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…
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
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
Walter changed his story with the wind. They accepted the check, but later
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
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
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
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
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 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
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…
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