eat that scrap of macaroni?; is that helping of beans bigger than mine?), it is hard to drop the competitive spirit for all of your other interactions.

By the end of Saturday, we were so desperate for real food that we drove in to Flores (roughly 1.5 hours round trip) for a meal.  We ate at La Luna and every one of us ordered red meat and vegetables, and there was not a scrap left on the table.   I was worried for a minute that the next table over was in danger of having the locusts from our table descend on theirs.

The week also brought some nice events.  Tuesday was Ingrid's birthday.   After the meeting with DJ, I snuck out with Elly to "survey a trail" we had seen earlier, and went to San Andres to pick up the piñata and cake I had ordered on Monday.  Luki, a friend of ours who lives in San José with her dad (Papatulo) and two kids (Detleff and Sylvia), had gone over to San Andres with me on Monday and helped me track down a piñata maker (I ordered the pig) and a bakery.   On the way back, we picked Luki and the kids, then back to Nuevo San José to pick up Carlos and Benito, who also had a passel of kids to take back.  By the time the party started, we had about 40 kids running around.  And we had a piñata full of candy.  And we had enough cake to feed an army.

Now everyone knows what a piñata is – a hollow figure filled with candy, bounced around on a string.   Kids take turns whacking at it with a stick until the candy spills out.  But until you have actually seen the results of it, you can not imagine the delightful spectacle.   It is like a bullfight, only with more gore, since the matador is blindfolded.  Heaven help the poor kid who sneaks in to grab the piece of candy near the matador.   Remember the scene with a blindfolded Luke Skywalker training with the light saber?  He was never guided by the Force so well as these kids.  One inner eye on the pig, while another is intent on keeping the horde of non-blindfolded kids at bay with a broomstick.  Definitely the stuff of epic movies.

Everybody ate cake and played games until it was time to go home.  It was one of the happiest birthday celebrations I have ever seen.   The kids really made it special.  And, fortunately, there were no stitches involved.

The reason stitches comes into the story at this point is that I almost needed them.  David Morgan, when I was on his project, emphasized that I was free to do anything I wanted, as long as I did not end up needing stitches.  In my defense, I never needed them then, and haven´t had to get any yet here, either.  But...

Well, Wednesday was a pretty tough day, between an incident involving the car and an unrelated injury.   Matt came in from the capital (sleepless overnight bus ride) as we were leaving for the field, and he crashed in my hammock for a few hours before I went and got him.  By then, we had cleared a couple of structures and had started doing some finer work, but still no excavations.   After walking the site for a while, Matt grabbed the car and went to find more workers for Thursday.  Somehow, the trip from Trinidad to San José took him in a straight line through camp and into my hammock for a while.   After he was done, he started up the hill again.

We have had some rain this week.  And some of the rain has been pretty hard.   The driveway is very steep, and more than a little slick.  Tuesday we had some difficulty getting up the hill, resulting in a minor explosion from me and the laying down of some sand, which was washed away Tuesday night by the rain.   Matt started up the slippery slope and did not make it.  Second time, tampoco.   Third time, he thought he would put two tires on dirt instead and try to maneuver his way to the top.  Problem is, the "dirt" was supersaturated with water.   Result: he slid downhill about thirty feet and came to rest against a sapling.  No damage to the car resulted, but it did mean that everybody had to walk home, after which we pushed the car out of the ditch and made it up the hill.  It also meant that the car could not be left at the camp, since we could not get the car out of the camp if it rained.  (I hired a guy the next day to take a pick to the concrete so that it would not be slick, and now we can use the drive again.)  

The loss of my car put me in a pretty bad mood.  One of the guys has a garage and said he would come and get us any time we wanted, but it is not the same as having the freedom to leave whenever you want.  

With that blow to the mood past, I grabbed my cell phone and went down to call Kathe (I only get reception on the dock).   I didn't make it.  In the dark, one of the stairs disappears.  I was looking at the phone and stepped onto the landing, which was actually two steps down, instead of one.   In the dark, I pitched forward, flung the phone away and caught myself with my hands and tumbled down the stairs.  For a few seconds I groaned as I took inventory.   Head, check.  Arms, check.  Hands, check.  Legs, check.   Toes scraped, but check.

The scraped toes were not a check, after all.  I had removed all of the skin off of a toe on the left foot, pulling off skin from the tip to the knuckle.   Including the toenail.  There was a flap of skin hanging there, full toenail embedded, dangling from the side of the toe.   Christina heard me and came to check me over.  She doctored the toe (isopropol alcohol was not a fun part of her medical training) and then went back to work.   I have limped around ever since.

One other bit of archaeology&ldots;  we took some pictures of the possible sweat bath that we found between Trinidad's harbor and the center of the site (makes a bit of sense to have a bath/ritual purification after leaving the lake), and have a running debate on whether it is a ceramic kiln or sweat bath.   From the attached picture, you can see which side I am on.

And a final side note.  The television show   previously mentioned (Staying Alive, so to speak), has elicited some email response (people asking for details that I cannot provide), so I will not mention the name of the show now.  But as we were coming down on Wednesday from hiring workers, we stopped to see some boat builders at work.  The guy overseeing the construction was a New Zealander, and he said that they were only using the boats for 39 days.   Then they can burn them or whatever.  Why only thirty days? we asked.  Filming, came the reply.   May I ask what?  Nah.  They'd kick my ass if I told you.  But we're working in an archaeological park.

