San Bartolo por fin

San Bartolo is a Maya site in the northeastern part of the Petén, the northern "panhandle" department of Guatemala. It was discovered in 2001 and has since been the site of a large-scale regional archaeological project. It has recently produced one hat, two Doctors of Archaeology, a handful of undergraduate theses (mine included), and more than a few amateur experts on Maya art and culture. It has been my home for the last six weeks.

The Petén is densely forested and when living in it one becomes accustomed to encountering two distinct types of landscape:



1. Jungle



2. Jungle with ruins

This is a subtle distinction that takes time to appreciate. It's sometimes difficult to comprehend there's anything for miles around even when you're standing at the foot of an enormous architectural complex. Though recent scientific breakthroughs (with direct connections to San Bartolo, incidentally) have made it possible for archaeological sites in the jungle to be remotely sensed from space, detecting Maya settlements in the Petén brush has been historically difficult and there are subsequently many un"discovered" (because it takes a licensed, typically non-local archaeologist to "discover"), unexcavated (though unfortunately not unlooted) sites pockmarking the jungle, visible only through a subtle rise in the earth and tiny dots of vertical inconsistency in the treeline.

San Bartolo is one of these pockmarks, about 1 km² consisting of four main architectural groups (including temples, palaces, ritual structures and administrative compounds), two large plazas, and a road running north-south for about half a kilometer between a ball-court and two residential groups. San Bartolo was discovered by chance and propelled to the forefront of Maya studies (and then thrust into the media limelight) because of its unique mural paintings:





The murals are significant because they index a fully articulated origin myth and cosmology (and attendant writing system) in place in the Maya lowlands at a date much earlier than was previously surmised for these cultural innovations (ca. 100 BC). If you're interested to learn more you can read my 80-page microtome on the subject (esp. Ch 2). If not you can enjoy my two favorite mural details. Above: The Maize God, having founded civilization at the world center and established the institution of kingship, dives into the underworld so that we (humans) might live, wrapped in this crazy abstract red-black-and-white death snake. Below: A slick jaguar hangs out on Flower Mountain (an iconographic motif with connections to Central Mexico, basically a topograph signifying the place of wild and beastly nature), where he snacks on an Oropendola (a weird-sounding, gold-tailed bird with its own Central Mexican connection: it was Montezuma's favorite).

As per Guatemalan law I can't reveal explicit details about the excavations I've done this season until these have been reported in full to the Institución de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH) at an annual Simposio in July, so instead I will dispassionately list the classes of artifact one might find in the course of excavating a lowland Maya site and maybe I will at a later date indicate what exactly I did and did not do in relation to these artifacts, which are at this writing only hypothetically related to San Bartolo:



A spindle whorl



Skulls



Polychrome pottery



Obsidian



Ceramic figurines



Ancient holes in the ground (not to be confused with Contemporary holes in the ground)



Benches



Bone jewelry



Mandibles



Friezes




Stelae. These last two are from Xultun, a large site to the southwest of San Bartolo. I was part of the first sustained mapping and excavation efforts at the site last year, and with full scale excavations set to commence next season, I may work up from the ground floor of Xultunian exploration. Which sounds kind of cool when I put it like that.



So I'm back in Antigua now, as evidenced by my favored motif of the omnipresent Volcán Agua, my constant reference point. It's an overcast morning and I'm slowly (2.5 hrs and counting) sipping away at a cappuccino at this super bougie cafe in the northwest corner of the Parque Central, which I was reduced to patronizing because my favorite wifi-friendly cafe (which is less bougie if no less "western", maybe the only difference is mean age of clientele?) doesn't have electricity and I needed to skype out to Beijing at 7am sharp for a job interview. Such is my life. I am of course and as always at a crossroads, but one that will hopefully be in my rearview within the next two weeks. Which way will I go? A note of suspense to tantalize my bewildered readership...

Regardless of what route I will take I am immeasurably satisfied with how the last few months have gone. I dug deep and got to the bones (yeah, puns) of the subject that I recently received a degree in, gained a visceral and spatial appreciation of time, made myriad little philosophical connections in a million different directions, became functionally fluent in Spanish, and had time to read a few good books. I realized how much I like archaeology. Archaeology is ethically useful because it encourages humans to think inclusively about humanity. Superficially (another pun) archaeology is a study of "the other," but so was anthropology until the ethical timebomb of regarding living, breathing, communicating humans as an "other" exploded and the discipline became "postmodern." The difference between anthropology and archaeology is that the people with whom the latter is concerned are neither living nor breathing. The similarity is that all people—past and present—communicate.


