another day, another peso

Another day in La mikela- work work work. We are trying to get things finished as fast as we can so as to wrap up the excavation by the time Nydia and I head out. We’re essentially leaving at the end of the typical field season anyhow and it gets tough, because Carlos and Martha start up teaching again at the university so it should be pretty close, but good overall timing. Weather permitting and fingers crossed!

Kids came through on tour from local grade school, which basically meant utter chaos and little progress! It’s cool that they are being exposed to archaeology and the work we are doing, but it was a lot to manage as there were about 80 of them and we ended up having to take time to explain to them about the work instead of actually working. Well, I couldn’t really explain much seeing as I’m not fluent in spanish; I basically wandered around since I couldn’t work or talk to the kids haha. Oh well, hooray for public archaeology/awareness! At least it was a nice, DRY and sunny day in the field.

Carmen and I ended up also leaving early after lunch to head to Manizales. I felt bad bailing out on work early since it hadn’t been a very productive day thus far but I had also really wanted to check out Manizales and plus we had a mission to complete: going to the museum of one of the universities there to pick up this book for Pat that can only be purchased there in person. So, really we were thinking of Pat.... at least partly haha.

After the visiting the university we walked to one end of town to get a cafe and look at this old wooden structure popularly known in Manizales. The coffee shop was right across the street from the structure so we could sit and enjoy a little warm cappuccino while taking in the view with baileys for me, yum! And Amaretto for Carmen. It was back to her house for dinner after that; we had almost left just in time to avoid the rain, but ended up catching a bus back instead of walking to stay dry. Her mom and her mom’s cousin (who lives with them there) had prepared a DELICIOUS dinner starting with soup and banana, a main dish of trout, rice, sweet plantain, and a tomato/carrot salad. So good! Nothing like a home-cooked meal : )

short n' sweet

Today we had to leave work after lunch once again due to the massive amounts of rain. I think today was the hardest, most intense rain I’ve experienced since being here. Carlos says that this much rain is really unusual for July which tends to be much more calm than June, but so far I think it has rained more during this month of my time here than June. I was literally out in the rain, shoveling out trenches on three different sites of the excavation to keep the water from pouring over the walls of our unit. I was wearing my rain jacket, but I was more or less soaked by the end of it; Diego was helping bail out buckets of water from the trenches to keep them from over flooding as it was. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew was sitting pretty under the break tarp sipping coffee and observing us go to town; they must have thought I was crazy to be out in that rain....guess I’m a little overprotective when it comes to my excavations. I couldn’t help thinking about how Tony had reprimanded me for digging the first small trench along the southern edge of the unit because, as he reminded me, these were archaeological sites....mind you, the ‘trench’ was no more than 6 inches down and all of that layer is just crummy pottery that is not important to our project so I went for it haha! What Tony doesn’t know won’t kill him ; ) Have to say it worked quite well.

It worries me a little though, the rain, for my departing flight next Wednesday because I am on the 7:00 flight out of Pereira which usually comes from Bogota or Cartagena earlier in the morning, meaning it doesn’t sleep the night before in Pereira and is more likely to experience delays or issues flying in to Pereira in the morning if the weather is bad. That, and Tony sent me an email with instructions for the transfer in Bogota that were a little nerve racking since the airport there is both under construction and difficult to navigate in the first place, however, I am hoping for the best! What else can I do? 

side note: I am trying to get this as up-to-date as possible, a few more posts are on there way I promise...longer and more exciting posts. Stay tuned!!

I clean dirt for a living?

Today we arrived at the site to find massive amounts of water held in the bamboo, string, and tarp structure that covers our unit as well as quite a bit of mud on the floors and walls of the excavation from the runoff of the massive rain the night before. I think that rain, second only to looters, is an archaeologists worst enemy, although I guess that burrowing animals, insects and plant roots need to be included in there somewhere as well. The rain has been extremely frustrating though, because you do all this work the day before excavating and cleaning the floors for pictures and then the rain just cancels out all that effort. And yes, I clean dirt for a living. I think about the absurdity of this often while working, but what can I say, I love it!

So anyway, Ricardo has been with us for a few days here in Pereira, he is a geologist from Manizales that works in the volcanic and seismic activity observatory there. Martha and Carlos had him visit to interpret the soils at our site and others in the area like Cuba, etc. It is interesting having him in the field to explain what he thinks about the different patterns in the soil profiles of the excavations since it is his specialty. Also, because we are really getting down to the end of the large excavation, I decided to go ahead and really clean the bottommost unit floor which was excavated in years prior and has accumulated quite a bit of other soil buildup/runoff. This turned out to be a bit more of a difficult task than I had intended because the soil in the lowest part of the excavation is extremely dense and humid, like wet, really compact sand. So that was a bit of a workout in and of itself, but the photographs of the unit with the entire thing cleaned up, walls and all looked really nice and will hopefully be useful for future analysis of the site.

Museo de Arte

Yesterday (these are quite delayed and out-of-date posts....disregard the corresponding post-dates with relation to reality, because they are false! haha) was our day off and I spent the morning sleeping in and catching up on field paperwork. I remembered mid-afternoon that I wanted to check out the modern art museum here so I went online and learned that they were open until 5, grabbed my stuff and walked down toward La Catrorce and behind to the Museo. The security guard was so hospitable and explained to me about the four exhibits currently there and how to navigate the museum. I was the only one there so I think he was happy to have someone to talk to haha, but it was a very interesting experience. It is small, of course, but really neat to see artwork from local Colombians and see their perspective on topics expressed in their work. I enjoyed it very much and was happy I remembered it was nearby. Of course, I took way too many pictures, but I wanted to remember the artwork and took some pictures of the descriptions and artist biographies as well so that I can take more time later to fully understand the spanish ; )

Parque Tematico

Friday morning, Carmen and I woke up early and headed in to downtown Pereira so she could check in with her supervisor for another archaeological project she is working on. She has a lot going on right now in addition to the work at La Mikela. I don’t know how she does it all. I’m starting to really get my bearings around town from walking around with her so much. Her boss’ office is in a building next to the artisan row in town where we went shopping several days ago. 