Ahhh, we all said.  Yaxhá?  Yep.   We never once mentioned the name of the show.  But we all knew what it was.  Funny thing is, they are trying to approximate native life as closely as possible, so they are modifying the form of the boats.   The typical boat being built today for use on the lake has a flat stern, used for mounting a motor.  That is how "the natives" do things.   But in "going native" the producers want boats that have pointed ends.  Ahhh.  Reality.  Hmmm.

Hope all is well,

Cloro 

 

26 June 2005

So the popular image of the archaeologist is probably best captured by the immortal Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame.  It is of a guy stooped over a unit, dad's shaving brush or and dental pick in hand, carefully separating out the grains of sand from an important burial.

For those of you who are not archaeologists, let me let you in on a great secret.  That mental picture comes from countless NatGeo images that show the archaeologist carefully excavating something important – maybe a plaster floor, maybe a corner of a building, maybe a hieroglyphic stairway.   The truth is much more mundane.  The archaeologist in Guatemala only gets in the pit at picture time.  The rest of the time is spent looking over shoulders, filling out forms, and trying to get the guys to either slow down excavations (if they are ploughing through floors) or speed them up (if they are lollygagging).   Then when an interesting feature comes up in the unit, the archaeologist orders everyone out, gets down in the excavation unit, and starts brushing like mad, articulating the plaster/corner/figurine/golden scepter of Doom so that it shows up well in photographs.   While (s)he is at work, the photographer flies/runs/boats in, takes the shot for posterity, and the project is well funded for the rest of the director's career.

The image saved for posterity corresponds not at all to reality.  Our work is done with hand picks and shovels and trowels and whisk brooms.   And I am shooed out of the unit every time I set foot in it – the guys I work with do all the excavating. 

We have now had a full week in the field, and it is time to introduce you to the guys that I work with.  I have managed to get the A-Team to excavate my small structure with me.  Don Jorge Arturo Sac is the best known of the excavators in the village where we work.   He has excavated at Tikal for a number of years, Yaxhá for a number more, and has worked at a number of other important Maya sites.  His most recent offer came from Richard Hansen, who was looking for experienced excavators who knew Itzá Maya to work at Mirador.   Papatulo, who grew up walking through the forest with his dad gathering chicle, learned about all there is to know about the local flora.  His knowledge of Maya is impressive, and he knows common name, Maya name, and scientific name for any   plant you come across.  He is a 55 years old widower who lives in a compound with his sons and grandkids, and stands about 5'5" and weighs 117 lbs.   And he is the true energizer rabbit – he just keeps on going.

Papatulo is also pretty serious.  He doesn't like shenanigans, and believes strongly in the concept of respect.   I have been the subject of a number of lectures on respect – not because I am not respectful (well, aside from the normal shenanigans) but because it is important to explain these sorts of cultural differences.

And I am not the only recipient of such lectures.  Before I came onto the project, I had heard a Matt story about Paptulo.   He had explained to Matt that men used to approach conversations with women respectfully.  When they spoke, the hands were held behind them, indicating that there was nothing untoward going on.   Nowadays, he says, men see approach conversation with a woman by saying, "Hey Baby!  Look at those curves, and my car has no brakes!"

Culturally, I have learned a lot from him already, in the two weeks we worked together.  Including a pick-up line that I don't think I'll ever be able to use.

Don Tirso is the number two man on the crew (and recently nominated for "Least Likely to Ever Get Behind the Wheel of my Car Again").   He also excavated at Tikal and Yaxhá, and is a little coarser than Papatulo.  He is illiterate, and also one of the brightest people I have ever met.   A little less patient, Tirso is a serious workhorse; I watched him cut trails for hours, pouring sweat the whole time, and not even slow down.  Every other day he wears a t-shirt that reads, "Class of 1997 Powder Puff.   At Least You Tried!"  It was a source of amusement for everyone when I explained what powder puff football was.  

Tirso is less serious than Papatulo, and more prone to the occasional practical joke.  And most likely (but never confirmed) of any of the group to have practiced some nightime excavations for profit at some point.

Don Arturo is 63 years old (born on the 18th of December but they coundn't find an official to sign the birth certificate for 11 days, so his "birthday" is the 29 th), and has one of the saddest stories I have ever heard.  His twin children were, according to one bit of gossip, sold by his brother in law to a Canadian who runs an adoption agency out of Belize.  Another version of the tale has the kids being kidnapped, disappearing completely.  All versions of the story have the same ending: the Canadian's house was searched by the police, and they found clothes and traces of the girl's hair.   The Canadian was arrested and then managed to be released due to some political connection, after which he went straight to the Belizean border.  Belize does not extradite to Guatemala.  Arturo's wife, by his own admission, has gone mad with grief, and he has not been the same since.  But who would be?

With that background, it is pretty easy to make allowances for his shortcomings.  He is not very bright, and is impossible to understand, partly the result of being hooked in the mouth by a bull's horn when he was five.  The owner of the cattle did not want to pay for the clinic, so he reassured Arturo's parents that five-year-olds heal up fine – there would be no scarring.   The five-year-old did heal up fine, but the resulting scar splits his bottom lip on the left side of his face. 

I would be pretty tempted to say "Yeah, but you should see the other guy..."

Arturo has some talents – he is a master stake maker, and will provide you with a split stake just the right length with a beautifully pointed tip whenever you need it.   He is also very diligent at screening.  But when asked to follow slightly complicated instructions, he doesn't do so well.   We were excavating two halves of a unit separately, to recover artifacts from inside and outside the building.  He was screening.  After watching him put artifacts in the wrong pile twice, I devised a system where he keeps the bucket while he screens the soil, and puts the artifacts on the side of the unit where and when he replaces the bucket.

