lack of internet

Hey there --

Long story short. Finished writing my prospectus. Went on a last minute trip with the students (I was responsible for them, wee) to Casma valley to see sites there. Found out we got half of the permits-they want us to do all the mapping first, turn in the maps, and then they´ll give us the rest of the permit to excavate. No real problem, need to do that anyhow. It´s just instead of going to each site individually, doing maps, then excavating, then repeating the process with the next site. But we´re started finally! So we go tback from Casma, had a half-hour to pack, moved to Huacho. Then we went out and mapped/worked all day. Just got back in. We´re staying at a nice hotel, I have my own private room and bathroom!! That was a surprise. I have to use internet at a local place. Once I find a good one I´ll write more. In the meantime it´ll be hard to post, I´ll see if I can work out a system. We´ll be in Huacho permanently (for the rest of the season). Wish me luck!

Stacy

textiles!

I’ve been plugging away at my prospectus and finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. :) So that’s why the update’s late.

As you may know, I like knitting. I haven’t been doing much knitting myself, but I thought I’d share some neat info and pictures about textiles in Peru.

Ancient cultures in Peru did not do any real knitting. Earliest textile-like things were knotted nets for fishing. Also, netted bags were filled with rocks to use as construction fill for mounds. First real textiles, from the preceramic period, were mainly done via twining. Twining was abandoned completely, however, once weaving was developed (done on a backstrap loom). Weaving patterns have many variations, and are way too complex for me. *grin* Reed mats and baskets are also often woven or plaited together by hand. For the time period I work in, gauzes were also very popular. Textiles were made out of cotton or camelid wool. Textiles were painted or dyed, using natural materials and clays rich in sulfates as mordants. Here’s some neat textiles I’ve seen walking around at looted sites:

This is a little plant fiber-material bag, inside which are some clumps of human hair (a child’s?).

This is a textile with yellow background and black stripes. It looks like the black may have been painted on after weaving.

This lovely red-fuchsia color comes from a dye made with cochineal, an insect that lives on cactus.
This blue is likely made from indigo leaves, which is a very hard dye to use. There is also a very nice purple that is made here from crushed shells.

Very nifty loosely woven brown and cream. I love the pattern.

And here’s a looter’s shelter, covered in tons of old textiles from the cemetery. Breaks my heart.

On a side note (and to balance out all the pretty stuff I showed you), here’s what we had for dinner the other night. Yes indeed, that is a head. It’s guinea pig (called cuy). It was 1st domesticated here in the Andes. No, I didn’t eat it.

TTFN

the Waiting Game

Yes, we’re still waiting for our permit approval. Yet again, the INC hasn’t reviewed the permit for no good reason. This is by far the most frustrating thing about archaeology.

I shouldn’t feel too bad about it, though. We’re not the only group in Peru waiting for permits right now, and we’re not the only archaeologist group in general waiting (I’ve got some friends in places like Guatemala and SW US to have yet to hear about theirs). So we’re all in the same boat, it’s just part of the job.

So in the meantime, we’ve done a few things to keep ourselves occupied.

We visited the site of Chambara, one of those we’ll be working at. What you see here is an area of the site that was flooded through about 4-6 years ago, melting major sections of the adobe architecture. The clay sludge then re-dried; it looks super-cool, no? But don’t worry, that won’t be the section we’re digging in.

We visited some rumored lomas (areas where fog from ocean collects and is so heavy, it condenses on the surface and is enough to support some plant life in the desert). What we found blew us away. Not the plants, but the occupation. There’s a ton of stone structures, circular arrangements of huancas (stone monoliths), etc. We totally didn’t expect to find such a large occupation, covering several periods. These are previously unknown sites! The nearby quebrada must have once had a regular river running through it to support so many people. I can’t say where it is for reasons of security *grin* but I can show a picture of a great view in the area.

And conversely, we didn’t find what we expected to at the Valley of 10,000 Burials (La Mina). It’s got a super-heavily looted area where burials from a bunch of time periods are. But it seems as if people have gone through and taken everything, even the scraps of stuff, in some areas. It’s changed since my professor saw it last 4 years ago. We were also looking for twined textiles (which date to preceramic) but we didn’t encounter any.

We visited the site of Por Venir, a preceramic mound site. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the modern ‘black magic shrine’ on the hillside overlooking this site for a couple years, documenting changes. It seems to have gotten much more trashed, less taken care of. And the focus of some of the rituals have changed, they’re a bit more ominous now. We found a sacrificed bird and a kitten in the alcove there. Odd though, they used to have skulls there from the looted prehistoric cemetery, but those are gone now. Interesting place. Since that stuff is a bit grotesque to show pictures of, here is a nice pic of us crossing the low river to get to La Mina instead.

Lots of tromping around for the past couple days, that’s to be sure. Quite tiring, too. This is the group of undergrads (and grad students Lori and Kaelyn) that I’m working with, and everyone’s snoozing in the combi on the way home.