After checking in with him, we walked to the Megabus station-stop and took a bus out to the Cuba exchange terminal where we grabbed a connecting bus out to the site, which is on the way to ComFamiliar. We exited the bus at a small wooden sign that read, ‘Parque Tematico,’ and continued walking along a long dirt road until we reached a small wooden building. It is the old farmhouse of the property converted in to equipment storage, office space, with rooms still for those who live and work there. Juan David had biked there and met us at the house. We grabbed some shovels and hard hats and continued on our way. The site has bulldozers working and so the hard hats are required on the site, however once we got to where we were digging we ditched them because the bulldozers were on the other side of a hill from us with a river running between us; I don’t think we were at harm there haha.

It was another long walk out to where we met up with Don Diego and another fellow that Carmen works with; they were taking topographical measurements of the area. They walked us over towards the main work area and showed Carmen some anomaly and then we parted ways and Carmen, Juan David, and I walked back toward the main dirt road and then through a large field, down over the Consota River and up a hill to where we were working for the day. We didn’t find much, or anything for that matter; just dug two 50 cm by 50 cm pits, went down 50 cm, photographed them and then filled them right on back up. Really thrilling stuff!! It was a good experience, but I am looking forward to getting back to work at La Mikela in the morning. We have lots to do before the season ends and I would like to get it done!

One thing I have realized so far about archaeologists is that they tend to underestimate the time it will take to finish certain projects, don’t necessarily take in to account interruptions like poor weather, and are overambitious in their plans for the season; all of which almost always leads to being disappointed in accomplishing less than planned. I have a feeling that this project is no exception, unfortunately. So it goes!

arte arte arte

At this point, Carmen has given me so many nicknames I can’t even keep track. It’s hard enough that I have to pay attention to both english and spanish, and respond to any of the following: Thundercat, Flash, Speedy Gonzalez (what can I say, I dig with purpose, like a pro haha), speedy cat, chica picante or spice girl (referring to the fact that I put hot sauce, salsa, peppers on everything- might be my current favorite), jeffa, and on and on....oh, and that I speak Spanish with an Italian accent, but better that than a German one ha!!

Thursday night, Carmen, Luz Marina and I went downtown for an art festival that they have in Pereira the first Thursday of every month. It was pretty interesting to see the work of local people and it’s a cool event because it’s organized by this group of artists themselves. We ran in to Carolina there where she and this other guy were selling little postcard-sized pictures of the region.

We checked out a few of the ‘galleries....’ spaces transformed for the event and then grabbed a slice at the Pizza Factory. We have been to a couple different places here that have surprisingly good eats, the pizza place being one of them. For Jen’s last night we went to this Arabic restaurant for falafel, hummus, and all that good stuff....including a tasty Argentinean malbec; the owner was this cute old man who waited on the tables himself and he was so pleased that we (Americans) had stopped in.

After pizza, we walked around some more and stopped in to some local craft shops, there were different people set up with tables selling jewelry and other things as well. I was beat since we had worked in the day and I had been up since 6, but we stuck around for the traditional Colombian music performance. This crazy violinist in leather pants and a cape went to town, dancing and just going crazy playing that thing. He was really good, though, and it was a fun, theatrical performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. We left after a couple songs, because the three of us were practically falling asleep standing up, said goodbye to Carolina, and grabbed a taxi home. 

122 sherds in a bag, 122 sherds...

The apartment has been very quiet now that both Tony and Jen are gone, but Carmen is staying with us for a few days so it will be nice to have her around. For the first time in a while, it didn’t rain today, which was very nice for working at La Mikela this morning. Carlos and Martha are on vacation for a few days with their boys, so we are on our own here in Pereira, but so far so good. Carmen took the bus in today from Manizales and met Nydia and I at the Panaderia across the street before heading up to the laboratory at the University and on to the field. Carmen and I actually walked both there and back today, which was really quite enjoyable. The site isn’t all that far from the University/our apartment, I’d guess about 2 miles maybe, and the weather was on our side for once so we had a good time walking and talking. 

With Tony, Pat, and Jen gone for good and Martha and Carlos gone for the weekend, the site felt bare as well, but we decided to all work on the large excavation instead of splitting up to work on the various pits; Diego and I digging while Carmen and Juan David screened. I must say it was a very productive arrangement and was some serious spanish emersion for me ; )

We finished off the 75-80 cm level with no more exciting finds. I think that we are really through the preceramic concentration and that things will be pretty much sterile from now on, but Carlos wants to continue taking the unit all the way down even with the floor of the southwest corner of the unit that was previously excavated. I mean I’m not an expert my any means, but it kind of seems like a waste of time to take the entire thing that far, essentially 1.5- 2 meters, but oh well. Although I don’t know how much longer our screens will last in terms of screening all the soil we’re digging up; they’re looking pretty sorry at this point and we’ve been having at least one casualty daily (my hands are looking real rough between the blisters, rips, and cuts).