And I watched him replace a bucket immediately adjacent to the other,  reach over the bucket from the wrong side of the unit and put the artifacts down.  On the wrong pile.

He is also amazing at losing obsidian.  Four times in one day, I removed obsidian from the screen only to have him misplace it or lose it to "the wind".  

He is prone to excited interjections whenever anyone is telling a story.  When it happens, Tirso and Papatulo will stop talking long enough for him to get out whatever his addition to the story is, nod, and continue talking.   But he is completely harmless, and wonderfully good natured.  And is even smaller than Papatulo, weighing in at 115 lbs.  

These guys are the ones that excavate for me every day.  Between Tirso and Paptulo, there is probably 40+ years of excavation experience at some of the most important sites in the Maya area.   They quickly sort out what is in-place stone and what is rubble, and do it seemingly at random.  It makes overruling them on their decisions pretty hard, and I have made some small mistakes in not enforcing my will on the excavations.   But I am building confidence in my decision-making ability.  I watched as they decided that an ugly alignment of stones was significant, and looked along that edge for more evidence.   What resulted was a very nicely articulated small patio made entirely of rubble – the stucco had eroded away, but left the rubble in place.  I grew more and more unhappy with that feature, and finally got it removed to reveal the plaster floor beneath.  They had, in their excavations, created something that never existed.   My real tip-off was that the "stoop" they excavated did not have an associated door.  And the three aligned stones?   Were not aligned with anything else in the building.  They could just as easily have made the rubble into a round altar shape.

The week started off pretty well, opening the excavations of the first few 2x2 meter units.  In clearing excavations, the purpose (as best I can discern it) is to reveal the last phase of architecture to see what the last construction event looked like, and to collect artifacts from those surfaces.  We started in the middle of the plaza, cleared down to the plaster floor, and followed that surface to the front of the building.   Where the building started, there is a beautiful step/banquette/terrace/stair.  We followed that up, and articulated a number of much smaller steps leading up to a small plaster-floor terrace in front of the building.   The front wall was very thin, but pretty well made.  Inside the structure, we had a hard time finding the floor, but with a number of large stones in the unit, it could have been pulverized pretty easily.   Using the wall as a guide, we excavated units to the west and east of our original line of units leading up the slope, and found no doorway anywhere.   The wall is pretty solid the entire length.  Expanding further to the east, we went to find (and follow) the side wall of the structure.

When we found it, I realized a number of small mistakes in interpretation I had made.  The wall went the wrong way.   The highest point on the structure was behind the front wall.  Or rather, what we thought was the front wall.   Turns out that the side wall, instead of turning toward the back of the building, actually went the other way, inclosing some of the plaster floor terrace.  Hm.   That nice plaster-floor terrace was actually the inside of the building.  I had been looking for plaster floors outside the back door.  Shocking that I didn't find one.

Looking back, I can see that the small steps on one side of the stairway I excavated were actually wall fall.  We had already suspected that they were collapse of some sort, and that they were not actually steps, but the fact that these "steps" did not extend all the way across escaped me.  The missing steps were actually the doorway.  Oops.  Time to fix some lot forms.

Seems pretty simple in retrospect.  Not so simple when you are staring at a single unit trying to make sense out of the whole.   It is like picking up one piece of a puzzle and trying to envision the whole picture -  by peeking inside one hole in the ground, you try to predict what the other holes will have.   And with more experience, your predictions get better.

The food issue is better.  We are eating more, and there is less of a total reliance on eggs.   And our collective mood is improving as a result.  After collecting a couple of people from their sites on Tuesday, I was driving back to the camp and almost ran down a guy walking across the road with a haunch of venison.   Immediately, the floorboard of the car was covered with saliva – everyone was drooling at the prospect of eating a little red meat.  Leaving the car still running, I jumped out (I am pretty sure it was in park when I did, but not certain) and chased him back to his house.  Negotiations ensued.  We agreed on a price of 18Q per pound (three more than going market price) for the 15 pounds of meat (hoof included) he had in his hand.  To be delivered the following morning to our cook at the camp.  

As I was paying him, I asked, "So, where did you get it?" (deer are a protected species here).  

"Oh, back in the Motul reserve.  How do you want that receipt made out?"

"Make it out to the Motul Project.  Where did you say the deer came from?"

Flinch.  "From the other side of the Motul reserve."  

The steaks she cooked us were as tough as they could be.  The bones were boiled down into a soup, with potatoes and carrots.   Afterwards, the meat was picked off the bones and made into delicious empanadas.  And, other than Elly (who didn't feel like she was suited to a Bambivorous diet) , everyone ate every last morsel.

Everyone is feeling a little pinch for time, and we are modifying our excavation intentions accordingly.  Matt excavated a huge number of small test pits along the edge of a flat plaza, hoping to find the market garbage dump (he ending up finding a lot of artifacts, but none in good tight midden context).   Elly placed a couple of test units in a very big architectural platform to find out about the construction sequence for that platform, and found that it was built in a single event.   Pretty big undertaking.  She is hoping to get to the harbor soon, but the owner got his lawyers involved.  That should speed up the process considerably.   Sigh....

Matt and I have a difference of opinion on where to test for middens, particularly on the edge of the plaza space (which he believes is a market) .  I believe firmly in the inherent laziness of people.  Seems to me that in a location that is not your living space, if you want to get rid of garbage, you take it to the edge of the platform and drop it.   Not fling it, or throw it, or even toss it.  His units are 5m from the edge of the platform, and extend out from there.   But he has placed no unit on the edge of the platform. 

