26 June 2005
So the popular image of the archaeologist is of a guy stooped over a unit, toothbrush 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, well known by those of you who practice the trade. 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 Papatulo. 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, and more prone to the occasional practical joke.
Don Arturo is 63
years old (born on the 18th of December but they couldn’t find an
official to sign the birth certificate for 11 days, so his “birthday” is the 29th),
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 he screens, and puts the artifacts on the side of the unit where 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.
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 Papatulo, 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. 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, “to 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.
So the popular image of the archaeologist is of a guy stooped over a unit, toothbrush 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, well known by those of you who practice the trade. 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
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.
And I am not the only recipient of such lectures. Before I came onto the project, I had heard a Matt story about Papatulo. 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 Tirso is less serious, and more prone to the occasional practical joke.
Don Arturo is 63
years old (born on the 18th of December but they couldn’t find an
official to sign the birth certificate for 11 days, so his “birthday” is the 29th),
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 he screens, and puts the artifacts on the side of the unit where 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.
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 Papatulo, 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
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
As I was paying him, I asked, “So, where did you get it?”
“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
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
Matt and I have a difference of opinion on where to test for middens, particularly on the edge of the plaza space
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. 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
About the same time the storm hits. I ran and got soaked and the car
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.
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