LA PATRONA
March 13, 2007
March 13, 2007
In memoriam….
O.K., so clearly, I am not good at this whole “regular updates” thing. Those of you who feel miffed because I don’t write more often can feel good about the fact that it clearly isn’t personal!
But this time, I have REALLY good excuses! The happy news from Mexico at the moment is that I have just finished eight weeks of excavations (and turned up lots of cool stuff!). More on that soon….
The not happy news is that my project director passed away a few weeks ago rather suddenly. He was diagnosed with cancer last summer, but seemed to be responding well to treatment. He and his family, and the doctors for that matter, were feeling positive and cheerful. He d
ecided that he was well enough to teach a few courses at Connecticut College this spring, and he even gave the first day of lectures. Unfortunately, it turned out that his radiation treatments were just making the spread of his tumors undetectable. While he was undergoing treatment, they ran rampant and spread throughout his body. Two days after giving his first lecture, he was admitted to the hospital. Twenty-four hours after that, I got the message from his son that he wasn’t expected to survive the weekend. He hung on for a week, and he got to spend a little more time with his family and his new grandson and to say goodbye.
Leaving aside the whole personal grieving from a distance, worrying about his wife, not being there to support the family or say goodbye awfulness of it all, it has made for a sad and lonely time here in the field. I’ve been on my own here for quite awhile, but I always knew I could pick up the phone and discuss the project with Harold and ask his advice. All of the sudden, it’s all me. Every decision about the excavations is mine and mine alone. In archaeology, there is rarely a right or wrong answer to any decision. Mostly, we just have to weigh all the options and try and decide what fits best within time and money constraints. In my experience, the best way to do this is to kick around ideas with lots of people and get everybody’s view on what will or won’t work.
Even though I had ten employees, Mexico is a very hierarchical kind of place, and nobody really wanted to leap in and discuss options. It didn’t matter how much I encouraged group input, asking them what they thought just caused a whole lot of discomfort. Everybody would look at each other and shift from one foot to the other. Finally, someone in the group would say, “Oh, whatever you think is best, patrona.”
So here I am. La Patrona.
Somehow, I muddled through. If I made any wrong decisions (which I won’t know until I’ve finished the artifact analysis), it is probably for the best. Any decision that would have resulted in more artifacts would have been an issue. As it currently stands, I can’t get to my couch due to the few hundred 5 gallon bags full of artifacts and soil samples in my living room. They are full of lots of fun stuff. Ceramics and bones and stone tools and little figurines. I’m certain that Harold is happy we managed to keep digging and is as excited as I am by all the interesting things we found!
So, to recap….
Eight weeks ago, after returning from Christmas in the states, I began excavations. I hired a field assistant, Su Lin, after my original field assistant, Adriana, quit the night before we were supposed to start digging. Some might view this as another negative chapter in the drama that has plagued this project for the last year, but I didn’t find it to be a problem at all. In fact, I think it was rather a blessing! Last summer, my friend Kim, who has a way with words, nicknamed her “Twisty Knickers.” I remain uncertain if this was due to the fact that after meeting with my “assistant” I would come home with my knickers in a twist, or due to the fact that my assistant’s general attitude was indicative of a certain level of knotting in her undergarments. Regardless, the change in personnel made for a much smoother couple of months!
We began ex
cavations with only six workers rather than a full complement of eight as we intended, but we were happy to take what we could get and finally start! Once word spread in the village, our numbers slowly increased. After telling our workers that we needed more people to help, they showed up at the beginning of the second week with a half dozen children between the ages of 8 and 13. The youngest of the children were actually the local animal herders, and so brought with them approximately 6 cows, 15 goats, a dozen sheep, a donkey and assorted dogs. To keep things exciting in the dog department, one of my workers also arrived daily with all 10 of his dogs.
My days in early childhood education came flooding back as I spent the first few days of that week trying to deal with the fact that I was now not just the patrona of The Acocotla Project but also, apparently, the patrona of The Acocotla Day Care and Petting Zoo (Central Mexican’s first Hacienda Day Care!). After breaking up the umpteenth doggie battle and shooing the donkey out of one of the excavation units (again!), I decided enough was enough. I took the spokesman of the workers aside and explained that if the Mexican Government or funding agencies found out I was employing children, I was going to have a problem, and that my patron could visit at any time and there would be trouble!
