31 March 2006
The week has been stellar. I had been a little worried about the experimental part of my project – where I actually replicate activities that the ancient Maya likely engaged in. But with a trio of old-time chicleros working me through the process, the biggest concern for me was getting them the tools they needed knapped on time – they knew instinctively how to manage all of the tasks with the tools I provided.
It started off slowly, with a day spent in preparation and working on fitting axes into hafts for later use. Then we got started, and we split and smoothed wood, drilled ceramic sherds (one class of artifacts we find in quantity is round, drilled sherds used in spinning cotton), drilled jade and wood, cut the top off of a conch to make a shell trumpet, and cut some more off for beads. And all of the work was done with chert and obsidian tools. The coolest part of all of it is watching the guys get into the process – they really seemed to get a kick out of doing the experiments. I even let them play around a little with the knapping, so that they could get an idea of what it takes to make a chert tool.
The experiments themselves are going well, but are not proceeding without the usual set of frustrations. I am in the middle of three or four guys who are cutting, drilling, chopping and digging from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. The idea behind the experiments is that if I do all these activities with chert tools and then study the damage on the tools, I will be able to recognize the damage on tools we recovered from excavation. So, for example, if I have a house at Trinidad where a lot of shell was being engraved, the damage on the chert from that house will likely be the same as damage on flakes from my experiments where I engrave shells. Another location, where the local butcher lived, will have chert that was damaged in a manner very similar to the chert we used in butchering a goat (I would have used deer, but it is a protected species and prohibitively expensive, to boot).
And so we are doing all of the experiments that we can come up with for activities that might have used chert. We are scraping hides, cutting leather, chopping trees, butchering a goat, drilling jade (well, not successfully drilling jade, but that is another story), making shell beads and a shell trumpet, drilling ceramics and wood, making a wooden drum, and making moccasins. Well, as far as the moccasins are concerned, we are doing the things that we would do if we were making moccasins – cutting leather, punching holes in the leather, etc.
The drilling of jade was something I really wanted to try. It is truly amazing that a substance so hard was used for so long by people who had no access to modern cutting implements. And although I cannot tell you what they did use, I can, with some confidence, tell you that they were not drilling jade beads using chert drills. After two days of drilling, I had an indentation in the thin piece of jade I had brought with me from Antigua. Not a hole, mind you. An indentation. If you put a drop of water in the indentation, ninety percent of the drop would flow over the side. And that represents the work of one person for two days, about 10,000 rotations of the drill, and a number of drills destroyed, bagged and replaced over the two days. We tried putting sand in the hole, but that simply obscured the hole, and did not help at all. We tried different methods of drilling, but none of them came out well.
So we scrapped the project, until I convinced Don Arturo to spend a couple of hours making a bow drill. And it does work, or at least it works better. A have a guy now making 10,000 rotations per hour and we are getting down a little further. It also means the drills are getting eaten up pretty quickly, too. Which means more knapping for me. And the jade is still going slowly, but at least there is now the possibility of drilling through it. Maybe. Minimally, I have a large number of samples at various stages of wear, and some really cool video of the different methods of drilling we used.
Other experiments have had better results. Arturo got a hollow avocado log, and we started cutting on it to make a drum. The teponaztle was a drum used in prehispanic times that made two tones when struck. There was an H carved lengthwise into the hollowed-out log, leaving two tongues of different lengths that, when struck, gave off two different tones (see photo). We started with the hollow log, and simply cut grooves into it in the form of an H. Four days later, we are still cutting – the log is pretty thick – and we are almost done. I eventually want to do the same with an un-hollowed log, but we have to wait for the cow to be butchered to do that, so that we can use the sinew to haft the axe.
The problems with the axes is pretty typical, from what I have read about hafting. It is simply a difficult process. The first day, we took some of the axes I had been making and hafted them. Great. But it was obvious from the start that we had a lot to learn about hafting stone tools. Arturo was proud of the result, but I had a sneaking suspicion that after ten strokes, the stone would fall out of the hafts.