That said I'll terminate this particular communication. If you're going to be in Boston, Austin, Atlanta, Savannah, or San Antonio during the month of May, hit me up because we may cross paths. In the mean time, be good and make it a



-Josh

The Forest

I've been in San Bartolo for a week now, and as predicted the limited bandwidth and 3-hour daily ration of gas-driven electricity has limited my connectivity, for the better. Which means no heavy photo uploads any time soon, mostly just words.

The trip from Antigua to the Petén was long and filled with a good conversation and a mediocre nap. The conversation, which took place during the wait for my overnight bus out of Guatemala City to Flores, was with Marwin De León, an anthropologist from G.C. who 1) conducts forensic work on mass grave sites from the Guatemalan civil war in order to create a historical record for a period that is seldom discussed here, as far as I can tell, 2) works with indigenous communities in Colombia to determine more economically efficient and environmentally beneficial ways to conduct agricultural practices, and 3) is designing a television program aimed at increasing public awareness of Guatemalan heritage through illustrating the aims and practices of local anthropologists and archaeologists. I got his contact information and will soon be asking if he needs an assistant or can spare even one of his jobs.



If you remember last year's injunction you'll know that I can't talk about what I'm excavating. It will have to suffice to say that I am excavating, which is a step up from last year in my book, when I mostly just wrote notes in a book (not mine). Actually the mentality here is that the archaeologists do more desk work while hired ayudantes do the hard digging, but personally I like the physical aspect of the work. It engenders a visceral understanding of how things are superpositioned in the ground, makes the verticality of time felt by the body rather than coolly comprehended by the eye.



A note on archaeology and the body: Archaeological digging requires varying tools and levels of refinement. A shovel is rarely used to break ground: it is an extension of the torso, a poor tool for comprehending the subtleties of the buried past. Better to use a pick, an extension of the arm; a trowel, extension of the hand; or, in especially fine cases, a dental pick or razor, extensions of the finger and nail. (Machetes are fun but unless you're properly trained tend to be at best inefficient, at worst limb-hazardous.)


-Josh

Jungle malady

Long silence from my end... I have been in the jungle for three weeks, and have avoided some great opportunities to catch you up on my various adventures in Honduras and Guate en route to this isolated tent burg, and now my computer has caught jungle rot and no longer functions! I'm trying to remedy the situation but the likelihood is that I won't be writing much until I'm back in the States, or if I do, my posts will be photo-less. In the mean time you can check out some of the photos I've taken since my last post here. If a picture is worth a thousand words these should be worth at least one overly verbose blog entry...

Talk to you later??

-Josh

Mayan, Maya, vaya

Spanish classes are wrapped up and I'm leaving tomorrow for the densely forested unknown. Here's what I've been doing for the last two weeks, the last month, the last few days, from my last day in Antigua.



Last weekend we went to Lago de Atitlan, a 1,000'-deep freshwater lake in the mountainous/volcanic Guatemalan highlands. The lake abides in a caldera formed by an ancient eruption, and has since human time observable been a site of great significance to the Maya who populated the region in the pre-Columbian era. There are actually archaeological sites beneath the water, but to observe these you must be high-altitude deep-water dive certified, a task for which I am doubly unqualified.

The purpose of the trip was to relax for the weekend, but I was keen to imbibe the distinct local Maya culture. There are over 20 Mayan groups living in Central America today, with distinct languages and cultural traditions. The villages around Atitlan are comprised of predominately Kaqchikel and Tzutujil Mayans. In a neat bit of colonial treachery, the Kaqchikels were enlisted by conquistadores at the dawn of Spanish conquest to defeat their then neighboring faction, the K'iche Mayans, before themselves falling victim to subjugation. Now the Kaqchikeles and Tzutujiles enjoy relative cultural autonomy, maintaining a more or less traditional way of life in the villages around the Lake, such as the one I visited, Santiago de Atitlan.



During my one full day in Santiago I took the opportunity to visit a Cofradía, a meeting hall where an interesting amalgamation of Catholicism and the shamanic Tzutujil religion is practiced. A few other students and I witnessed the blessing of an American philanthropist (and funder of excavations at San Bartolo). Two Tzutujil nahuals, or shamans, presided over the ceremony, one swinging incense around those to be blessed and the other (pictured above) playing guitar. In this picture the elder nahual has just inundated his guitar with incense from the Copal tree, floating a generous amount of the fragrant smoke into the cavity of his instrument. He played with his guitar nearly vertical and as he did a stream of smoke slowly trailed out around his hands and engulfed him in a pale, sun-inflected cloud. Cool image.