When I asked him about that, he stated that if the middens were uphill, some of the artifacts would have washed down.

My response?  "Ask Ingrid about that."  Ingrid placed two 1x1 units in succession downslope from a pretty rich positive test outside my group.   Her units came up almost completely empty.

Elsewhere, Jeanette is deep in a trench at Buenavista that she is hoping will turn up VERY early material.  She has some indirect evidence for a local chert source, one tidbit I need to follow up on.  Christina has moved back to Motul to excavate some likely spots for kilns, and has also put in units in the huge known midden at the site to look for evidence of figurine production.   She hasn't found it, but has a load of material to show for her efforts.

Today I head to the border with Ingrid and Matt – we all have to get our visas renewed and the car papers renovated.   And get a lunch in Belize.  In the next couple of days, we will get more archaeologists, including a couple of people from Earth Search who will be running a brief underwater pilot project.   They will be diving and mapping the surface of the harbor and beyond.  And will, maybe, find cool loot, right off the shore.

Final note.  We hurried back from our trip to Flores last Sunday to catch the wedding of a friend of the project.   We were told to arrive at 3.  Being savvy gringos, we waited until 3:45 before showing up, clean and, if not pressed, at least less wrinkled than usual.   Our meeting spot, according to our informant, was the San José Social Hall.  So we showed up and it was empty.   No surprise; we just went to the Bungalo to have a couple of cokes.  A couple of cokes later, we watch as women in satin dresses arrive in high heels and walk the steep cobblestone road up to the municipal offices.   Curious, we follow suit.  After waiting a half hour on the civil ceremony to start, we give up, extract our bodies from the throng, and head back to the Bungalo, where we can at least sweat with a cold drink in our hand.   About the time the civil ceremony is done, we are ready to go home and change, but we watch them move to the church, where the religious ceremony takes place.   And when people finally move to the social hall (around 6:30) we decide to head that way.

About the same time the storm hits.  I ran and got soaked and the car (weak attempt at a zeugma there).   We entered the social hall and sat.  My chair, predictably, was strategically placed under the leak, but since   I was drenched, it mattered least to me.  After sitting through forty-five minutes of the loudest marimba band I have ever heard (tuned cordwood with four musicians hammering away, with microphones to amplify the sound 1000 times) .  Add four other percussion instruments (I am pretty sure that guy with the cowbell was part of the team) and an electric bass guitar, and you have a pretty rocking band.   And not much possibility of hearing the other half of the conversation in which you are participating.  After destroying six sets of tympanic membranes for an hour or so, we have been at this for way too long, and head home, or, as we explain it, "walk out for some fresh air".  

And meet our informant, who is just arriving, looking fresh as a daisy.  The one who told us to arrive at 3 o'clock sharp.  

Future archaeologists will have to explain the 21st century use of the ditch as a burial locus.

 

Contact Crorey    

                                                                                                                

JULY JOURNAL ENTRIES

02 July 2005

This is the journal from last week.  I almost had it completed when we left Flores last Sunday, but I couldn't finish it in time.   Enjoy...

Don Arturo extended his hand as if to shake hands.  "The deer was this big," he said, indicating the height of the animal with the blade of the hand.   Ten minutes later, we were talking about his corn field.  "Three weeks ago, the corn was this high," hand extended palm-up indicating a height below his knee, "and now it is this high," raising his hand to waist height, still extending the hand palm up.

It got me to asking some questions.  We gringos have a pretty uninteresting way of indicating size.   What size is your kid?  Extend out hand as if patting the kid on the head.  The dog that chased me must have been this big.  Extend hand out the same way.  How big is the corn plant?  This high, indicated with the same gesture.

My guys were incredulous when I explained that we don't use different gestures for animals, people, corn and chickens (yep, poultry gets its own size indicator – hand held much like a cupped baseball with fingers pointed downward) .  How rude it is, they think, to render such different things equal with a wave of the hand. 

I asked a few others about it, and I did get one more interesting tidbit.  Fish, which we measure between the hands spread equal distance in front of us, are measured from the back of the left hand (held closer to the body) to the right hand, extended farther in front in a diagonal.  Cool to hear and see a difference like that.

A corollary to that occurred to me.  In the Yucatec Maya language (very closely related to Itzá Maya), there is a thing called a numeral classifier – a way of indicating what kind of thing you are counting, be it people or animals or inanimate things or long, thin things.   Each has its own type of classifier.  So you don't just count one pancake, two pancakes, three pancakes; you say one flat-thing pancake, two flat-thing pancakes, three flat-thing pancakes.  

It would be an interesting thing to compare gestures with the numeral classifiers.  Maybe I'll talk it out with Papatulo, when he comes back to work for me.

Yes, O Best Beloved, my excavation mentor, Don Arturo, has been absconded with by the project co-director for her ethnoarchaeological research.  He is the obvious choice – he knows and is respected by all, and his knowledge of local Itzá ethnography is astonishing (I will be using him for my canoe research).   But it has been tough going from the three dons to two dons (one of which is none too bright) and a couple of kids.

Our ongoing dispute with the land-renter began again.  DJ was waiting for us at the site, and accused us of cutting another cow's tail.   Poppycock, of course.  The workers are under constant supervision, and no one can even be gone for 10 seconds without being noticed by everyone.   Matt got up in arms, and I lost it.  I told him (bad cop-esque) that we would just go talk to the alcalde, that talking to him directly was a waste of time.   Matt shushed me (I hate being shushed, even when playing bad cop) and told DJ that we were not responsible, but we would remind the workers that they should respect the cattle.  