It only took nine. We decided that the best bet would be to get some sinew and rawhide, rather than tanned leather and tie the axes and hoes into the handles. The cow was to be butchered on Tuesday night, so we could get it first thing Wednesday morning, and then start our experiments. But I had misunderstood, according to Arturo. It was Wednesday night that they were butchering. So we went over there on Wednesday.
Wrong. I had been right, and the cow was butchered on Tuesday evening, and sold on Wednesday. It was really fun to realize that my Spanish had progressed to a point where I could understand directions better than Arturo (at least on a bad day for him). Which was small consolation, since there was nothing left of the cow by Wednesday evening. So the axe experiments of chopping wood and digging are still pending. But we should be able to start them on Monday. I will get Arturo, come hell or high water, to make sure that the haft holds.
And on Friday we butchered a goat. Killing it was pretty distasteful, but the actual work was fascinating. In the space of an hour and a half, the guys (none of whom had ever butchered a goat before) had taken the skin off, cut out the entrails, cut though the ribcage (with one of the poorly hafted axe and what quickly became a heavily battered flake), and divided up the portions into haunch and round and ribs, all ready for barbecuing. And I had one of the haunches defleshed so that we can carve artwork into the bone next week.
In all of that, the only metal we used was the nails used to stretch the hide (and we used stone hammers to drive in the nails). Again, the coolest result was the impressions of the guys doing the butchery. They were surprised at how fast it went and by how long the obsidian flake they used stayed sharp. They were less impressed with the chert, but said that is was useful as well, for cutting nearer the bone. And they enjoyed doing it, and have begun to give talks to the people who come by to see what the crazy gringo is doing. They explain what we are doing pretty well, and seem to enjoy the process. And they all took home a portion of the goat to eat and share with their families, so everyone wins. Just a typical day in Nueva San José.
And life in NSJ is certainly interesting. The people here are all recent arrivals – the oldest family here arrived in the late 1970s. And that creates an interesting dynamic within the group. Most places in Guatemala have very closed groups and strong xenophobia. Here it is different. Although an outsider is unlikely to ever hold a political position (New San José is linked politically to San José, whose residents are from much older Itzá stock, including three of my workers), the community is open in a way that is very reassuring to the foreigner. People are just welcomed here.
I started off the week not sure what I would be doing, where I would be staying, or how I would cope with the project. I called up Luis, a friend of mine in NSJ (his son was the one that almost died from worms), and he offered his house for the week or two that I was going to be here. I shared the house with Martin, another NSJ-er, and a recent transplant. The funny thing is, I have been in the community longer than he has, but the community is so welcoming that it doesn't matter. He has work, he has friends, and he has a place to sleep.
And he is invited over to eat almost as often as I am. I ate more in the week in NSJ than I ate in New Orleans while I was home. But understand, please, that all of the love that I am feeling does not mean that everything is supremely comfortable. The conditions are not bad, just rustic, and not at all set up for gringos (the three knots on my head where I smacked three separate too-low doorways says it all).
And who would have thought that I would miss my morning electrocution shower? Luis apologized profusely for not having indoor plumbing. He said that was on his list of things to get done on the house, but he just hasn't gotten to it yet. I said – no problem, I have no trouble taking an outdoor shower.
I was wrong. I do have a problem, just not the one that I thought I would have. The "shower" is a sink right next to the street. It is the place where dishes, clothes and people are washed. And I do mean right on the street. There is a blue plastic screen set up so that you can bathe in semi-privacy.