After the Cofradía we visited this guy, Maximon, a rather enigmatic Tzutujil god. Maximon is a local legend, and spends each year at a different house, making his annual trip during Semana Santa (the week at the end of Lent). On his way to his new home Maximon spends a few days at a Tzutujil temple adjacent to the Catholic church in the center of Santiago. The Tzutujil equate Maximon with Judas Iscariot, and when he is placed in his temple he is simultaneously viewed as hanging on his suicidal tree and jeering at the imposed religion of European others. Local legend has it that Maximon fights Jesus on Easter. When I saw him he was accompanied by a lit sculpture of Jesus in his sepulcher and two attendant nahuals. Maximon gets by on donations (such as those I paid just to visit him for a few minutes), and he puts the money to good use, "consuming" 40-60 eighths of liquor and a few packs of cigarettes a day (he smoked two cigarettes while I was there). I was told by our translator that while he's drunk he is taken advantage of by witches, who take away his curing power. However, when he wakes up to the holy nahuals he sobers up to his mistakes and regains his supernatural efficacy. Interesting guy.

To conclude our day we visited a Franciscan church where the Catholicism was a bit more clear cut. The main claim to fame of the church, however, was a fantastically intricate carved wooden altar, a towering masterpiece that took its craftsman eight years to complete. The iconography of the altar complicated a completely Catholic reading of its symbolism, as it featured such undeniably Maya adornments as the maize god and nahuals dressed as Maximon surrounding and ascending such expected imagery as Christ crucified and the mournful Mother.



My weekend concluded back in the unambiguously Catholic Antigua. There is an elaborate church procession every Sunday during Lent through the streets of town, featuring two marching bands, giant lit floats, and innumerable purple-robed Padres and altar boys. I managed to catch a lull in the motion long enough to capture this image of Jesus. He is attended on this float by lilacs, a tree, Greek columns and very Western angels, perhaps a no less conspicuous admixture of divergent cultural elements than what I saw in Santiago.



Now that I'm leaving Antigua, a quick word as to what exactly I've been doing in between all these disturbingly vacation-like side trips. Besides Spanish class, I've also been working in the laboratory that houses all of the artifacts unearthed from San Bartolo for two hours a day. As I've mentioned, San Bartolo possesses now-famous spectacularly preserved Maya murals dating to around 100 BC. Over half of the murals, however, exist in the state visible here, that is, in the form of over 9,000 (and counting) fragments of destroyed stucco wall. One of the main objectives of the archaeologists working here is to piece together, literally, the amazing imagery of the murals, using as a rough guide the art of both Preclassic maya predecessors and San Bartolo's iconographic descendants, notably illustrated manuscripts of the 16th century K'iche Mayan creation myth the Popol Vuh and the numerous lived Mayan religious and artistic traditions practiced today, one small part of which you have glimpsed here. In fact, the nahual guitarist pictured above has been to San Bartolo, making the 8-hour trip with full religious paraphernalia and a small orchestra of traditional instruments after hearing about the murals in 2004. My professor, William Saturno, described the ritual to me, which involved the burning of Copal and playing of guitar and drum. It moved him deeply, he says: "this is the first time these walls have heard this music in 2,000 years."


I know this is terribly long, but it's two weeks and many introspective days-worth of images and observations. The next week might slow my roll a bit, as I'll be on the road. Three nights in Copan Ruínas, Honduras, where I'll visit the country for the first time and see the artistically sophisticated Maya site of Copán. Then three days in Flores, Guatemala, where I'll revisit the most monumental Maya site, Tikal. After that, it's off to San Bartolo for two and a half months of mural-gazing, hard-digging, hammock-sleeping, no-running-water-but-somehow-constantly-internet-connected tent living. There will be much more to write.


-Josue

Active

Another week deep in Antigua. Here´s some background on the ground around me.

city + volcan
Originally uploaded by endtimes

This is Antigua as seen from Cerro del Cruz ("Hill of the Cross"), a small park on a hill to the north overlooking the city and the monster Volcàn de Agua to the south, which has come out from hiding behind its clouds. Agua is inactive except as a navigational beacon and subject of innumerable street artists´painted views of the town.

yellow / sun
Originally uploaded by endtimes

This area´s main claims to fame are volcanoes and churches, old colonial missions such as this one, La Merced. This one is particularly lovely and yellow, part of the same complex as the previously mentioned arco amarillo. La Merced is located a block away from my Spanish school so I have the privilege of viewing it in the early morning and afternoon every day on my way to and from class.