All of us, separately, had similar encounters with our workers afterwards.  Elly went to her excavations, and the guys told her, "We know where the tail is!   It is in Elly's bag!"  Matt told his guys to respect the animals, and it immediately became the joke.  I whirled on Tirso when we got to the site, got right in his face, and said "It is imperative that you respect the animals.  Do you understand?"  Pause.  Pause.  Then my goofy grin.

After he got over the shock of such a strong confrontation with me, he (and the rest of the guys) had a good laugh.

The dumbest part is, DJ then turned his attention to the excavation of a couple of water holes on the site.  With a bulldozer.  He is, apparently, trying like hell to get thrown off the site.  The law is very clear – you get rights to the very surface of the land, and not what is underneath.   That part belongs to the country.  To dig, especially in an archaeological site (as we well know) you have to request an endless supply of permits to undertake the work.   We presented him with the paper from IDAEH giving us permission to work at Trinidad, but he would not accept it.  We warned him to be careful, that if he bulldozed mounds, there would be trouble.   He got belligerent and would not let us talk, talking over us until we gave up. 

At the end of the week, we had a visit from the local head of archaeological monuments.  He had heard through one of our guys that DJ was destroying the site, and came out at the end of the day to investigate.   We walked over to one area of destruction, where the bulldozed area had clipped the edge of a platform built on a leveled hill.  There was some material on the surface, but not much.   He managed the impossible – turning over dirt in the site without doing much damage.  He is either really lucky or dumb like a fox.   I prefer to think of him as just lucky, but I have to hold out the possibility that he is not as dumb as he seems.

The excavations are going better.  At the beginning of the week, I was feeling a little jealous.   The rest of the 20-person crew was over the crest of the site excavating cool loot from trash dumps next to the ballcourt. 

Now if you are looking for cool loot, a nice structure with known ritual function would be a good place to look.   The garbage thrown out there is simply amazing.  Beautiful painted plates with glyphs.  Carved glyphs on vessels.   Huge quantities of gorgeous pottery.  Figurines.  And the few pieces of stone tool that appear in the mixture are stunning bifaces of material that we don't see elsewhere at the site (good for my diss). 

After seeing all the material coming through that part of the project, I was just a little discouraged to be excavating a small household group with very few artifacts.   The few pieces we have from the fill are small and pretty eroded.  Worse still, the walls of the structure were insignificant, and so the collapse of the structure did not protect much material. Apparently there were two places on the site you could dig without hitting artifacts.   It just so happened that the second one was a prehistoric structure.

Basically, I have a basal platform faced with a single row of nicely cut stone.  Decent investment in the façade to impress the Peches, but no investment in the rest of the house.

Now, let me set the record straight.  I am an archaeologist.  I am interested in understanding previous ways of living.   I even consider myself an economic archaeologist – I am interested in the way that people made groceries and what they did for a living.  My focus is never going to be the royal tombs, filled with jade and gold and elite goods; the stuff I look for is more often left in the garbage.

Even so, it can still be hard at the end of the day to see my colleagues coming in from the field too loaded down to fit in the truck for all the goodies they found during the day.   Even when I will be analyzing that material for my dissertation, as well as the two sad bags of material I add to the pile.

On Thursday, that changed a little by the end of the day.  After finishing my clearing excavations on the first structure, I opened two units, one in the middle of the structure I had just cleared to get more information from earlier phases of construction, the other in the next building in the residential group.   The small unit in the structure kept going down without hitting anything – no floor or anything.  This surprised me – I had seven floors in the plaza, and no corresponding construction levels show up in the construction of the building?   How can that happen? 

The other unit started coming up with a fair amount of obsidian, right at the end of the day.  We have been getting one or two pieces of obsidian at a time.   We pulled ten pieces out of the screen at the end of the level, and it didn't get any less at the beginning of the day Friday.  There is a lot of obsidian in that unit, and it is coming from all over the unit.   I thought it might be an offering or something, but it is simply a lot of obsidian. 

The stuff from the underwater archaeologists was cool, but it was real archaeology instead of the treasure hunt we had hopes of.   They came back with some very interesting information, based on the maps they made and the material they collected.  The conditions were nearly perfect for doing the work, according to Mel – clear water and ambient light that extends pretty deep.   And the water extends pretty deep, too.  They did a 100-foot dive at the end of the week and did not come anywhere near the bottom.  

But what we did not get was lots of loot, right off the shore.  They came back with some really cool stuff – large potsherds and lithics, collected from a range of depths.   But there was no offerings or canoes that they identified, and the piers for the dock that we had hoped for did not appear, either. 

Their first day was pretty typical.  Their plane arrived on time, and we grabbed a bite to eat before heading over to pick up the air tanks.   The air tanks, predictably, were a problem.

Bus driver:  I cannot let you unload cargo until the paperwork is signed at the office.

Matt: But you arrived an hour late and the office is now closed.

Bus driver:  I can't help you.  You have to get the form signed. 

Matt:  How many people are going to be asking for the air tanks off of your bus!?   

But nothing could be done.  He was not going to unload the air tanks, no matter what.   And he was leaving with the air tanks on the bus in an hour, so we had to get his form signed.  So we went off to the office, located in the heart of the market, a pretty sketchy area to be in at night.   The manager finally answered the door, and said that it would be perfectly all right to take the tanks, but....

