Beyond Worth It: The death of my phone and other endings

We closed our units and finished digging on Thursday with mixed emotions. On the one hand, that may have been the last time I was ever so lucky as to work on a dig, an experience which I loved. On the other, I think I could never see another mosquito or doctor fly again and be more sane for it. Clearly I'm gonna miss this. Even the monkeys came out to say goodbye by throwing poop at us again! They haven't done that since maybe the first week of excavations...

Doing some final excavation work before we began to clean up

Melody mapping. She's not even posing, honest!

So to finish a unit you have to map absolutely everything (which involves more measuring than you thought anyone would ever do) and clean the unit for photos. Once that's done, you're done! We backfill the units to protect anything we've discovered and not removed (like architecture) from the elements, and gather everything up so that we can make sense of all the data and prepare to come back next year. Oh! And you take a unit photo of course.

Op 2! That's Eric (our supervisor) and Bethany in the top row, with Sunaina, Beau, myself, and Melody on the bottom. we're sitting on the stairs we excavated.

On Friday we went to Chaa Creek, the superswanky resort where Sam did his PhD work, and ad a total blast. There were amazing swimming and poolside drinks and snacks for all! And as a treat, we got to canoe back home instead of driving. Fun!!! Even the part where our canoe capsized in a rapid and we floated down a river in the middle of the jungle until the intrepid Ali (a staff member with a penchant for being awesome) saved us. Zena and I both had our bags on us and, despite some ziplocks, my phone, her camera, and both of our notebooks were in serious trouble.
So we spent Friday afternoon with a blowdrier, trying to salvage our field notebooks (which we do turn in for a grade. Ooops!) but it all worked out. And what a good story! Especially when I remember to add the part where there was apparently a crocodile lurking prettymuch exactly where we went overboard that the canoe in front of us saw.

After many goodbyes and hours in transit, I'm back in California! I had such a wonderful time!! Who knew that I five weeks of working in the jungle would make me actually laugh at tourists impressed by a toucan, or see me completely ignoring howler monkeys as they roar? Archaeology was everything I'd hoped it to be and more--we found "cool stuff," I got to dig up part of an ancient building, and I even learned a ton about an ancient culture. Actually, the world might be a better place if everyone tried their hand at archaeology; you have to be so open-minded and flexible as new data makes you change all of your ideas every day and it's wonderful. I'll miss the people most of all. Everyone was so passionate and driven, and so adventurous! Not to mention of course my awesome unit and my amazing roomies!

Cabin 10 with our professors! Dr. Morris on the right with Marisa, Melody, myself, Zena, and Sam.

Still, I'm glad to be back.
Love you!
Elise

Day 32: Trying to find high ground

I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time! Internet is pretty inconvenient here, and since we're in the last week of the project we've been spending tons of time in the field trying to close our units and I've been spending all of my free time soaking in all of these amazing people. Also, my camera died, so no pictures for you. Sorry!

I have to tell you, we've been making some pretty exciting finds at the site lately. Apparently it's like the Murphy's Law of archaeology that you find the coolest stuff in the last few day's, and it's SO TRUE. I felt like such a true archaeologist today as we were lying on our stomachs reaching into a trench, excavating artifacts with dental tools and paint brushes.

Today was pretty exciting because it rained insanely lots. We had about fifteen people catching water and bailing out our unit and it still got totally flooded. I ran outside to fix the tarp and was instantly soaked. It was pretty funny though because after we had secured the unit we all crowded around the fires (which we burn to keep mosquitoes away) in the rain to get warm. Warm is, of course, a relative term since I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually lower than 75 degrees. Which is cold when you've acclimated!

Anyways, I'll try to be more frequent with the blog posts, sorry!
Love you,
Elise

PS check out our weekend awesomeness below!

Day 30: The most fun project expedition ever!

Yesterday we took the last (sad!) of our project excursions, and it was amazing! We visited the ancient Maya site of Caracol, which is one of the most powerful Maya sites and likely responsible for the Tikal Hiatus...which means they, maybe with the help of another site, Calakmul (I'm sure that spelling is wrong), actually defeated and ruled over Tikal for about a hundred years. So they're important. Caracol is actually the largest site in Belize, and both of our professors actually excavated there when they were students, which makes it really cool to take a tour of the site from them. But more on that later. We did so many other awesome things!