Pacaya
Originally uploaded by endtimes

And here is Pacaya, another volcano near Antigua/Guatemala City, but one that is quite active (view here its steaming top). I hiked up here yesterday with a small group of new friends, wasn´t too arduous and definitely worth it when we got to the bank of the lava river. I poked the beast with my walking stick, which became instantly aflame, I was expecting something viscous but it actually feels quite solid, being liquid rock. It didn´t get too mad and wasn´t moving nearly fast enough to overtake my escape on the sharp pumice rockscape but even getting near enough to shake a stick at the flow nearly singed the hair off my face. Pacaya´s revenge.

This week in my Spanish class I talked about human evolution, extraterrestrials, Maya archaeology and seismic activity with my teacher. In the future I will discuss some of these things with you (specifically the Maya and what I´ll be doing in relation to them in the coming months), but for now my life is sun and lava so that´s what´s hot at the moment. I plan to dedicate myself to Spanish for the proceeding week, taking a personal "language pledge" that will preclude me from speaking any English in an effort to dial in my reacquired skills. So until then,

Hasta domingo pròximo
-Josh

Yeah the place you've been the last two weeks

Been in Guatemala, Central America for the last week, after a lazily productive and ideally snow-filled week-and-a-half-long Cantabrigian vacation. Still have a foot in both worlds mentally but I'm adjusting to the cloudless 70-degree days and it's not so hard. So here's some background on my situation. WITH PICTURES.

I arrived in Guatemala City last Saturday and took a bus with the other students in my program to Antigua, a UNESCO World Heritage spot and site of over 20 Spanish schools.

arco amarillo
Originally uploaded by endtimes

We checked into our hotel, which happened to be right inside Antigua's famous "arco amarillo" (yellow arc). Not pictured due to clouds is the monstrous Volcan de Agua which looms large to the south and has already proven a navigational beacon during early lost walks through town. I'll post up a flick of him later. Not pictured due to not being visible are the church bells that are ringing at this very moment near the hotel, one of the many reminders of Guatemala's pervasive Catholic culture and the small size of the town.

turtle drum
Originally uploaded by endtimes

I myself started Spanish classes last Monday, which will last for a month. I'm living with a host family, but with two other Americans and three Dutch so it's more like a host hostel. I have a lot of free time during which I've been roaming around the city. On the weekends wealthy domestic Guatemalan tourists come to Antigua because of its high elevation and subsequent coolness, and general charm. Last Sunday there was a small band of Mayan musicians playing a traditional marimba and turtle shell drum, recordings forthcoming.

sand temple
Originally uploaded by endtimes

On Thursday we had our first "field trip," which wasn't as much educational as sea-soaked. We headed to the Pacific coast of southern Guatemala to a resort area called Monterrico. Since the region is volcanic the sand is black, I'd never seen anything like it. The beach had pretty fierce waves, which crested in thin sheets of curling clear water that resembled obsidian blades as they pulled the arena negra from the sand floor.

So I got beat up by the 5-foot waves, napped in hammocks, read with my feet buried in the burning sand, burned in the sun but not too badly, just enough to coax some complexion to the fore of my pollution- and winter-paled skin. Now I'm ready to go back to class?

More about Spanish and Maya murals later, signing off, just saying

shout out
Originally uploaded by endtimes

Stateside, on the late side

Been back in the US for a few weeks and it took me a few minutes but I finally figured out how to get this webpage back into English and how to stop my blog titles automatically transliterating into Hindi. Writing in transition, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a move. I'm leaving for Boston in half an hour. Wanted to hit you with some quick boring updates:

I've managed to throw most of my China photos up on Flickr. While I'll probably prove uninclined to update my previous posts with photographic evidence you can peruse at your leisure here.

I'm bumming around the bean for about a week and a half but soon enough I'll uproot and leave the country once again. If you've stayed posted during 2007 you'll remember my trip to Belize last semester. Well I'm returning to the jungles of Central America with Boston University for another archaeological field school, here.

So I'm soaking up the American soil through my travel weary feet for another two weeks. Getting over this reverse culture shock in time to reverse and repeat last spring's Mayan mission. Too tired to waste more words on this post! See you in Guatemala.


TWO THOUSAND EIGHT