Turns out that the air tanks weren't even on that bus.  They were on the next bus, set to arrive at 10:30 pm .

So I took Mel and Thad, who had had a really long day of travel, back to the camp, and Matt stayed with our workers and their truck to wait on the bus.   And when the tanks did come, the bus driver was glad to get them off his bus, because they had been rolling around a little too much to make him happy.   Now let's see, pressurized oxygen (highly flammable), driven across bumpy roads for 500 miles.  Don't you think it would be normal to secure them pretty well?

Nahhhh....

Mel and Thad also lost the next day of diving because of some broken equipment.  They arrived on Monday, lost Tuesday, were headed back Sunday, and couldn't dive on Saturday because of the dangers of flying after a dive.

But they made the most of the three days, and collected some cool stuff, mapped a broad area, and noted some really interesting features. There is a wall (almost certainly natural) pretty deep down that parallels the shore.  There is a thick layer of silt near the shore that would be a nice place to preserve archaeological materials.   And there was enough material around to arouse interest.  As far as pilot projects go, it was an unqualified success.

So that is pretty much the news for the week.  Hope you all are well.

Crorey 

 

10 July, 2005

The week did not start well.  Sunday, on the way back from Flores, I got to feeling a little rocky, and while everyone was organizing artifacts, I was looking for my hammock.  And then the dysentery hit around 1 am, and kept me up and really uncomfortable until 4. 

Now I have not gotten really sick in the field since my field school in 1994.  I have had a couple of days when I really didn't feel great, and would have a mild disagreeable food experience, but I do not get sick.  

Until Monday morning.  It was still not as bad as some.   When I woke up at 5:30, I actually thought about going out.  I have very little time to spend doing the things I want to do (thanks to the bureaucratic hassles), and taking a day off to recover from being sick is not ideal.  Of course, neither is getting sick.

The thing that pushed it over the edge for me is that some years ago, a student at Tulane, while doing survey in Yucatán when he was sick, got really badly dehydrated and fell out.   They found him in a thorn thicket convulsing, and took him to the hospital.  Will Andrews sent a Lear jet for him and brought him back to the states, where he later died.   Dehydration from diarrhea is not something to be played around with.

So instead of going to the field, I spent the entire day asleep.  I would wake up for thirty minutes, then go back to sleep.   By Tuesday, I felt fine, albeit a bit weak.

And on Tuesday, Matt and I got the opportunity to confront a guy who couldn't cash his check.   Walter had started work on Wednesday of the previous week, so I paid him by check his Q150 for the three days of work.  And the bank turned it down.   Word got back to us by some of the others that the amount on the check was a little off.  Well, a lot off.  Those who were there (he actually showed the check to the guys!) state that they saw clearly that it had been tampered with – he had added a "1" in front of the 150, and, at least according to some, had added a "mil" on the line on top of the "ciento cincuenta" line.   If true, he could face criminal charges from us, and worse from his brother-in-law Benito, who is, as Matt put it, "a made man" with us.  Benito will kick his butt and then some, and I would not want to see Benito truly angry.   He could be scary.

Walter changed his story with the wind.  They accepted the check, but later ("then we will go and get the check from the bank to check the amount?).  No they didn't accept the check, and I have it at home.   ("well, bring it tomorrow, and we will pay it if it is just a mistake").  We asked him flat out how much the check was for.   He waffled.  How much was the check for?  More waffling.  NO.   What was the amount written on the check?  Do not let another word emerge from your mouth that does not start with a number.

Later, he asked me for clarification.  What exactly was Matt asking?   I didn't understand.  I explained that Matt was asking if he had tried to steal money from me.  He looked me in the eye and told me that he wouldn't do that.

Wednesday we fired him.  He admitted that the check had an ink mark on it in the number area that looked like a one.   He neglected to mention that the letters "mil" had been added in front of the quantity.  When we saw him, we told him that he was just as stupid as he could be, that all these other guys are working hard for money, and that there are a bunch of guys wanting to make money by working for us, and he just wants to cheat and steal.  

He's lucky we didn't get the police involved.  The last guy to try that trick got caught at the bank and did eight months. 

Eight months in a Guatemalan prison.  Ugh.

So after work on Wednesday, I went over to his house to give him his machete and his severance pay for working for five days.   He was asleep, and they went to wake him up (most of the family avoiding eye contact with me at the time).   Benito showed up, and I explained that I was there to pay Walter for the time he worked, and to return his machete.  He said he understood, and that sometimes you get a thorn and have to cut it out, so that you can keep working.   Crude analogy, but apt.

Meanwhile, Walter stumbled out the door, and when he saw it was me, he scurried back inside.   People kept going in "to wake him up", and finally he came out, cradling his infant daughter in his arms.

Did he think I was going to administer a beating?  I honestly think he expected violence from me, and was using the kid (who is this tall) to ward it off.  Sad.  I paid him and took my leave.  

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful.  My excavations are continuing, but are not turning up anything stunning.   The structure nearest the surface is badly eroded by cow trails (vacaturbation) and I missed it entirely in one of the units.   No floor, no bench, no door, no clue what the building looks like. 

On the other hand, I dug a deep unit into the structure we completed, and found a Preclassic plaster bench, a short step right next to it, and a floor.   The fill that they dumped on top of it (usually a good place to find decent ceramics and lithics – the garbage pile is a good source for fill material) was almost sterile.  I didn't even have enough to date the structure accurately. 