Since we were on our own today we packed light and decided to grab lunch in town after a morning in the field. We ended up working until about 1 and met up with Nydia after walking back to town to grab some traditional Almuerzo fare; it was delicious and extremely plentiful for only $4,000 pesos, about $2 USD, each! It started with a light potato soup, the main dish was a choice of meat (I got grilled pork) with rice, beans, cole slaw, and plantain accompanied by pineapple juice with water, a small cup of jello and a banana for desert!! Definitely got our money’s worth!

Headed back to the lab afterwards to get some work done, including counting the contents of various artifact bags so Nydia could input them in to the massive catalog she’s working on, and other odds and ends stuff. Javier stopped by the lab today to do some things and Susanna, a botanist, has been in Pereira yesterday and today collecting samples from the gardens on campus, so we got to see them and say goodbye (until next year, I hope, haha!)

quickly with careful!!

t is finally a nice, sunny day here (for now) and it is our day off on top which makes it doubly nice! For the dry season, it sure does rain a lot....it usually rains just about every day, though lightly, except it has really been storming this past week. Martha says it’s more like the really, really rainy season and the less rainy season because of this. Good to know! It also gets surprisingly chilly here in the evenings, especially after a rain has cooled things off, so I am glad I decided to bring my hoodie and sweatpants after all.

Work at the site has slowed down the last few days. There are really some curious anomalies in our unit that don’t really appear in the small pits being dug around the site. There is a LOT of bioturbation making it difficult to interpret things and we have several light and dark soil stains that we are unsure of- one larger dark soil stain in the very center of the unit is where we keep finding big tools and flakes; just yesterday we found a large mano, or grinding stone, the size of a brick! It is quite interesting...

It rained a bit again yesterday morning which slowed work a bit, but we didn’t work a full day anyhow. After getting home and cleaning up, Jen and I went downtown with Carmen to look around and find some cheap artisanal crafts. The city of Pereira is actually quite nice, with three large plazas and lots of shopping. The main plaza, Plaza de Bolivar, is equipped with a large statue of Simon Bolivar riding a horse, naked. The second one we checked out further west had this enormous system of fountains and water that took up most of the square. These areas are nice because they are lined with palms or some other type of tree which brightens up the city. 

We checked out an old church where some archaeology had been done recently in which they found the original foundation of the original church from the 16th century, along with burials and other structures. The inside of the building that stands today is really quite stunning as they have left the roof/rafters open through reconstruction and rehabilitation to the structure and all of the arcing wood beams are visible.

Most of the shops and storefronts in the area are more commercial but there are a few artisanal places, though, we found the best stuff was from the indigenous people that sell hand crafts from little stands along the wide pedestrian walkways between the shops. Even still, things are either quite pricey or not very well made, so we didn’t make many purchases. 

Carmen was a very good guide of the city even though she is from Manizales and hasn’t spent much time in Pereira, herself. Between her broken english and my broken spanish we were able to communicate pretty well; she is such a cute and funny person, so we all had a good time. After we had worn ourselves out from walking all over the place, we rested our legs at a juice bar for a fresh pitcher of pina en aqua and super empanadas! The empanadas were probably the second best I’ve had, the first being this roadside place in southwest Costa Rica somewhere along the road from Montezuma toward the rest of civilization to the north, and the juice was nice and fresh, though, I’m a sucker for mango or maracuya (passionfruit). 

We headed back toward the bus terminal so that Carmen could get on her way back home and Jen and I continued back to the apartment. The traffic here is a little nuts and stop signs are really more of a suggestion than anything else, so it was like a game of frogger getting around town, the whole time Carmen saying, “quickly with careful!!” We had a little siesta after getting back to the apartment and then went to check out this little eatery down the street that we had seen a few days earlier on a walk down to La Catorce, the major shopping area. The food was tasty and the atmosphere was cute, but the music was in stiff competition with the street traffic and the bar next door that was playing Aerosmith’s entire discography. All in all a pretty enjoyable afternoon and evening : ) 

Thunderkat!!

Let’s see, it’s been a few days since I last sat down and reminisced about my time here so I have some catching up to do. It starts the day before last, we got to the field and saw that the makeshift bamboo canopy we had made (and already altered several times) had fallen down from the weight of a very heavy rain the night before. This sounds like it would be a problem, but I took the opportunity to step up and take over as engineer, which meant not only planning a reconstructed canopy but chopping some bamboo down machete-ninja style!! I’ve said it before, but machete-ing things is like the best therapy ever....too much fun : ) I only wish I had brought my machete from Belize (which coincidentally I think was manufactured in Colombia) so it could see some more action. So far my design has held up quite nicely as it is much more slanted to help with water runoff and a bit lower to the ground. So we’ll see how well it keeps; so far the the weather has been mostly nice as it’s the dry season, but even so it spits on an almost daily basis. 

It was business as usual after that, digging, screening, counting, paperwork, lunch, more digging....the work days seem to be getting longer, which is to say that Carlos and Martha keep losing track of time at the end of the day and before you know it, it’s almost 4 and we’re still in the field.  The amount of material we’ve been finding has significantly dropped off lately, save for some larger possible tools. Some of the pits they’ve been digging around the site, though, have had dry spells and picked back up around 80-90 cm below the surface and we are currently around 65-70.