Making yourself the subject of somebody else’s authority is always a good negotiating tactic in rural Mexico. Everybody understands having to answer to SOMEBODY in a village like the one I work in, and NOBODY wants to come to the notice of the government for any reason at all! My problem with our demographics was immediately understood on these terms, and my foreman apologized and promised to find some older workers for the next day.
Slowly our workforce built up, bit by bit, as word made its way around the adult population of the village that there was a cash salary to be made out at the Hacienda. I had soon exceeded my complement of workers (all adults this time), and things were truly under way!
O.K., so clearly, I am not good at this whole “regular updates” thing. Those of you who feel miffed because I don’t write more often can feel good about the fact that it clearly isn’t personal!
But this time, I have REALLY good excuses! The happy news from Mexico at the moment is that I have just finished eight weeks of excavations (and turned up lots of cool stuff!). More on that soon….
The not happy news is that my project director passed away a few weeks ago rather suddenly. He was diagnosed with cancer last summer, but seemed to be responding well to treatment. He and his family, and the doctors for that matter, were feeling positive and cheerful. He d
ecided that he was well enough to teach a few courses at Connecticut College this spring, and he even gave the first day of lectures. Unfortunately, it turned out that his radiation treatments were just making the spread of his tumors undetectable. While he was undergoing treatment, they ran rampant and spread throughout his body. Two days after giving his first lecture, he was admitted to the hospital. Twenty-four hours after that, I got the message from his son that he wasn’t expected to survive the weekend. He hung on for a week, and he got to spend a little more time with his family and his new grandson and to say goodbye.Leaving aside the whole personal grieving from a distance, worrying about his wife, not being there to support the family or say goodbye awfulness of it all, it has made for a sad and lonely time here in the field. I’ve been on my own here for quite awhile, but I always knew I could pick up the phone and discuss the project with Harold and ask his advice. All of the sudden, it’s all me. Every decision about the excavations is mine and mine alone. In archaeology, there is rarely a right or wrong answer to any decision. Mostly, we just have to weigh all the options and try and decide what fits best within time and money constraints. In my experience, the best way to do this is to kick around ideas with lots of people and get everybody’s view on what will or won’t work.
Even though I had ten employees, Mexico is a very hierarchical kind of place, and nobody really wanted to leap in and discuss options. It didn’t matter how much I encouraged group input, asking them what they thought just caused a whole lot of discomfort. Everybody would look at each other and shift from one foot to the other. Finally, someone in the group would say, “Oh, whatever you think is best, patrona.”
So here I am. La Patrona.
Somehow, I muddled through. If I made any wrong decisions (which I won’t know until I’ve finished the artifact analysis), it is probably for the best. Any decision that would have resulted in more artifacts would have been an issue. As it currently stands, I can’t get to my couch due to the few hundred 5 gallon bags full of artifacts and soil samples in my living room. They are full of lots of fun stuff. Ceramics and bones and stone tools and little figurines. I’m certain that Harold is happy we managed to keep digging and is as excited as I am by all the interesting things we found!
So, to recap….
Eight weeks ago, after returning from Christmas in the states, I began excavations. I hired a field assistant, Su Lin, after my original field assistant, Adriana, quit the night before we were supposed to start digging. Some might view this as another negative chapter in the drama that has plagued this project for the last year, but I didn’t find it to be a problem at all. In fact, I think it was rather a blessing! Last summer, my friend Kim, who has a way with words, nicknamed her “Twisty Knickers.” I remain uncertain if this was due to the fact that after meeting with my “assistant” I would come home with my knickers in a twist, or due to the fact that my assistant’s general attitude was indicative of a certain level of knotting in her undergarments. Regardless, the change in personnel made for a much smoother couple of months!
