Post Script

Soup and pie night was delicious, cherry pie even!!! Today I got dropped off in Orange Walk and was lucky enough to immediately catch a bus to Chetumal. I also got a really nice taxi driver once there, and made my way to the Principe hotel. While not quite what the pictures portrayed, its good enough, and I have been watching tv and surfing the web since. just took a hot shower, and am now about to emerge after 5 hours of hoteldom to find some food and then... DRUMROLL PLEASE.... get jon! woo! so, this leg of the adventure is now fully CLOSED. 

last day

Well, finished up the week and dawn and I closed up our site yesterday. We took out our second body, and apparently part of a third, as we found when we reassembled the body and had three femurs. We think it is probably the mass amount of decayed bone where the tarp had let in the rain. Oh well. We spent all of yesterday digging deeper and deeper. What we thought was another body under a huge rock ended up just being our lady´s feet. We dug and dug and dug, and finally concluded that there was nothing else in there, at least not in the near vicinity. Next door though, in the room where I uncovered the plaster floor, they had dug through and found four successive plaster floors under the main one. The plaster even curved up on the last one making a kind of dome. It was very curious, but it being the second to last day, it was decided to cover it all up so no looters would come and leave it for the  next group. Those people are going to have it so easy, im kind of jealous. Our shultun was also abandoned, at least for this session, with not more than the trough found. I spent the day today washing our artifacts and trying to put together some of the sherds I found in my massive ceramic cache. It was like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle but worse. I got about 10 different pieces to fit together after 2 hours, then I quit. Also helped dawn assemble and disassemble the bodies again. The wet bones kind of reeked, but it was fun. We used the sheet from the infirmary to lay out the bones, and it got covered in bone dust. So, word to the wise, don´t get sick while youre here. Tonight we are joining the Mennonites for a soup and pie potluck. I´m all packed up and ready to go, absolutely cannot wait to meet up with jon tomorrow. Im glad im getting to chetumal before him. I will hopefully be able to de-campify myself by the time he arrives. The end. 

june 17th

oh, we uncovered her and she was beautiful. ill have to get some pictures up in the next couple of days. she was in great preservation, with every single vertibrae, all her teeth (and notched too! another sign of eliteness!) it was amazing getting her out. i have decided vertibrae are my favoite part because they all fit together so perfectly, just like a little puzzle. dawn, the expert reassembled her in the lab, and has decided she is 19-29 years of age, good health except for the healed wound on her head. i have a fantasy that she is me a thousand years ago, since she is about my height. so, we got this body out, but while we were finding all her bones in place, we realized there were some doubles. and a huge honking foot that didnt match a nice petite female. aka two bodies. the second we left and focused on her. today i was supposed to take out number two, but it poured all night, and when we left to the field in the morning the first sign of failure was that the vans got stuck about a mile and a half from the entrance to our half mile trek through the jungle. optimistically we decided to go on, hoping it would clear. we finally got to our sight, mud caked and soaked, only to find that all the tarps were weighted down with about a foot of water, and most were leaking. we frantically tried to fix everything, and the san filipeans even built me a shelter to try to get the second body out, but the rain was too hard and we just had to cover everything and hope for a better day tomorrow. meanwhile, we all showed up back at camp, bedraggled, and grumpy. we dried off, did a bit of lab work, and had lunch. after lunch, a couple people had to go to orange walk (second biggest town in belize, an hour away) to renew passports, so we made a mini trip of it. it poured the whole time we were there, and walking around the town i soaked another set of clothes, but i really liked it. weirdly enough the town is largely chinese, with most of the stores being like china town clothes and knicknack shops. i bought a shirt and a skirt for a couple bucks, then wandered and figured out where im supposed to catch the bus to meet jon on sunday. also, i found a cheap pair of galoshes, pretty sure those will highly improve my mood for the next few rainy days. we made it back fairly well, though the rivers are quickly rising, and the limestone roads became so slick that at one point we made a 360 spin out. it stopped raining around dinnertime, and hopefully tomorrow will be clear enough to at least get a couple things done. oh, and jason left this morning back to the states... so. only 3 workdays left!!!