Yesterday we headed over to see the guys at Javier’s site in Santa Rosa. The drive there was really gorgeous because it was clear blue skies and we left early enough to catch a glimpse of the snow-capped mountains that are not too far off in the distance. I may have gotten one or two good pictures of them, but they will be needing some retouching I’m sure, since it was a quick, out-the-car-window shot. The site in Santa Rosa is more tropical and covered with large palms of bananas and other things. The soil is way way different from the stuff we have in La Mikela which was really nice when it came to screening, but alas, we did not find much of anything. I was working with Nicolas and Pat in a Sondeo closer to the edge of the hill where it slopes off; it was not very exciting because we had a large, disintegrating tree root that invaded the center of our pit and cattle had previously walked all through where we were making it even more difficult to keep our levels measured correctly and our walls straight (the soil would compact and compact every time you put pressure on it...) 

They have some really extraordinary views from up on that hill, though, and we took advantage of the one to the southwest for our lunch break. Unfortunately by that time the clouds had come down and covered up the snow peaks, otherwise they would be visible from that spot too. On the other side to the north, where the road is, you can see the town of Manizales up in the mountains and off in the distance. We escaped with Martha and Carlos back to Pereira before the rains came, but apparently missed out in the finding of a possible tomb/burial, which is cool but not exactly something you want to find when you don’t have the time or money to excavate it.

Back in Pereira, we decided on cooking in instead of eating out, so Jen and I walked down to La Catorce to pick up some stuff and ended up making a pretty delicious (and nutritious) meal of shrimp, broccoli, and rice with a salad to go along. I think that meal was the most green things on one plate I’ve seen since we’ve gotten here haha. They don’t seem to eat many vegetables and eat a lot, lot, lot, lot of pastries, breads, and arepas, or corn tortilla cake-like things, so it was a nice change of pace and, of course, some Club Colombia was enjoyed with it as well.

Which brings us to today!

Today was an enjoyable but not very productive day....I was just exhausted for some reason, Jen and I both. It’s weird how it catches up with you at random and unexpected times, like we didn’t do anything crazy strenuous yesterday and yet I am BEAT. Hopefully a good night’s rest is the cure and awaits me this evening, but seeing as it is Pat’s last night in town before she flies back to the states and there will most likely be rum involved, I’m not gonna bet on it. We got a fair amount done though, we are completely finished with level 9 now so we will start 10 tomorrow and see how much of that we can get through. The field was loads of fun today, though, because it was only Diego, Carmen, Lous-Marina, Jen, and I....neither Jen nor I speaking much spanish and only Carmen speaking a bit of English herself made for a very interesting, comical, and informative day haha. Carmen and I have a deal now where she will work on her English with me and I, my spanish with her. Between the two languages, with a little German, French, and Portuguese thrown in to the mix (Lingua Poliglota as Carmen referred to it), we managed to communicate quite nicely.

Carmen is so funny, she was writing the paperwork for the unit for a while so everything was dug today by ‘Jane and Kate’ haha and then she decided that her pneumonic device for remembering my name was ‘Thundercat!’ like the TV show and also because it was looking like a mad storm was coming our way this afternoon and had been thundering for about two hours before we called it a day as a result of the ominous approaching clouds. Now we have some down time for which I may have myself a siesta and then I guess it’s off to Carlos and Martha’s? For now I am trying not to itch my face off; the bugs are not bad here really (especially compared to last summer in Belize) but they still linger forever and continue to itch even after they’ve healed. So now I have a nice-sized one on my face and back, as well as two fresh guys in my legs from our work in Santa Rosa yesterday. Oh joy!

Go ask Alice, when you're ten feet tall

Where to begin indeed. It has been a long and eventful day while running on about 5 hours of sleep....i think I’ve finally become so accustomed to the noisy chaos outside our building, that I now cannot sleep when it is quiet. Such was the case this morning when I awoke at 3 am to deathly silence and could not go back to sleep. 

I don’t know what I was expecting when going out to the field today, but the sequence of events that followed were quite surprising and exciting. I should preface by saying that our site of La Mikela is not far off of the highway, tucked behind a house on a hill between the road and the river. The people there seem to have an adorable white albino rabbit. Needless to say, if you knew I had a sweet albino rabbit growing up, you will understand my excitement at this sighting. The last few days he/she has been getting friendlier and hopping over toward our excavation area. The other day I was able to get close enough to give him/her a bite of carrot, but then scared it off. 

Well today, it was hopping all over the place, from pit to pit, checking things out and hopped right up to the edge of my unit. This of course, called for a short ‘water break’ seeing as I was finally close enough to be able to pet and even hold the bunny!! It is precious and so soft and makes me want another rabbit, but alas, I can hardly handle my two cats.....I can’t even imagine adding to the mix at this point. 

So that was the first amazing event! As if being able to pet a bunny weren’t enough, within the first hour of work today, we found an azada or hoe. It is gorgeous! Finely prepared and as big as my face, it was a great find, for sure. Pat, however keeps managing to one-up us with the massive grinding stones she keeps finding over in her unit, but hey, we’re only in the 50-55 cm level so there’s plenty of time to catch up haha! I rode an unbelievable high for the rest of the day from that and all the possible stone tools we found around there as well. Seeing as this is really only my second big dig, it is incredibly thrilling to find such artifacts, but I think it’s something that you never really lose an appreciation for, thank god! Tony was yelling and waving around like a child filled with excitement from our find. So it seems that there may be a loophole in this whole growing up thing. 

We only worked a half day today, because we rented a van and took a trip out to Armenia, located in the mountains to the west (the same range as Sanctuario, but more north). There in Armenia, we checked out the Museo del Oro, or Museum of Gold (archaeology museum)!! It was stunning. We had a lovely tour through the facilities and an old friend and classmate of Carlos’ who is also the current curator stopped by to welcome us. She will be joining us in the field tomorrow to see what we are doing, so I am looking forward to that. 