But only if you are a Petenero. If you are a six-foot tall gringo, half of your body is out in the open, because the plastic polyurethane sheeting only comes up to chin height on a Petenero. I feel terribly exposed being the only gringo in town anyway. I feel doubly so being the only naked gringo bathing on the street. So far I have managed to choose low-traffic times of day to bathe, and I do it quickly. But Lord help the first tall woman to try and bathe here…
But it is a wonderful place, if only for the beautiful souls that live there. And while in San José this week, I got a lesson in Small World. Ema Pech, my Yucatec Maya teacher from Tulane is from Mérida, Yuacatan, where I was working for the majority of my time at Tulane. While I was at a party in New Orleans, we struck up a conversation about the Petén, and she mentioned that she really loved it. She had stayed in Petén with a woman, and she described how lovely the lake was, and how nice Flores was.
I had not realized we shared quite so many experiences in common. A couple more minutes of conversation went by, and we realized that my village was the place she had stayed. After a few moments of staring at each other, open mouthed, she shook herself free of the disbelief first.
"Would you mind taking some things back to her?"
I was delighted to do it, and only needed the name of the person to whom I was delivering it to. The name was Chayax.
In San José, there are only four last names. There is Tesucun (that most hated of names, belonging to both the aforementioned DJ from Trinidad and the equally aforementioned Don Diablo from La Estrella), and there is Suntecum; there is Cauiches, and then there is Chayax. All of the families are related, but asking for a woman with a last name Chayax only narrows it down a little. Might as well open a Manhattan phone directory, and count the Smiths.
I finally got a first name from Ema, and immediately got my response – of course we know Nimfa Chayax. And, predictably, all my workers are related to her in one way or another.
The visit to her house was very nice. She started out a little suspicious of a gringo that showed up on her doorstep as it was getting dark, but once she figured out who I was, we laughed and joked about what a small world it was and how someone like Ema just makes friends everywhere.
The only down side for the week was an episode of Grand Theft Auto. I left the car locked and clubbed just below the apartment window, and over the course of Friday night, someone broke into it, hotwired it and drove it off.
Now normally, I would be furious, but I feel pretty sanguine about it for a couple of reasons. I had asked around, and selling it was going to be difficult – the Guatemalan importation taxes were higher than the value of the car – and the car is not in any shape to drive home. And although I had planned on one more week of experiments, I can do those without a car, and I had removed the flakes from last week's experiments the night before (thank goodness…).
I filed a police report, but they are not terribly interested in recovering the car, and it certainly is not worth my while to offer a reward to them for looking for it. So the car is gone. But with it went the hassle of dealing with the car in the next two weeks. So, even in an unfortunate circumstance, it ended up OK. And much better than if I had lost the car before or during the field season. That would have been disastrous.
So I hope you all are well. I'll keep you apprised of developments with the experiments as I complete more of them.
Crorey
The week has been stellar. I had been a little worried about the experimental part of my project – where I actually replicate activities that the ancient Maya likely engaged in. But with a trio of old-time chicleros working me through the process, the biggest concern for me was getting them the tools they needed knapped on time – they knew instinctively how to manage all of the tasks with the tools I provided.
It started off slowly, with a day spent in preparation and working on fitting axes into hafts for later use. Then we got started, and we split and smoothed wood, drilled ceramic sherds (one class of artifacts we find in quantity is round, drilled sherds used in spinning cotton), drilled jade and wood, cut the top off of a conch to make a shell trumpet, and cut some more off for beads. And all of the work was done with chert and obsidian tools. The coolest part of all of it is watching the guys get into the process – they really seemed to get a kick out of doing the experiments. I even let them play around a little with the knapping, so that they could get an idea of what it takes to make a chert tool.
The experiments themselves are going well, but are not proceeding without the usual set of frustrations. I am in the middle of three or four guys who are cutting, drilling, chopping and digging from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. The idea behind the experiments is that if I do all these activities with chert tools and then study the damage on the tools, I will be able to recognize the damage on tools we recovered from excavation. So, for example, if I have a house at Trinidad where a lot of shell was being engraved, the damage on the chert from that house will likely be the same as damage on flakes from my experiments where I engrave shells. Another location, where the local butcher lived, will have chert that was damaged in a manner very similar to the chert we used in butchering a goat (I would have used deer, but it is a protected species and prohibitively expensive, to boot).