The ride getting there was half the fun. Caracol is about two hours south of San Ignacio, and the roads to it run through natural and archaeological reserves and are generally unpaved. Actually, they're bad enough that we couldn't even take our intrepid schoolbus, which has been through a lot going to the site every day. Which meant we rode all the way there in the back of pickup trucks! It's definitely not the tidy way to travel--between the dirt road dust and the rain we got pretty filthy--but it is by far the most entertaining. Most Belizean trucks have a frame built into the bed so that you can stand up behind the cab or hold on to bars along the outside edge. If you ever find yourself in such a truck, stand. It feels like you're riding the world's fastest skateboard or something. Combine that with bracing yourself for bumps and dodging vines and branches and you have yourself a really good time. We swashbuckled.

Caracol itself was, of course, incredible. The coolest part is that there were a TON of well-preserved monuments at the site, complete with glyphs and iconography, so we can actually know relatively a lot about the site. Picture time!

Climbing to the top of one of the temples. We look like ants!

In a collapsed room. There were also excavated tombs and things, which was super cool!

After Caracol, though, was the best part. Sam and Dr. Morris took us to the Rio Frio cave, which was INCREDIBLE. It's basically one giant cavern, but when I say giant I mean that movie theaters could probably fit inside of it. Plus, water runs through it, and it's gorgeous, and I loved it. But none of my pictures came out at all, so you'll have to imagine.
THEN, they took us to these amazing waterfall things that were actually basically natural waterslides that were SUPERFUN and AWESOME and can only be described through pictures.
Love you!
Elise

Day 32: More Excavations and Visiting Aguacate Dos!

About two weeks ago I told you about a new, larger site that our directors discovered (well, they were the first from our group to find it) while surveying the area nearby our site. As it turns out, that site, named Aguacate Dos after our original El Aguacate, actually has larger buildings than our current site. And we finally got to go visit it yesterday!
The site is off the road to the left there (or south, if you care), about 30 meters into the jungle. I features your usual plaza (it's so much bigger than ours!) surrounded by structures that currently look like very pyramidal mounds of dirt (also bigger). The major difference between this site and ours? It was looted. And when I say looted, I mean LOOTED. There is a full picnic table, barbecue, and lights set up there that the looters very possibly used while they dug the biggest looter's trench I have ever seen. Observe:

Looters usually trench into the sides of temple-type buildings in hopes of finding burials rich with artifacts, etc. This one is actually pretty clearly done by inexperienced looters for a number of reasons. Let's take a look with another picture:
Do you see Beau all the way down there at the bottom? See how HUGE this thing is? Now think about the fact that this thing is dug into the side of a thousand-year-old structure. It can and will collapse at any moment. They're actually really lucky it didn't collapse on them.

This isn't all bad though--thanks to that trench, we can see that this building was built in nine layers, because you can count the floors up the profile of the trench. Also, there's evidence of a paleo-indian structure at the very bottom. Those two things tell us that this site was in use for a very long time. It's pretty cool to know all of that stuff right off the bat, even if it does mean the total mangling of a building.

And then I waxed artsy! This is a tree that tops another structure at Aguacate 2.
Love you!
Elise

Welcome to Flores!

The view across the lake on the bridge into Flores. So pretty!

When we weren't off adventuring in Guatemala, we based our adventures out of the very cute but very touristy island (in the middle of a lake) town of Flores. It's actually a really cool place from my current perspective because the island is actually the site of the Maya people's last stand against the Spanish during colonization. Nowadays it's filled with fun spots, bright colors, and tourists. Definitely a fun place to spend a weekend. OH! and since we were in Guatemala I finally got to bust out my Spanish and it was so much fun!!! I am way less rusty that I remember, and really had very few problems. Yayy!The view from our hotel balcony

We stayed in a really fun hotel (there were 20 of us) for two nights and had a great time. Between all the other people, the nightlife, the shopping, and the lake, there was a ton to do. The funny part was, I know that things were all overpriced thanks to all the Gringos, but with the 7.8 Quetzales to a Dollar exchange rate, I still managed to stay pretty far away from broke. And, added bonus, the food there made me realize how great we've got it here in Belize!Oh, and there was the coolest storm yesterday! Not that that's unusual during the wet season, of course. We got to watch as it came across the lake towards us, though, which was really cool. I think I've seen as much lightning on this trip as I had in my entire life previous.