Back to the Museo....it was really amazing. The building itself is really interesting and intricate; the architect who designed it really took in to account the landscape and the natural flow of water to make a really spectacular place. Once inside, you are really in for a treat, they had many, many ancient golden artifacts from jewelry to funerary helmets to ceremonial instruments. Also there, were really interesting ceramic vessels, statues, and figurines as well as a preserved tomb finding and other odds and ends. It was really a nice treat to be able to check it out. 

After the museum, we headed off to Salento, a town known for its artisan crafts located a bit higher up in the mountains than Armenia or Pereira, which meant an awesome view! From the lookout there you can see mountains and mountains, hear the river running below, and take in the fresh air. Even on a fairly overcast day like today at dusk, it is still stunning. The valley is a result of glacier melting years and years and years ago and the volcano Timbo is off in the distance. The valley is part of the volcanic fan that was covered with ash and such making the soil ever fertile in the area. It is a somewhat hazardous place to have a house, however, because the river that cuts through the valley tends to flood during the rainy season here.

The town of Salento is really cute itself. It is not a typical Colombian town in the sense that Santa Rosa is, but it is really colorful and quaint; sort of geared at tourists, but not overwhelmingly expensive or lame like you might expect a tourist-y place to be. We stopped off to get a cup of coffee after arriving at this awesome little cafe and got to speak to the owner as well....he gave us a little talk on colombian coffee which was most excellent. Then we headed of to the giant shopping strip that goes on for five or six blocks.

Mostly just looked around, but made a few small purchases; the stores there were so cute and colorful, the whole town was, really. Makes me wish Philly would add a splash of color to make things seem more fun and cheerful! Anyhow, after we finished shopping, the group got in the van and made our way up to the lookout at the (top) of the mountain. We got there just after sunset, unfortunately, but the view was still spectacular.

After taking in the sights, we got a cup of coffee with aguardiente, a locally produced liquor that has a bit of an anisette taste, and then hopped back on the bus to go back to Pereira. The night was finished off with some Colombian Domino’s pizza and rum or Ron, in spanish haha, on the rocks. I was exhausted to the bone at that point even though it was only something like 8 in the evening, but the days here seem to progress much more differently than back home, or perhaps because it gets darker so much earlier than it does in Philly at the moment, that it seems like it is quite late when in fact it isn’t. Either way, it was a great day!!

what's the matter with kids today?

Woke up a little earlier today, well actually I woke up at pretty much the same time as always, because we are right on the corner and the vehicles here are surprisingly loud and noisy, between the mega-buses and motorbikes it’s already quite loud by 6:30 or so. However, Jen and I had decided the night before that we were going to wake up early and have us some real Colombian breakfast and not the pastries from across the street. So we got dressed and walked down the ‘strip’ to see who was open and it turns out that a place we had gone for dinner had a few people there, so we decided to check it out. Only small problem was that Jen does not really know much Spanish and I don’t exactly know enough to make coherent sentences but have a pretty good-sized vocabulary at this point. Nevertheless we were able to order to #1 breakfast combos which was scrambled eggs with tomato and green onion, a buttered rice cake type guy and a little fried plantain on the side. All that for only 2000 pesos or about $1 USD!! Also you start off with a little spiced hot chocolate stuff that you eat as a soup, but could certainly be drunk as well as it is not too thick. Good eats! And cheap too : )

Got out to the site and it was already bright and sunny; today started out with nice blue skies and the threat of a rain cloud to the west, which did reach us a little later on after lunch, but was brief. We got a bit of work done again today, getting down through 5 more units, but today I was the digger all day while Evie screened and Jen took notes, made labels, and counted all our finds. Because we are down in the 40-50 level and are right on top of the preceramic stuff we have to be much more careful and start to be a bit more precise in our recordings. We came down on what we think may be a feature, but it’s sort of hard to tell with all the disturbance in the unit. It could be, though, that we are coming down on some type of hearth, there certainly appears to be quite a bit of evidence of fire, burnt fire-cracked rock, and unfired clay. We started getting some carbon today, we are not dating the stuff we found just yet, but some of it is clearly carbonized organic material that could be identified in terms of the berry or seed, etc. If we find carbon down in the preceramic levels, we will certainly be collecting it for carbon dating in the hopes that we can get an older date than 5700 yBp for our site of La Mikela. So these are some exciting times! 

We weren’t in the field for as long today, peaced out around 3 and went straight back to the apartment seeing as we had all our lab stuff in order. We are going over to Carlos and Martha’s tonight to celebrate the great Tony Ranere’s birthday. Pat and Martha are making dinner I think, we have a cake, and the girls and I grabbed some gouda and wine when we were shopping to bring along, so it should be good. Right now we’re snacking on some delicious yucca and plantain chips with some homemade guac that Jen just made along with some of our candy we still have left over from Saturday at the movies. A nice little amuse bouche hahaha.

Tony's birthday dinner was quite scrumptious, but the night ended up winding down pretty early as we were all exhausted from a hard day's work. It got to a point where a few people were talking about the project, but in very quick spanish, so as we weren't understanding or didn't care to understand, the three of us girls whipped out our laptops to check in with the rest of the world, which resulted in Pat and Tony scolding us about being rude and antisocial....again, though, I mention that everyone was speaking in spanish so we could have sat there staring blankly orrrrrrr yeah. what's the matter with grownups these days...they just don't get it hahaha.