So for the rest of this weekend and coming week, we’ll be doing some excavation in the backyard at the house for practice. We’re digging up a pachamanca to see what signs we can find of such ephemeral activities. I’ll give more details and explain that project in a few days, maybe Thursday or so. I’ll be posting up on Monday a mini-textile lesson as well. Lots of blogging to look forward to!

Until then,
SMD

Picture referred to below

Modification to the plans:

As an archaeologist, I’m definitely learning how to be flexible on things. Rarely do any plans stay the same from one week to the next. It can be frustrating, but as long as something worthwhile actually gets done, I don’t care too much.

1st off, we’re not going to be living in Sayan at all. It’s quite a small town and very cute. The problem is that no tourists ever go there, unlike the bigger beach towns of Barranca and Huacho. The Huaura valley in general is also known for being a little more insular and rebellious back from the 80s (during the guerilla wars with Sendero Luminoso aka the Shining Path). And finally, the Huaura valley is one of the best direct routes to the highlands from the central coast, with lots of campesinos passing through to other parts back and forth from market seasons. So as gringos, we’d really stand out, uncomfortably so. We’d be the talk of the town (region, really) for certain and it’d might attract some unwanted forms of attention. Thus, we’re going to stay in Huacho the whole time; it may mean a bit more driving time to a couple sites, but it’s safer.

2nd, we’re still waiting for the permits. The INC didn’t review it like they were supposed to on Thursday, so Dr. Ruiz (Peruvian co-director for the project) is going to the INC office on Monday with a few lawyers to gently remind them that they’re illegally past the time limit for doing the review. The meeting to give approval occurs every Thursday, so they’ll hopefully get the papers stamped then and we’ll be ready to dig by Monday. And if we have the permits we’ll start some mapping on Sunday.

There’s been a few other minor changes here and there to plans, but those are the two center issues. Things look like they’re falling into place and the undergraduate students that have arrived ( 2 boys, 2 girls) seem like they’ll work out well. Lori’s (Tulane phys anthro grad student) also with us this summer to finish collecting cemetery data for her dissertation. Once things get going, I think it will be fabulous.

There’s the update for now. And you see below a picture of the 2 pets for the PANC project house: Waira (meaning "wind") is the rat-looking thing. She’s a Peruvian hairless dog, well suited for living in the desert. The black color is actually a tan-- when she wears that little coat too much, she loses her tan and is pink instead. Weird little thing, she’s so ugly it’s almost cute. The gi-normous black dog is Cuto (meaning "without tail"), and he’s only a year old. He’s such a bad puppy, he needs to go to school. We jokingly cll him "wiggle-butt" because that’s what he does when he walks. Adorable.

Yet Again

Hello to all!

With the start of another summer, another field season in Peru, it’s time to get the blog rolling again. I’ll likely only be posting once a week this year, unfortunately, due to a much more limited internet access. But we’ll see how things go, hmm?

For a quick re-cap, I work in the Norte Chico region, about 200 km north of Lima, consisting of 4 valleys (in order N to S): Fortaleza, Pativilca, Supe, and Huaura. Barranca is a coastal town inbetween Pativilca and Supe. My work is going to be almost exclusively in the Huaura valley this year as is the site that I intend to do my dissertation at.

So I arrived in Peru on May 16th, super-late at night, and went to Barranca the next day. Most of the time since then has been re-establishing my contacts, getting paperwork and equipment ready. It’s now the 22nd and so I’ve got a much better idea how things are going to go. At each site, we’ll be doing extensive mapping of archaeological features as well as total station maps for topography. We will dig approx 3 tests pits (1x1 m) and clean the profiles of 2 looter’s pits at each site. Here’s the agenda:

Week 1 -- May 25 - June 1: The undergrad students arrive the 25th. We’ll stay in Barranca, driving out to the sites in Huaura to do some mapping of sites. Also, training the students for excavation.

Week 2 -- June 2 - June 8: Move to the town of Sayan, about 30 km inland up the Huaura valley. We’ll start work at the site of San Juan de las Canas.

Week 3 -- June 9 - June 15: Stay in Sayan. Work at the site of Quipicu.

Week 4 -- June 16 - June 22: Stay in Sayan. Work at the site of Chambara.

Week 5 -- June 23 - June 29: Move to the city of Huacho, located at the coast at the mouth of the Huaura river. Work at the site of Rontoy.

Week 6 -- June 30 - July 6: Stay in Huacho. Work at site of Centinela (my diss site!).

Week 7 -- July 7 - July 13: Work in the lab on materials collected. I’m unsure if we’ll be in Huacho or Barranca at this point. We’ll take the students to Lima on the 12th, they fly out on the 13th.

For the rest of the time (3 weeks, July 14 - August 6), I’m not sure if I’ll be staying in Barranca or Huacho, but I’ll be doing more lab analysis and organizing materials. If things haven’t gone that well, then we’ll be finishing up whatever work we didn’t complete. And if we’ve been really efficient, then we’ll start writing the report.

Wish me luck!

TLAP

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