Monday

well, the excitement from saturday has kind of dwindled. Sunday we went to Chan Chich, a site about an hour and a half away with a very nice lodge in it. The site is only semi excavated and not restored, so there are just these huge 50 foot tall grassy mounds everywhere that you know are big uncovered temples. The lodge itself was heaven as well. Amazing food, luxurious relaxation areas, a pool, a HOT SHOWER with free shampoo conditioner and soap. and wine with lunch!! so, sunday went well. However, rainy season really began around sunday evening. it rained while we were in the pool, and the cloud cover still hasnt really left. its funny what the rain does, i opened my clothes chest and 5 frogs hopped out. the termite swarms are back too and they have left their wings EVERYWHERE. It also means that we cant excavate the bones at our site unless it stops raining. Luckily yesterday it did stop raining for about 4 hours, so we got some work done finding the a leg bone, arm bone, scapula, ankle and big toe in addition to the skull. Another group at our site also uncovered an almost perfect shultun, a round hole in the ground leading to an underground chamber. all this would be a fabulous start to a last week, but our group leader appears to have gotten kidney stones. he is leaving tomorrow to get to a hospital in the states. im not sure what will happen, but hopefully our site doesnt close. oh, and hopefully he gets better.

CRANIUMMMMM! june 13th

so, finally broke through the floor. it was the most satisfying experience i have ever had. my nice plaster floor cracked perfectly, and the square looked so neat it was worth sacrificing the floor. we decided to do the area a little forward from where i found the cache, from the back wall in. Kim Cox, one of the guys who contributed to my scholarship had shown up that day and was helping me. Under the floor is a cobble fill of chert. they are pretty big irregularly sized cobbles, and they didnt fit together so there were all these suspicious holes everywhere. on the side closest to the front wall, we found a huge limestone block, which jason said was about 75% positively the capstone to a crypt. about 15 minutes after we got the plaster cleared away, Kim found a teeny piece of bone. We called over dawn, who being a forensic anthropologist could identify it as part of a skull. WOO! Kim left, and I had 45 minutes before the day, and week ended. I leveled the square, trying to get most of the cobbles out so that when we came back after the weekend we could just dig right in. i was digging with my hands trying to be careful when all of sudden, POP. i found the top of a skull with my fingers and since it was so brittle it just kind of caved in when i touched it. i quickly called jason over while dawn and i jumped with joy and giggled. we poked around at it for a while, noticing that it had a spot where a blow had hit at one point in its life, and healed. i made a stupid comment about it being cranially deformed and a second later jason was like oh.... wait... no, youre right. oh, i cant even describe how awesome it was. unfortunately all this happened about 5 minutes before we had to leave so we had to cover the skull back up and tarp it, hoping it survives any rain before monday. the good news is though, this probably isn't even the main burial. hello graveyard.

PICTURES!

photo 1 (from bottom to top) Lamanai, the High temple. climbed all the way to the top.

photo 2 The pottery cached that I found against the middle wall to our main building. The top ridge of the building kind of goes west[__ __*][___]east with the back wall having fallen down the steep hill, and with the front wall facing south into the courtyard, with the spaces being doorways, and the asterix being where the cache is.

photo 3 The showers went out for a while so we bathed in the spill way. me, jackie, hannah, emily and gail

photo 4 The view from the nonexistent back wall of the building into the eastern room.

photo 5 Our team for the first two weeks, missing a couple people. Fidel, Hannah, Jason, Me, Mary, and Janeice.

Photo 6 Trip to La Union, Corona and Norteno music. Sierra and Bruce.

Photo 7 Tom and Mikey on our tour of Blue Creek.

Photo 8 Dawn peeking through the massive root going right through our potetial doorway and really pretty floor.

Photo 9 Most recent view of the top of the main building, looking eastward.