4 degrees from the sun

11:03 pm

Hello there! It’s Monday evening here in Pereira; we just got back from Carlos and Martha’s house where we had some Colombian-Chinese take-out food from ‘Restaurant nuevo Kung Fu’ that was pretty much like American-Chinese food but with slightly different colors. It was a little less salty/heavy too and very delicious....I think that tomorrow some of the leftovers will be available for lunch in the field. Lunch is the main meal here and so even though we are working, we take a break and have a pretty good sized spread of things to choose from and create. Carlos is very good about introducing us to all sorts of wild and crazy fruits, flavors, and so on. He’s also a pretty good tour guide when driving around to different sites...

5:46 pm

Oy, I had to go to bed because I was exhausted!! We got a lot done today, 5 whole units, all finished up, bagged, tagged and counted. We are starting to get in to the groove of the excavation, I think, and are doing much better with keeping up with all our paperwork and lab work, so it doesn’t feel like we have all this unfinished business hanging over our heads, which is nice. Jen and Evie mostly excavated while I was their screening slave, meaning I sifted all of the soil they were removing for lithics and ceramics, aka a LOT. It was nice though, because I got in to a groove and just felt good getting so much done and making some good progress in the unit. So we are now done with all of the 30-40 cm units and tomorrow we will begin taking it down lower (to 50 cm) and in to perhaps the preceramic levels, but for now we’re still sort of just on the cusp of it. 

After the long day in the field, we headed over to the lab at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica Pereira) to count some of the perviously collected artifacts from various test pits on the site and were there for quite a while before heading out. It was a long and exhausting day. Jen and I walked back to the apartment since we’re really only 4 blocks from the university to shower and clean up to go over to Carlos and Martha’s for dinner and post-field beers. For those who are unaware of typical archaeologist habits, drinking is a favorite past time ; )

While we were there I was able to copy a few tracks on to my computer from some of the CD’s that we were listening to of traditional Colombian music and am excited to have some new music in my library. It cooled off quite a bit today after some light rain which made for a nice, cool evening.

Sanctuario

It occurs to me that I never finished my entry the other day about our trip to Sanctuaria but, instead, caught up on the preceding day’s events. So, I shall fill in some blanks here....

Down here the work days vary for us but we work 6 days on and 1 day off, Sundays being our day off. Yesterday was a treat because it was Martha’s father, Joaquin’s, 70-somethingth birthday and so we all went to her parent’s farm in Sanctuario which is located a bit northeast of Pereira, about an hour- hour and a half away. Tony went ahead on the bus with Martha and the kids while Jen, Evie, and I went along with Carlos who explained a lot of the landscape, architecture, history, and so forth on the way. The roads there are extremely tight, winding, and dangerous at times, but it makes for an exciting ride. Sanctuario and Pereira are on sort of adjacent ranges of mountains and so you cross over a bit of savannah on the way as well. Many of the roads past the Cauca Valley that are up in the mountains where Sanctuario is are subject to landslides and there were a few points where the road narrowed due to part of it having crumbled off the outward side and down in to the valley. The good thing about the soil over in this region, however, is that it is very rocky and densely filled with sheetrock type material that helps keep things together a bit. Plants have to put their roots down through these rocks in order to gain the nutrients they need, but despite this, many coffee, sugar cane, banana, and plantain plants grow nicely in this area. 

The town of Sanctuario is quite small with very steep hills and streets at times, but is very quaint as well. Martha’s parents live down the mountain from the main part of town on a farm where they grow coffee, bananas, and plantains, among other things. I think that they may only sell the coffee and that any other plants they have are just for personal use, but alas, my memory hardly serves me well during the same day, let alone a day later so I cannot say for sure.

Her family was very welcoming and nice; they have a quaint house with a big wrap around porch and many many gorgeous flowers and plants that only add to the lovely scenery. Martha’s father, Joaquin, gave us a short tour of the land and facilities. We saw many coffee plants on their way to ripening (not just yet) but Tony showed us a neat trick of opening an almost ripe pod and sucking on the bean and its coating which has this sweet, nutty flavor that is quite good. He was also kind enough to show us where they wash and dry all of the beans and how to harvest yucca root....mmm yucca is so good!! Carlos explained to us that most of the coffee growers in the area export their beans while they are still green because roasting is expensive and beside a lot of places take pride now in roasting their beans in their own particular way once they get to wherever they’re going.

We didn’t stay for dinner or anything but had a nice little lunch and got to take in some awesome views, eat freshly picked bananas and play with some cute dogs so all in all it was a good trip. In Carlos and Martha’s car, only five passengers can be in it at a time, so I volunteered to walk back to town and take a bus back to Pereira with Carlos. Suffice it to say that the incline didn’t seem so bad in the car on the way down, albeit quite steep; we definitely got a workout on our walk back up at a pretty much constant 45 degree angle. Phew!

The bus ride back to Pereira was nice because the seats were a bit bigger and much better than being squashed three in a seat. Also Carlos was my personal tour guide explaining more about the landscape, Colombian lifestyle, and such which was really nice. He is such a warm person and loves to explain things and talk about Colombian architecture, agriculture, archaeology, and so on....all the a’s haha, but really he knows a lot about the area so he is the perfect person to know here.

The trip back was pretty quick (the minibus driver went much faster than Carlos, which made him a little uncomfortable and he mentioned it a couple times....reasonably so, though, because buses have gone off the roads of these mountains occasionally). Carlos and Martha gave us a ride to the La Catorce 14 or LA 14, a store not that far from our apartment actually. There we picked up some things to make pasta, rice, eggs, beans, various vegetables, a variety of hot sauces, of course, and some essential first aid type- field things to make life easier, but I of course forgot a few things because I kept forgetting to make a list.....damn brain. Anyway LA 14 is bizarre, things are not organized in aisles very well like bug spray was with the raid....anyway it’s like an all-purpose store with food, clothes, book supplies, and tons of more stuff. 