We began ex
cavations with only six workers rather than a full complement of eight as we intended, but we were happy to take what we could get and finally start! Once word spread in the village, our numbers slowly increased. After telling our workers that we needed more people to help, they showed up at the beginning of the second week with a half dozen children between the ages of 8 and 13. The youngest of the children were actually the local animal herders, and so brought with them approximately 6 cows, 15 goats, a dozen sheep, a donkey and assorted dogs. To keep things exciting in the dog department, one of my workers also arrived daily with all 10 of his dogs.My days in early childhood education came flooding back as I spent the first few days of that week trying to deal with the fact that I was now not just the patrona of The Acocotla Project but also, apparently, the patrona of The Acocotla Day Care and Petting Zoo (Central Mexican’s first Hacienda Day Care!). After breaking up the umpteenth doggie battle and shooing the donkey out of one of the excavation units (again!), I decided enough was enough. I took the spokesman of the workers aside and explained that if the Mexican Government or funding agencies found out I was employing children, I was going to have a problem, and that my patron could visit at any time and there would be trouble!
Making yourself the subject of somebody else’s authority is always a good negotiating tactic in rural Mexico. Everybody understands having to answer to SOMEBODY in a village like the one I work in, and NOBODY wants to come to the notice of the government for any reason at all! My problem with our demographics was immediately understood on these terms, and my foreman apologized and promised to find some older workers for the next day.
Slowly our workforce built up, bit by bit, as word made its way around the adult population of the village that there was a cash salary to be made out at the Hacienda. I had soon exceeded my complement of workers (all adults this time), and things were truly under way!
Over the course of the eight weeks, we excavated five rooms in the workers quarters and an enormous midden (archaeology speak for a pile of trash!). In the summer of 2005, we excavated a small test unit, just a one meter by one meter, and found what we thought must be a midden. This year, our plan was to expand that area and get as much as we could out of it. For a historical archaeologist, the only thing better than a midden is an outhouse (awesome preservation due to moisture and the place where people hid all the trash they didn’t want anybody to know about!). When planning it this year, I thought to myself, “Well, I’ll just go ahead and dig a HUGE area to make sure we get the whole midden,” and I figured it would be quick work. HA HA. Famous last archaeological words!
We opened up what I thought was a big area, 5 meters by 2 meters, with last year’s little test pit right in the center. When we were down below the surface by about a meter, I realized that we were still smack in the center of what was turning out to be a VERY BIG midden. We dug and dug and dug and dug for weeks and weeks and weeks. Literally. I put trenches off it in all directions trying to find the edge. After a week of trenches, I still didn’t have the edge of the midden, but I did have a building we didn’t know existed. To be accurate, I had approximately 12 inches by 12 inches of collapsed wall in the very end and very bottom of a trench. Peeking out from underneath it was the tiniest bit of plaster floor.
So again we dug and dug and dug and dug… We reached the end of the collapsed wall, feeling very good about things, the week before we had to start filling the excavations up again. As we cleaned the edge, one of the workers said, “How come there are some bricks here?”
I looked down into the pit, and sure enough, there at the bottom, was the edge of a beautifully laid brick floor. I took a deep breath.
And we dug and dug and dug some more….
By the end of the excavations, we had uncovered everything. But don’t ask me what it is just yet! I’m not prepared to guess until I’ve had some time in the lab with the artifacts.
Over the last week, as I’ve talked to a few people over the phone, a number of people have said to me, “You’re done? But what are you going to do now!?!? I thought you were there to dig!”
Very simply, the bulk of my work is only now just beginning. Digging is the quick, easy part of things. As a general rule, for every one day we spend digging in the field, an archaeologist needs 6 days in the laboratory to process and analyze the artifacts. Since Mexico prohibits my bringing artifacts back to the States, all that work has to be done here. I have a lab set up in my house, I’ve programmed a database, and now I’m beginning the “important” work. When you are out in the field digging, all sorts of wild interpretations run wild through your head. You are out in the sun in a high altitude desert, where you spend eight hours a day five days a week doing heavy physical labor. There is no shade, you’ve run out of water, it is 95 degrees, and you have
n’t had time to sleep more than four hours a night since excavations began. Your brain starts writing all sorts of stories. It is the really fun part of archaeological fieldwork (and no, I’m not being sarcastic! It really is a blast!). But the truth is, until you get back to the lab, plug all the info into a database, and run a bunch of statistical analyses, those stories are nothing but semi-delusional, water-deprived fantasies. 
So, keep tuning in to find out what it was I dug! I’ll let y’all know as soon as I decide myself!
And that is it for now. I think it is time for bed here. Next time, check in for pics of my favorite artifacts (like this one!)!
And that is it for now. I think it is time for bed here. Next time, check in for pics of my favorite artifacts (like this one!)!
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