June 10th

Well the weekend was fairly uneventful. The people who were only staying for two weeks left on Sunday, which brought a general bout of homesickness, but only for a little bit. The original plan had been to take the remaining people to the belize zoo, and spend the night in san Ignacio, and then go see a site the next day. Unfortunately, the planners failed to take into account the lack of vans that would be staying in Belize City to get the next round of people. So instead, we sat around all Sunday, and were so bored that by Monday we decided that instead of having a day off, we would go back into the field. We did go to mexico Sunday though, which included the long trek of driving a mile, and hopping into a little canoe to be paddled across the 20 foot stream to La Union. But they had corona and ceviche, and Mexican music, so all was well. Its funny how much difference that little border crossing made in changing the ambiance from Mennonite to blatantly Mexican. Lorry and Mary, two people from my group that left had bequeathed to me a bag of things they didn’t need, so I also spent the weekend making my cabin nice and comfy.
Yesterday I stayed in at camp to go on the site tour with the new people. A change from the last group, these people all seem to be from the west coast as opposed to the south. There is a huge difference in the feeling of the group. They are a lot more chill, but a little bit less in your face friendly. I miss our old group. Anyway, so I went with them to see the actual Blue Creek site core which they excavated about 6 years ago. Its all grown over, but after having read Toms (the director) book on it, and having worked on a hill that is slowly turning into a house, it was really impressive and interesting to see the site in person. Also it was nice to have a somewhat day off. I finished a book and sat in the hammock. Tom brought his 3 year old son back with him, Mikey. He thinks he owns the place and runs his trains around wherever he wants. I like him.
Today we went back out to Nojol Nah. The place is really starting to look good! Almost the whole top of the main structure is cleared. We have a small room on the east side with a doorway facing south, and a what appears to be a huge room spanning the rest of the top going west with two doorways in it. The floor is visible on all of it now, and its obvious now that the back wall fell off some time ago. The back of the house faces away from the inside of the courtyard and is very steep, so it makes sense that they build a tall wall there to keep people out, and that that wall would be one of the first things to collapse and fall down the hill with time. We finally cleared out the area where we found my huge amount of pottery. One of the trees has a foot and a half thick root going right through the area, obscuring what we think is a doorway facing the courtyard. Tomorrow the plan is to start digging in horizontally from the collapsed back wall forward to the doorway and under the floor to see if we find any caches, or better yet, the lineage head´s burial. The plaster floor has burn marks on it which indicate that they had a lot of ceremonies here, so the place was important even after it was abandoned. So… COME ON BODIES!

june 5th

worked on the pot a little more today, its about 50 pieces of various pots placed on top of the rubble of the collapsed roof. we found two animal bones in there too today. the theory is that is a postclassic (classic and late classic being the peaks of the mayan civilizations) revisitation to a lineage household (ancestor) where they left a bunch of broken pots and other goods and then burnt it all up with copal incense which you can see on the burnt plaster of the floors. a pit over from me, a girl found a whistle shaped like a bird head. its very cool to think that no one had blown it for 1000 years until today. so far our site is the most interesting in finds, and im in love with it. the two week stay people leave tomorrow, which im sad about because our team, mostly made of them, will be all new people come monday. i liked our team alot. rainy season also hit last night. it was the strongest storm i have ever seen. we watched the lightning far away until we went to bed and then it finally hit about 2 am. tin roofs did not help. it stormed and lighteninged about an hour and a half, and then when we woke in the morning, the termites had all started swarming. were talking hundreds around your head. so, excavating was a little annoying. well see how i handle this rain thing. two weeks. 

June 4th

GREAT DAY! thunderstorm but no rain yet. opened our middle unit at the top of the house, and while we only got about a foot deep today, this is THE ONE. tons of ceramics, some stone tools, a piece of green rock, not jade, but anything green is of value. then, the best part, right as we were about to leave i started uncovering some huge pottery sherds all the same make. turns out i hit a cache, and this is a whole pot, about a foot and a half in diameter still in place in the dirt. tomorrow i get to uncover it. and all the things underneath it!!! oooooh joy. 