My roomies and I decided to go swimming in the lake during sunrise this morning (don't ask me why) and it was really fun! We got up at like 5:20 and ran down to the lake. Thankfully, it never really gets lower than 70 degrees outside and the lake must have been at least 75. We swam for about 45 minutes as we watched the sun rise, and it was gorgeous. Plus, I got some beautiful (and artsy. I love!) photos.

We left at 8am for Belize, spent about an hour in the customs line, and made it back home just in time for lunch. And now I'm exhausted! We start work again tomorrow and I'm excited because it feels like forever since we've been in the field.

Love you!
Elise

Day 22: Ziplining over Guatemala!

After going to Tikal we spent the rest of the weekend at the relatively close island town of Flores (more on that later) in Guatemala. That meant we had some free time, and what better to do with that than go flying through the canopy? Ziplining it was! We took a taxi about fifteen minutes away to a natural park-type reserve where you could go ziplining, horseback riding, etc and signed up. It was so fun!I swear they copied the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland from this place. The jeep we took through the jungle WAS the jeep from the ride, only with more bumps and less seatbelts. We actually drove up and down some pretty steep terrain, so it was quite the adventure!
Once we got to the bottom of the ziplines, we suited up and headed out! Here we are, the intrepid explorers.
Climbing up to the ziplines...
It's funny, I had definitely not planned to do anything like this while out here at field school, and we felt like such tourists doing it! (We're very proud of the fact that we're here with a PURPOSE, not just being stuffwhitepeoplelike bums). But then, what trip to Central America is complete without some ziplining?

Love you!
Elise

PS scroll down, there's another post about Tikal below this.

Day 22: Tikal

As I mentioned before, a group of us headed to Tikal this weekend and it was amazing! Tikal is one of the most famous Ancient Maya sites, and features hugely tall temples, palaces, and the like. In the time of the Ancient Maya, Tikal was one of the most powerful city-states, and its influence is evident throughout the Maya area. It is definitely a huge point of pride in Guatemala, and we barely went into a room without an image of it the whole time we were there! Apparently Tikal is also featured in one of the original Star Wars movies. Something to do with Ewoks...

The Guatemalan border is only about half an hour or 45 minutes west of where I'm living, so we were able to spend the majority of Saturday exploring the site after leaving Belize at about 7am. I always love visiting sites that have been worked on for so long (Tikal has actually been being excavated since before the turn of the twentieth century) because they're such a departure from our site. As you've seen from earlier pictures, we're still trying to find the staircases of structures that are otherwise giant mounds of dirt. At sites like Tikal, however, entire plaza groups have been cleared, and you can climb the temples and explore the palaces. It's crazy to think that one day our site could be like that.We kept saying that Tikal is like Guatemalan Disneyland--it's huge (huge!), mazelike, and there are even occasional kiosks selling drinks and snacks. There are paths and walkways that can be really confusing but also really fun. They've even built ladders and stairways beside the largest temples so that you can climb them (the actual temple steps are WAY hard to climb, and far too dangerous)!

See how civilized it is? They have paths through their jungle!

And stairs! Zena demonstrates how to avoid falling through the broken ones...These are the steps built alongside of Temple V. They are soooo steep and so much fun to climb! Trust me though, the actual steps would have been much scarier.

We spent the day climbing temples and exploring the ruins. We even found some ongoing excavation units to examine with our expert eye! The whole thing was just so huge and amazing! I loved it.

Examining the other archaeologists' work
Zena, Marisa, myself, and Melody on top of Temple IV. The view is spectacular!
On top of Temple IV again! I'm pretty sure that's Temple V in the distance.
We all made our signature archaeologist poses. I chose to emulate the candid note-taking pose.

Love you!
Elise

Day 19: Xunantunich!

Our long weekend (a tradition on Belizean projects) started today! To celebrate, Sam (one of the profs) took us to the relatively nearby site of Xunantunich (shoo-nan-tu-nich, or Stone Maiden) where he did his dissertation work. We rode there in true Belizean style, in the back of pickup trucks! It was definitely my favorite site we have visited so far. We got a lot of free time to explore before we met Sam on top of the high temple for a visual tour of the site.

Here's Zena in the main plaza (I really like this picture cuz it looks like she's standing on the bottom edge of the photo)
We took roomie pictures in this ancient Maya stone bed. Marisa and Melody share the other bed in our cabin:

Here's the high temple:

And here's the view FROM it!