Unfortunately, the jar of jalapenos broke as we were bringing the groceries home because I tripped going up the stairs....guess I should have listened better when my mom said to pick up my feet when I walk. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up Sunday. After getting back to the apartment, Jen and I watched another episode of Boardwalk Empire, of which we have the first season, and called it a night.

KunFu Panda II

Hohhhhhhhlahhhhh. Today has been a surprisingly long day, given that it was our day off. I am exhausted and somewhat delirious, but am trying to recall yesterday’s activities so as to catch up here after skipping a day. We went out to the field as normal for the morning. The day started with a slight headache from the aloe vera licour, but nothing terrible. We managed to start and finish up three sections of the balk that had been left untouched, which felt good. We haven’t finished counting the assemblages or the paperwork for the units, but it was nice to accomplish something. We cleaned up the rest of the unit and rigged up gridlines for some photos, cleared away brush and bamboo from the edges and pretty much called it a day. Things have been a bit slow going so far, between a lack of communication and uncertainty of tasks, but I am hopeful that this will improve with the days we are here.

We had a chance to check out this jazz festival that the Technological University of Pereira was hosting. After eating a large and delicious lunch across the street, Jen, Evie, Nico (Carlos and Martha’s 15 yr old son) and I headed downtown to see the bands. Unfortunately, they were still setting up the stage and doing soundchecks when we got there even though we had arrived a bit after the start time listed on the flyer, but we did hear a couple of interesting groups warming up before we decided to bail. It was also starting to rain, and although it didn’t end up doing much, there was a bit of a constant drizzle so we opted to go to the local mall about 4 or 5 blocks away. The mall was interesting, they had some cool stores, but I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of them looked almost identical and merely had a different name, so I guess what I’m saying is there wasn’t too much diversity in the shop choices. In any case, we looked around for a bit before heading up to the top level to the Cinema Victoria. We had some time to kill and thought it might be enjoyable to go to a movie, however the only two films with English subtitles were X-Men and Sin Limites, both of which weren’t playing for a while as well. Instead we decided to see Kung Fu Panda II.....in SPANISH!! This turned out to be a pretty brilliant idea despite the fact that Jen and I are not exactly fluent or even very coherent of Spanish....gotta love cartoons;  but no it was really funny, probably funnier than I would have thought had I seen it in English, plus I understood a decent amount of the Spanish, of which I was proud.

After the movie, the four of us headed down to the plaza to check out a tented marketplace there. There were typical sort of goods of wooden jewelry, keychains, leather products, bags and things, but I didn’t buy anything. There were some interesting foods there as well; we got this stuff that sort of tasted like caramel-y ricotta cheese which was surprisingly tasty. We took a taxi back to Pereira to Carlos and Martha’s house and visited for a while (about two beers time haha) although by the time we had arrived, Pat and Tony seemed as if they had had quite a bit of rum.....each of the three bottles on the table were getting down to the dregs. Nico, meanwhile, was busy watching the rest of the football game in the other room of which the National team won. Carlos and Martha’s eldest son, David, whom we met today seemed to have celebrated a little too hard, but it was a really close and exciting game that came down to penalty shots and everything, so I can see why people were so excited over the victory in general.

So many sherds, so little time

Today was a sort of jimble jamble. We started out to the field around 8 and finished taking our units down the  arbitrary 10 cm which we will be doing for each level until we start getting in to the prehistoric stuff, the goods, at which point we will slow down and take more precautions. So far as we have been updated by Tony, they still have yet to find any charcoal samples or usable artifacts in their test pits, going down 2+ meters with the auger, which basically tunnels down in to the earth and results a core which is subsequently screened for such things. Oh, and for rocks, lithics. The soil down there is verrrrrrry clay-y though and seems to be pretty sterile, so it may be that we don’t do much more at this site than take down our main unit all the way and then start work on another site in order to get that earlier date we are after. 

Excavation was enjoyable today. We had good weather for most of the day, a bit cloudy but sunny as well and not too hot. I still managed to get a bit pink in the cheeks though! I keep thinking that the local Colombian archaeologists, botanists, etc must think we are crazy due to the wild banter that comes out of our units. Partly dehydration at times and partly just awesome, crazy personalities, Jen, Evie, and I tend to come up with some interesting jokes, comments, and songs; there are loads of obscure references and shenanigans. Good ol’ fashioned diggin in the dirt fun!

By the time we had finished up our respective units and gotten 30 cm below surface, we were ready to pack up and call it a day in the field. We stopped back at the apartment and headed to the lab to start paperwork and grabbed our laptops so we could check in with the rest of the world while we were at it. Counting the ceramic sherds from a 10 cm slice of soil might not sound that taxing, however, my unit had 699 and Jen’s section had 799!! 

After working in the lab for a bit we grabbed some grub at a delicious little food shack on campus, followed by frozen coffee drinks made with some sort of Colombian Nesquick equivalent, caramel-condensed milk, and of course, coffee. Sounds maybe weird, but was soooo yummy! Called it quits at the lab around 5ish and turned around to head over to Santa Rosa to meet up with some friends doing work there. It was too dark to really take in the sites as we made our way over the mountains to the north, Rio Altun, and over to Santa Rosa, but it was worth it. Although Pereira is nice, Santa Rosa is a really cute town with lots of activity in the main Plaza and is easy to walk around in as well. Our friend Nico has told us that many of the cities in this area have plazas dedicated to Simon Bolivar; going along with this is the Plaza de Bolivar in our own town of Pereira featuring an unclothed and seemingly fleshless Bolivar riding horseback. In Santa Rosa, the statue in the Plaza is a bit more conservative and what one would typically imagine of him on horseback raising a sword in the air. 