And so we are doing all of the experiments that we can come up with for activities that might have used chert. We are scraping hides, cutting leather, chopping trees, butchering a goat, drilling jade (well, not successfully drilling jade, but that is another story), making shell beads and a shell trumpet, drilling ceramics and wood, making a wooden drum, and making moccasins. Well, as far as the moccasins are concerned, we are doing the things that we would do if we were making moccasins – cutting leather, punching holes in the leather, etc.
The drilling of jade was something I really wanted to try. It is truly amazing that a substance so hard was used for so long by people who had no access to modern cutting implements. And although I cannot tell you what they did use, I can, with some confidence, tell you that they were not drilling jade beads using chert drills. After two days of drilling, I had an indentation in the thin piece of jade I had brought with me from Antigua. Not a hole, mind you. An indentation. If you put a drop of water in the indentation, ninety percent of the drop would flow over the side. And that represents the work of one person for two days, about 10,000 rotations of the drill, and a number of drills destroyed, bagged and replaced over the two days. We tried putting sand in the hole, but that simply obscured the hole, and did not help at all. We tried different methods of drilling, but none of them came out well.
So we scrapped the project, until I convinced Don Arturo to spend a couple of hours making a bow drill. And it does work, or at least it works better. A have a guy now making 10,000 rotations per hour and we are getting down a little further. It also means the drills are getting eaten up pretty quickly, too. Which means more knapping for me. And the jade is still going slowly, but at least there is now the possibility of drilling through it. Maybe. Minimally, I have a large number of samples at various stages of wear, and some really cool video of the different methods of drilling we used.
The problems with the axes is pretty typical, from what I have read about hafting. It is simply a difficult process. The first day, we took some of the axes I had been making and hafted them. Great. But it was obvious from the start that we had a lot to learn about hafting stone tools. Arturo was proud of the result, but I had a sneaking suspicion that after ten strokes, the stone would fall out of the hafts.It only took nine. We decided that the best bet would be to get some sinew and rawhide, rather than tanned leather and tie the axes and hoes into the handles. The cow was to be butchered on Tuesday night, so we could get it first thing Wednesday morning, and then start our experiments. But I had misunderstood, according to Arturo. It was Wednesday night that they were butchering. So we went over there on Wednesday.
Wrong. I had been right, and the cow was butchered on Tuesday evening, and sold on Wednesday. It was really fun to realize that my Spanish had progressed to a point where I could understand directions better than Arturo (at least on a bad day for him). Which was small consolation, since there was nothing left of the cow by Wednesday evening. So the axe experiments of chopping wood and digging are still pending. But we should be able to start them on Monday. I will get Arturo, come hell or high water, to make sure that the haft holds.
And on Friday we butchered a goat. Killing it was pretty distasteful, but the actual work was fascinating. In the space of an hour and a half, the guys (none of whom had ever butchered a goat before) had taken the skin off, cut out the entrails, cut though the ribcage (with one of the poorly hafted axe and what quickly became a heavily battered flake), and divided up the portions into haunch and round and ribs, all ready for barbecuing. And I had one of the haunches defleshed so that we can carve artwork into the bone next week.
And life in NSJ is certainly interesting. The people here are all recent arrivals – the oldest family here arrived in the late 1970s. And that creates an interesting dynamic within the group. Most places in Guatemala have very closed groups and strong xenophobia. Here it is different. Although an outsider is unlikely to ever hold a political position (New San José is linked politically to San José, whose residents are from much older Itzá stock, including three of my workers), the community is open in a way that is very reassuring to the foreigner. People are just welcomed here.