Another shot from the high temple, except look, it's Guatemala! The site is about 3 or 400 meters east of the Guatemalan border.

Speaking of Guatemala, a group of us are going there for the long weekend starting tomorrow!!! I'm so excited! We're headed to Tikal, and then we'll hang out in the island town of Flores. I won't be able to update while I'm there but I promise pictures when we get back. I'm so excited!

Love you,
Elise

Oh! And PS we did actually work this week. See? Here's proof:

Day 17: Rain Day!

It was actually raining so hard today (keep in mind I think it has rained every day but like three since I've been here) that we got to stay back from the field. Big day! We got about halfway to the site (it's a 45 minute bus ride, you'll recall) when the directors made an executive decision that, since the rain probably isn't going to let up all day, we wouldn't go out to the field. To be honest, I'm totally excited about getting a break so that my bugbites can heal!

I don't know what the full plan for today is but we're having a lecture after lunch, which should be good. Honestly, we haven't had that much formal teaching so it's always fun to cement what you've learned in the field. Other than that I've been spending my day researching for my project (using the evidence of lithic tool production or lack thereof at our site to talk about craft specialization in the ancient Maya society overall). I have a lot of work to do so it'll be nice to have some time.

Speaking of the rain, I have to say that I have been loving the climate here in Belize. It was very hot and humid when we first got here, but you get used to the humidity pretty fast and it's not a bother. Also, the hot weather has faded, as the wet season starts, to an extremely pleasant 70 or eighty degrees. Today is the coldest day so far I think and I'm sitting here outside, quite comfy in shorts. So wonderful!

Hopefully I'll get the chance to update more later, we'll see!

Love you,
Elise

Day 14: The Mayan word for "Caves" is "Actunob"

We continued to excavate today, which is still super fun. Sadly, something I was hoping would be a cache (the Maya left offerings of artifacts on the stairs of buildings sometimes, and we call those groupings caches) turned out to just be one artifact and a bunch of broken rocks, but that's ok. I still found the one artifact, which was really cool!

Today was really cool because our lithics expert, Nick, actually came out into the field and was working with us. He taught us a TON, and would randomly quiz us by handing us a rock or two and asking us which were lithics and which weren't, how they were used, which marking on them was the last, etc. He could tell so much just at first glance! It was superfun. Plus, I'm excited because I'll be working with him for my research project because it includes lithics research. It'll be so fun!

Check out the post below for a taste of the awesomeness that is the ATM Cave. OH! and exciting news, this week we're only working for four days and then we have our long weekend (a tradition among Belizian projects, I guess) which should be really fun. There's a really good chance that I'll be headed with a big group to Guatemala to go see the AMAZING site of Tikal. I'll keep you posted!

Love you,
Elise

Actun Tunichil Muknal

The ATM Cave trip was so amazing! I can't even describe it. AND I brilliantly tried to charge my camera during a power outage the night before so I don't even have any pictures to use instead! Yet--I'm hoping to steal someone else's. In the meantime, I turned to the marvelous powers of google image search, as should you if you'd like to see more images.

Anyways! Ten of us girls from the field school took the tour together, and it was fantastic. First, we drove about a half an hour off the road into the countryside. From there, it's about a 45 minute hike through the jungle (in which we walked through a river three times, fun!). We ate lunch at a permanent camp set up there from back when they were actually excavating in the cave. Try to imagine how awesome it would have been to be at THAT field school!
The entrance to the cave. You swim in!

So this cave is amazing for a lot of reasons. here are a few:

1)It was completely untouched between the last Mayan use in about 900 CE and the Cave's rediscovery in the 1970s. That's INCREDIBLE, especially when you consider the fact that there are no plants to disturb things in a cave. Also, since Belize is so full of archaeological features it's also full of looters, and the fact that they didn't get this cave (0r at least this deep into it) is really rare.

2) The Maya thought of caves as portals into Xibalba (shi-ball-ba), or the underworld where the gods of rain, death, and a lot of other stuff, lived. Thus, they used them as INCREDIBLY sacred sites. In fact, only elites were even allowed inside caves.

3) This particular cave was used during the collapse, which means that the use of this cave was getting more and more intense and desperate. See, we know that there was a very bad drought in the early 900s (during the Maya collapse) that would have caused huge problems. Thus, the use of the cave, to appeal the gods of rain and death, was intense.