So I opened another unit next to it, and got more of the same, all the way down to the floor.   But in excavating the bench, I found out that it is curved.  So is the step.  It was really neat, seeing all this plaster curving from one end of the unit to the other.   And a little sad, knowing that I don't have the resources or time to excavate the whole thing – it would be nice to see the rest of the structure.

An interesting bit that I had read about before, but had never really hit home.  The plaster is beautifully preserved in my Preclassic structure, and that would not happen if the building was left to collapse – plaster in wet environments melts.   So the fill event had to happen at about the time the structure was left.  600 years later, there is a Late Classic structure built on top of the mound, and maybe some Postclassic squatters afterwards.

But why cover over a building that will not be reoccupied for 600 years?  And why cover it over so completely?   It would make sense if the fill took place during the Late Classic – you want to build a house, you pick a high spot you like and dump a bunch of stuff on top to make it taller before you build your structure on top.   But the platform building took place earlier, to protect the structure inside.  And then it was left alone, as far as we can see (although that might also be impacted by vacaturbation.

It was around this point that DJ caught us.  As I related before, the archaeologist gets into the pit in Guatemala only when there is something cool to do.  So he looked over and there were all six workers clustered around the deep unit, and my head was poking out.   So he came over.  "What did you find?"

I whirled around, not expecting a voice behind me, let alone his voice.  I looked up, offered my hand (the dog was this tall) and explained that I was teaching the guys about the principle of superposition.  I continued with my lecture using pieces of paper and coins to demonstrate how earlier material is deposited in lower levels and the later stuff is on top.   I then turned to the floors and demonstrated the same thing, explaining that the pottery worked the same way as the coins.  I have a lot of experience on my crew, but I don't know how much of what we are doing with the information has ever been explained to them.   I then explained how old each floor was, based on the pottery that Matt looked at (a solid date will only come from complete analysis) and walked them through the process of explaining each step.  DJ finally got bored and walked off.  I know he thought he was walking in on us after we found something impressive.   Instead, he got a lecture.  Heh.

He also apparently sold his beach this week.  He had asked for Q700,000 for a small parcel of land with a little bit of waterfront access, and ended up selling it for 150,000.   Still a pretty amazing price – he spent every night this week at the watering hole in celebration.  But that explains the aguadas he dug last week with the dozer – he will be unable to water his cows if he can't take them to the water.   But he managed to hold on to waterfront property longer than anyone else, and sold at a better price than anyone else did, too. 

The food is no better this week – if anything, it got worse.  We would honestly be pretty bored but content with rice, beans and salsa.   What we get is a ball of egg with some veggie fried into the ball.  Or pasta, all by itself.  Matt commented this week that we need to do an Iron Chef competition, but modified to our setting.   Rather than being presented with one ingredient, the chefs will be required to come up with one result.  They will be provided with a wide variety of vegetables and ingredients, and have to come up with the same congealed mass regardless of the input.   I can see now chefs from around the world throwing down their towel in disgust, as Doña Ana walks away with the prize every night.  Congealed eggs with eggplant.   Congealed eggs with cauliflower (the worst of the lot – I didn't even eat my lunch on Saturday).   Or broccoli, or potatoes.  OK, the potatoes were the worst.  Matt ate all his potatoes (congealed in a ball of egg) for lunch on Friday and threw up.  None of the rest of us got so far.  Then dinner was more of the same.   We went out and had fried chicken two villages over rather than submit ourselves to that again.

The only good meal we had this week was the one I only nibbled on the outside of because I was under the weather.   Monday, one of our sources had wild pig that he sold us.  It had already been cooked, and it was spicy (not what I needed when feeling queasy, anyway) and tasty.  Doña Ana, for once, did not put it in a ball of eggs. 

Good food is out there.  Wives make tasty lunches for husbands – they show up in the field with them and share.   Don Tirso brought and shared a tamale with local greens; Don Erlindo provided us with rice and mushrooms in a mustard-based sauce with another type of wild greens.   The good food is out there, we just can't seem to hire a cook that can make it.

So be sure to include in any email to me full descriptions of any meals you ate that were spectacular in some way.   It doesn't make me homesick at all.  It doesn't make me ready to give up archaeology for one good dinner.  At this point I feel a little like Esau – I would sell my birthright for a good stew.  And hearing about home-cooked meals makes me feel so much better...

Crorey 

 

17 July 2005

Go look up the Boston Globe online and read the review of my sister's play, Arcadia.  She got a good review, and is making some waves.   I am amazed by her – it is such a tough profession to make a go of it, and she has done it for nearly a decade.

So this week the cops had stopped Matt, and were harassing him about not having the papers on him while driving.   He had gone to get Danny (soil scientist working with us for two weeks) and Don Jorge (Paptulo) from San Pedro and got stopped.  And they hassled him quite a bit.   He had stopped at the entrance to Trinidad, where they pulled him over, and he managed to explain that the car papers were "just over the hill" where the owner of the car was working.   They took his keys and told him to hurry.

When I arrived on the scene, they turned their attention to me.  I have seen it before in Mexico, but usually the Guatemalan police are not out for mordida.   But this was a shakedown, plain and simple.  They even threatened to tow the car to the Mexican border for overstaying my welcome – I was past the thirty days for renovating the car papers.   They tried several tacks – that I had overstayed my permits (untrue; I renovated the car papers two weeks earlier), that my car papers said the car was green, but it was actually green and black (also untrue – the bottom panel is also the same color green as the rest of the car, but one set of car papers actually says it is red, which they fortunately did not pick up on) . 

I told them they were wrong on both counts.  

