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 : )