I started off the week not sure what I would be doing, where I would be staying, or how I would cope with the project. I called up Luis, a friend of mine in NSJ (his son was the one that almost died from worms), and he offered his house for the week or two that I was going to be here. I shared the house with Martin, another NSJ-er, and a recent transplant. The funny thing is, I have been in the community longer than he has, but the community is so welcoming that it doesn't matter. He has work, he has friends, and he has a place to sleep.
And he is invited over to eat almost as often as I am. I ate more in the week in NSJ than I ate in New Orleans while I was home. But understand, please, that all of the love that I am feeling does not mean that everything is supremely comfortable. The conditions are not bad, just rustic, and not at all set up for gringos (the three knots on my head where I smacked three separate too-low doorways says it all).
And who would have thought that I would miss my morning electrocution shower? Luis apologized profusely for not having indoor plumbing. He said that was on his list of things to get done on the house, but he just hasn't gotten to it yet. I said – no problem, I have no trouble taking an outdoor shower.
I was wrong. I do have a problem, just not the one that I thought I would have. The "shower" is a sink right next to the street. It is the place where dishes, clothes and people are washed. And I do mean right on the street. There is a blue plastic screen set up so that you can bathe in semi-privacy.
But only if you are a Petenero. If you are a six-foot tall gringo, half of your body is out in the open, because the plastic polyurethane sheeting only comes up to chin height on a Petenero. I feel terribly exposed being the only gringo in town anyway. I feel doubly so being the only naked gringo bathing on the street. So far I have managed to choose low-traffic times of day to bathe, and I do it quickly. But Lord help the first tall woman to try and bathe here…
But it is a wonderful place, if only for the beautiful souls that live there. And while in San José this week, I got a lesson in Small World. Ema Pech, my Yucatec Maya teacher from Tulane is from Mérida, Yuacatan, where I was working for the majority of my time at Tulane. While I was at a party in New Orleans, we struck up a conversation about the Petén, and she mentioned that she really loved it. She had stayed in Petén with a woman, and she described how lovely the lake was, and how nice Flores was.
I had not realized we shared quite so many experiences in common. A couple more minutes of conversation went by, and we realized that my village was the place she had stayed. After a few moments of staring at each other, open mouthed, she shook herself free of the disbelief first.
"Would you mind taking some things back to her?"
I was delighted to do it, and only needed the name of the person to whom I was delivering it to. The name was Chayax.
In San José, there are only four last names. There is Tesucun (that most hated of names, belonging to both the aforementioned DJ from Trinidad and the equally aforementioned Don Diablo from La Estrella), and there is Suntecum; there is Cauiches, and then there is Chayax. All of the families are related, but asking for a woman with a last name Chayax only narrows it down a little. Might as well open a Manhattan phone directory, and count the Smiths.
I finally got a first name from Ema, and immediately got my response – of course we know Nimfa Chayax. And, predictably, all my workers are related to her in one way or another.
The visit to her house was very nice. She started out a little suspicious of a gringo that showed up on her doorstep as it was getting dark, but once she figured out who I was, we laughed and joked about what a small world it was and how someone like Ema just makes friends everywhere.
The only down side for the week was an episode of Grand Theft Auto. I left the car locked and clubbed just below the apartment window, and over the course of Friday night, someone broke into it, hotwired it and drove it off.
Now normally, I would be furious, but I feel pretty sanguine about it for a couple of reasons. I had asked around, and selling it was going to be difficult – the Guatemalan importation taxes were higher than the value of the car – and the car is not in any shape to drive home. And although I had planned on one more week of experiments, I can do those without a car, and I had removed the flakes from last week's experiments the night before (thank goodness…).
I filed a police report, but they are not terribly interested in recovering the car, and it certainly is not worth my while to offer a reward to them for looking for it. So the car is gone. But with it went the hassle of dealing with the car in the next two weeks. So, even in an unfortunate circumstance, it ended up OK. And much better than if I had lost the car before or during the field season. That would have been disastrous.
So I hope you all are well. I'll keep you apprised of developments with the experiments as I complete more of them.
Crorey
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