They even tried the seat belt law, claiming that they would have to charge me for driving without a seat belt (forty people can cram into the back of a pickup truck without fear of being ticketed, but heaven forbid the driver not be wearing a seatbelt!)   But since I had not been driving when they pulled Matt over...

The final one was charging me with just raising dust.  I don't know anybody in town (untrue), I ask them for help with a landowner dispute (true) but then don't file any paperwork that says that the dispute is over (true – but we did stop by and explain it to the officer in charge).  And all I do is drive through without stopping to talk, raising dust as I pass.

Guilty, I guess.  But weird.  They finally let us go with a "warning".

The work has been steady, if not exciting.  Matt continues to excavate cool middens from the other side of the site, and I continue to struggle to understand small household architecture.   I have a building with no walls.  I have no idea what happened to the walls – they are just gone.  All that I can find in the structure is a partially preserved plaster floor.   And I was excited to finally find that.  Both of the other structures have good, if small, walls defining inner and outer space.   But not this one. 

On Tuesday, I was at the site, when everyone started to point out a figure in a pink shirt making his way towards us.   "It is Don Angel," they explained.  He moved quickly across the arroyo, and came up to the area where we are digging.

I was glad to see him.  I had heard so much about Don Angel, and we had tried to get him to work for us at the beginning of the season.   But he had not been there. 

See, Don Angel is a curandero – a healer.  He had worked for the project before, and knows a huge amount about the area.   So I was thrilled to have him on board.  After talking for a few minutes, he asked for work.  I decided for the project that we wanted him.   We were losing a couple of people, and so I hired him to start the next day.

But Don Angel is not Don Angel.  We got to the site yesterday, and Matt said, in an exasperated tone, "who is that?"  It was at that point that I realized my mistake.

Don Angel is the father of Doña Ana, our cook.  Don Angel is single, never married, and without kids.   Don Angel is from San José.  Don Angel is from Nuevo San José.  Don Angel worked with Gerson on the excavations in 2003.   Don Angel has never done this kind of work before.

Two Don Angels.  And the incongruities did not really get noticed until Matt and Elly did not recognize him. 

Anyway, he is a good worker, and I like him.  He also adds years to the average age of the crew – I now have four dons on the crew – Don Tirso, Don Jorge, Don Arturo and Don Angel.  And I will likely be getting Don Paco back (he went to work for Elly for her last week).

It is like a donvention.

On my way back into the village last week, I stopped in San Andres and picked up some cigars for the don that smokes.  I asked the price of the poorly rolled cigars, and was surprised.  I bought eight cigars for Q5.

Granted, they had to be re-rolled before Don Arturo could smoke them, and he saved some of the extra tobacco for later use, but he was quite pleased with the result.   And he can have them.  I sure don't need them – I got enough from being downwind of him.  Odd that Honduras and Mexico, on either side of Guate, are both known for their cigar tobacco, but that Guatemala, which has more biozones than you can shake a stick at, does not have a tradition of growing tobacco.   Except on a very small level.

A guy named Oscar came back through this week (he made an appearance last Saturday, as well, asking questions about our excavations).   This time he came with his brother and someone else.  He is the head of the water purification company in San Benito (the water tastes awful, but half the time it is all that is available) and he just bought the land on the other side of the road from DJ (150,000Q) and was looking to buy rights to the land at Trinidad.  He views it as a profit venture, he was looking to develop it into a Tikal-like park, so his questions ran the direction of, "will the government take this land away if I buy it?"

I couldn't say yes or no.  If I say yes, DJ has had his deal torpedoed by me, and the current landrenter is angry with me.   If I say no, and the government does take it away, I have screwed him instead.  Papatulo, while I was waffling, stepped up and said the government was almost certain to take away a site as important as this.   It would be made into a national park.

Bless him.

Turns out Oscar wanted to "clean" the structures privately and charge admission to the site.  But I think the tag-team combination of Papatulo and me dissuaded him from buying the rights.   I told him that the program of test pitting that Matt was doing all over the site was going to cost 12k, and that he was going to spend much more than that in the process.   It would be hard to charge enough to recover an investment like that.  And besides, only the government can really restore sites like he wants to.

Food situation is grim.  I explained at the beginning of the week that Doña Ana had to make vegetables last the entire week – that Friday and Saturday without vegetables was not acceptable.   This week it was only Saturday without a veggie (plain eggs for breakfast, noodles for lunch).  Every other day we got eggs with at least one vegetable mixed in.   And one day, she hit the trifecta – plain eggs for breakfast, egg-veggie mass for lunch, and eggs and potatoes for dinner.  $75 worth of veggies in a market in Guatemala, where veggies are cheap, and it only lasted 6 people five days.  Hmph.

So we were sitting at dinner last night fantasizing about big, full breakfasts, and Christina couldn't stand it any more.   "Enough with the food porn".  Yes, Best Beloved, we have dropped another level, and are only dealing with fantasies of food.  I am a little scared to go back to civilization; for fear that I will embarrass myself in the first restaurant I go to.   As it was, last night I ate in near-panic, trying to wolf down my steak as if protein works better when eaten quickly.  Even worse, the moment I was done, I looked around at everyone else's plate (they were almost as fast) and wanted to start vulturing them. 

The conversation then turned to bad experiences with field food.  In years past, this project has had it bad.   One year, there was nothing but noodles for a two-month field season.  Another project, the director rationed food according to work ethic – lazy people got less (we all agreed that was a bad idea – you mess with people's food supply in the field, you get wolves circling).  It could be much worse.