We met up with our friends and colleagues for a little rum and beer to start off the evening and then continued on to check out some of the well-known chorizo of the area. Aparrently we had just missed the Festival de Chorizo, so I can only imagine how delicious that must be, but the restaurant we went to was pretty good too. Had my first Colombian beer at dinner tonight, there are a few labels all of which are similar to a Pilsner, but the one I tried was Club Colombia which was quite delicious indeed.

After dinner we stopped over at Nico’s place for some more drinks before heading back to Pereira. Michael, the German archaeologist working in Santa Rosa, treated us all to his homemade aloe vera and honey licour which was interesting....not altogether terrible but had enough of a bite to begin with; it’s sort of dry stuff with a slightly sweet aftertaste that grows on you, but is most certainly an acquired taste. So far Colombia has been all about experiencing new and unexpected flavors; some bad, some realllllll good!! I am finding, though, that they seem to eat a lot of pastries here, cheesy, sweet, or otherwise, so we shall see just how much I weigh by the end of the trip lol : P

Met a lot of cool people at dinner, students working with Nico from another university here in Colombia; Andreas and Susanna. Michael, as I mentioned before, and Fransisco, this very talkative and interesting Spanish archaeologist; Nico and Susanna were telling a funny story about how Colombians have a hard time understanding Fransisco’s spanish and that, while he was trying to ask for directions to Pereira after first arriving here, people had confused his inquiry as a question to join him in his travels. So, while he thought he was simply asking for directions, people kept brushing him of saying ‘no, no thank you’ and promptly turning away from him. 

The night finally came to an end and Michael dropped the three of us back in Pereira. It’s about midnight here, but tomorrow’s another day of work so I think I’ll turn in for bed and catch up with y’all later.

travel, travel....dig, dig : )

Twas a long day of traveling yesterday on our way down to Pereira. Turns out I had my ‘Jens’ confused and the one that I would be flying with was my classmate in Professor Stewart’s ceramics course this past Spring. She’s in the doctorate program at Temple and made for a very enjoyable travel buddy. Our first flight started out with a bit of turbulence before we even left the ground, when an agitated father with five very young and exhausted children started a commotion in my row. To make a long story short, it ended in the flight attendant writing up his misbehavior on the airplane and my row getting complimentary snacks and cocktails. The disturbance could have been easily avoided, but I wasn’t gonna turn down a free drink!

After landing in Ft. Lauderdale we made our way around the terminals and checked in with Avianca airlines, went through security, again, and settled in for our three hour layover. Needless to say Ft. Lauderdale is not a very exciting or comfortable airport to hang out in, but the flight to Bogota more than made up for it. International flights don’t mess around; we were greeted with warm towels, pillows, blankets, cheesy tortellini dinner, flan, drinks, and on and on. And that was not a first class ticket, mind you. Props to Avianca!

Once in Bogota, it was a mad dash through the (very confusingly laid out) airport to find our gate and go through security once again. We ended up going through security a total of 3 times, one for each flight; I was beginning to wonder if I could even get any more ‘secure’ by the time we arrived in Pereira. It began to rain once we landed in Pereira. Tony, Carlos, and Martha met us at the airport and we journeyed to our new temporary field home of Carerra 27, No. 16-39, Apt 402. Car rides in Colombia have been interesting so far....stop signs are really more of a suggestion and autos always have the right-of-way. Our friend Nicolas who is working on a site over in Santa Maria learned that the hard way, but seems to be getting around well enough with help of a cane.

We slept in a bit this morning before heading to the field, although I can’t say I slept much at all between the wave of allergies I got smacked in the face with after landing and the adjustment to my lumpy bed pad. I am very much looking foreward to sleep tonight, however, I need some solid zzz’s. Carlos picked us up and took us for a little ‘tour’ around Pereira around 9. We had checked out the little cafe across the street and gotten some much needed coffee and breakfast pastries. 

We drove down in to the heart of downtown Pereira and up in to the mountains to the north, then worked our way back and around to the southern area of town where our site is. Pereira is a fairly built up area and continues to grow and expand; with a population of about 600,000-700,000 peoples. Our site, however is sort of off to itself, though it is located just off the main road. A lot of this area used to be covered in coffee farms and in some areas there are still plantains and other things being grown, but the agriculture has greatly decreased. 

A local source of salt water is not far from our site along with the Canto River which runs under the road we take to get from our apartment to the site. The salt water source, we think, is very important to the location of prehistoric peoples here and the enormous amount of ceramic sherd assemblages is also indicative of that. The ceramics, however, are more of a nuisance than anything else at the moment as we are more interested in getting farther down in to the pre-ceramic territory and finding lithics, stone tools or other cultural material that would be indicative of early food processing and/or agriculture. The earliest carbon date we have for the site at this point is 5700 yBp, but Tony thinks and would like to be able to get a solid date even further back. 

Due to a lot of previous work done in the area, it would not be surprising if this area of South America was the center point around which much agriculture and domestication spread, but we need to gather more evidence before being able to say so definitively.

Anyhow I’m starting to get a bit tired of writing and am interested in figuring out what the deal is for dinner, so I think I’ll call it a day here with this. Hopefully I will have more adventures to share about such exciting things as grocery shopping for our sad and very sparse apartment here haha.

Ciao.