4) ATM is HUGE. For most of our walk, the ceiling was easily 100 feet above me. Also, it goes 3.5 miles into the mountain. The tour only took us 1/4 of a mile in, and that was still a ton of stuff.

5) The archaeologists who excavated the cave decided to actually not remove any of the artifacts--everything is in it's original location. As you can probably guess, most of the artifacts have been covered in calcification overtime, but they are still very visible. So basically, ATM is the most amazing, natural museum on earth.

One of many human sacrifice remains in the cave. This particular one is a young woman. There are also young men and boys, as well as some infants. The age range of these sacrifices indicates the desperation of the Maya at this time. These sacrifices also speak to the incredible terrifying sacredness of this site to the ancient Maya.

6) Water flows through the entire thing. You have to swim to get into it, and walk through water that's usually at least up to your knees almost the entire way. SOOOO cool.

We ended up spending about six hours in the cave (longer than we were supposed to--our guide was super cool) and by the time we got out, around 8:30 pm, it was night-time. So then, on top of our awesome cave tour, we got to hike through the jungle and ford rivers at night! Thank goodness it's always so hot here because we were all in swimsuits and soaking wet. It was AMAZING. I cannot even express.

I'll try to get some pictures of our actual group later, but that's it for now.
Love you!
Elise

Day 14: Welcome to Lamanai!

Yesterday we visited the ancient Mayan site of Lamanai as a project. It was supercool to go with the entire group because it meant that we got all of the perks of being associated with our Belizian professor, Dr. Morris. He is, after all, the head of the Institute of Archaeology here in Belize. That meant that we got to do really cool stuff like touch and climb everything!

A little history: Lamanai is a VERY unique site in a lot of respects. Firstly, it is the only site I know of, maybe even the only site period, that experienced continuous occupation from pre-classic times all the way through the arrival of the English in the 1800s. Obviously the people living there at the time of the Spanish and the English were not as they would have been in the Mayan heyday, but the fact that they were there still means that there is an absolute wealth of archaeological and historical data about the site. Also, the continued occupation means that the site is HUGE. I don't remember the exact number but there are apparently somewhere around 200 structures there, which is amazing. The site was excavated for 12 years by Dr. Pendergast (spelling is my best guess), a British archaeologist who is considered to be one of the best in the world. Oh! And the name Lamanai is cool because it is actually the original Maya name of the site, which we don't usually know. Lamanai means "submerged crocodile" in Maya, and is a reference to the Maya creation story.

Picture time!!! As I mentioned yesterday, we actually accessed this site by river, which was REALLY cool. We took a three hour bus ride and then hopped a couple of powerboats to head up the New River (called the "River of Foreigners" by the Maya), just as the ancient Maya would have done to access the site for trade.

The river was amazing, and very unlike rivers I'm used to at home. Of course, there was the obvious fact that it is flanked by the jungle. Also, though, it was very wide in places (like lake-sized) and generally deep, or at least rock-free.

Here's the dock at Lamanai. The whole site is actually really well maintained for visitors by the Institute of Archaeology. It was really cool to see a site that has come so far along compared to ours!This (super awesome!!) mask is on the side of one of the smaller temples at the site. It represents a king, and was discovered underneath three other walls because as Maya kingship changed hands they would cover up the past rulers' monuments with their own. Nowadays that's awesome because it means that some of them have been protected from the elements and remain preserved today.

The high temple!! Currently, this building is equivalent to something like 33 stories high, but given the fact that it lost no less than 55 tons of stone from the top in the last hurricane, it was very probably MUCH taller. Also, sorry for the weird pose--I was trying not to scratch.

Climbing the temple! That rope was VERY helpful--those stairs are steep!

We had to get back off of the High Temple pretty quickly after this because the lightning started up again and I guess it has a penchant for hitting people up there, but it was so amazing to get to be on the top of something as amazing as this. We spent probably four hours exploring the site, which was fantastic, then boarded the boats back to our bus. Oh! And we saw a crocodile and these bats that are soley responsible for pollinating the plant that makes tequila, and the other group got to feed monkeys, but I didn't get any pictures, sorry! Still, amazing day!

Today I'm headed to the ATM Cave (which stands for some really long Maya words that I can't remember) and I promise to tell you all about it.

Love you!
Elise