June 3rd

Drumroll please…….. I FOUND MY FLOOR. Jason was sick today so no side projects intervened. After clearing a ton of dirt out of my square, I finally hit a teeny square of plaster floor. Finally at the end of the day, I had cleared out my square plus the back end of the hill, found where the floor started breaking off down the hill, and found a doorway on the front end of my square. It was fabulous. I felt like I was cleaning my house, and the floor was just so pristine and smooth and wonderful after days and days of clearing out roots and rocks and things that don’t make sense. Tomorrow I am opening up the next plot over, which should extend my floor and find the edge of the building. I really love this work. I like realizing how things fit together, I like the hard work of digging and lifting all day. Also, the fact that I have a floor means there is a possibility of BURIALS and CACHES. Woo woo. I think I am going to try to illegally upload a photo of my plot just because it is so awesome. ps picture failure. ill try again soon

sprinkle sprinkle

The rainy season is finally starting to show its face. Yesterday and today were cooler, and by cooler I mean under 90, with teeny tiny sprinkles of rain. Last night we had about 2 minutes of hard rain falling on the cabanas tin roof, and it made me jump out of sleep. We have had several more people quit, or decide to leave at the 2 weeks mark instead of the month mark. I guess there are just too many bugs and creepy crawlies and dirt. Im liking it though. I have gotten in the working groove, hauling dirt like the best of them. Our hole at the top of the mound is slowly advancing. After finding a wall Saturday, I was hoping to find the floor shortly after. But instead we followed the wall, chainsawed some of the huge trees down, and a million other activities deviating from me finding the floor. Tomorrow I am determined to do it. Otherwise, no new news. Other than a wall, I have found NOTHING. Boo. 

May 31st

Today was our first day off. Whew! We were told we could sleep in as late as we wanted, but of course, I woke up with the sunrise at 5 am, and then only forced myself to sleep in until 7. It seems like everyone else had the same problem, and by 8 we were all ready to go to Lamanai, the tour for the day. Lamanai is an archaeological site about 30 minutes away on the New River. It was pretty impressive. A small site, but the architecture was very intact, and after my week of digging and imagining walls, this gave me hope that there could still be something VERY cool inside. The first building is the temple of the serpent, a medium sized pyramid with squareish serpent like designs on the front. From here, I ended up going off on a random trail with another student, Alex, who is very shy and quiet and thus perfect company so that I don’t get lost alone, but don’t have to chitchat the whole way. The trail ended up leading us to the nearby abandoned sugar mill. It was kind of like gasworks part but smaller. I took some interesting pictures. We also found a family of howlers living in a tree right above it. They were very calm and friendly, and came down to about 10 feet above us. When we got back to the site, we followed the correct trails and found a couple other structures. The crown glory though, was the high temple. Probably nowhere near as big as the pyramids in Mexico City it felt huge in this setting. Climbing up it was steep and treacherous, but when you got to the top, you were above the dense jungle treeline and could see for miles. I kind of wished I could stay there and just meditate, it felt like you were on a cloud.

 

After the pyramids, we lunched at Lamanai Lodge, a kind of boutique hotel on the river, with amazing food. NOT being Mennonite, they did not serve us any rice or beans whatsoever, and we got spinach dip and pita bread quesadillas. It was great. The lodge grounds include a big dock on the river with sunning chairs and a palapa full of hammocks, so the rest of the day was spent relaxing in the sun. I even fell asleep, which maybe wasn’t the best since I now am a little rosy. The dock had a huge tree growing off the bank nearby, and it seemed to be the home to another howler family. They had a new baby that would follow its mom all around and pester her, pulling her hair and dive bombing her from above. It was entertaining to watch.

 

Unfortunately, the internet is once again out, prompting a revocation of internet priviledges, which means I am no longer allowed to post videos or photos. I have them though, and will be adding them later, so until then…. IMAGINE.