Have you ever wondered about integrating accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C data with stratigraphic evidence using Bayesian statistical models? Us neither. Yet, here we are, presenting you with two articles on the subject. Led by Ph.D. Candidate Mr. Matthew Longstaffe, the manuscripts discuss our own attempts at the above to help refine our Alabama Townsite chronologies alongside other lines of evidence.

Want to learn more, but afraid you may not understand? Try this version from the most recent volume of Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, which is written (as much as it can be) toward a more public audience alongside academic, and focuses on a single house group at Alabama.

Do you already know what we’re talking about? Try this First View version from the journal Radiocarbon, which looks at multiple house groups:

We would like to thank all SCRAP team members for their hard work and dedication that went into producing the primary field data for this research (see additional acknowledgements at the end of each article).

In November, we were fortunate to be asked by our friends at the Institute of Maya Studies, Inc to present on SCRAP’s 10 years of research. In case you missed the talk titled “Small-Town Maya Archaeology in Belize: 10 Years of Community-Engaged Research at the Alabama Townsite,” IMS has generously permitted us to share their link to the recording. The talk starts around min. 4 and runs for roughly 45 min, plus a question/answer period. Enjoy! https://www.instituteofmayastudies.org/peuramaki-brown…/

Thanks so much to Futurum Careers for approaching us about creating learning resources about archaeology and our SCRAP project.

Follow the link to read the full article online and download related resources, including an activity sheet suitable for junior high to high school levels. https://futurumcareers.com/how-are-archaeologists-uncovering-the-secrets-of-an-ancestral-maya-boomtown

Futurum Careers is a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

In 2022, we asked a young and talented Mopan-Yucatecan filmmaker, Mr. Marroquin Saqui (@young.saki on Instagram), if he would be interested in making a short film about SCRAP and archaeology in Belize—or anything to do with the Ancestral Maya townsite of Alabama (ancient name currently unknown). We’re so happy he agreed, and during our 2023 field season, he came out to site with us on multiple occasions to film and interview our team. For International Archaeology Day 2023 (October 21), we are premiering this wonderfully artistic film, which also includes animation work by Marroquin’s cousin, Mr. Rudy Saqui. We’re so happy with what they have produced, and we are already planning future collaborations. Please enjoy!

“Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project.” Film by Marroquin Saqui, animations by Rudy Saqui. 2023.

**WE RECOMMEND ENABLING SUBTITLES/CLOSED CAPTIONING ON YOUTUBE (you should see white-on-black text at bottom of screen)**

Funding for our research and outreach activities is provided in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Athabasca University. All archaeological activities were permitted by the Belize Institute of Archaeology, along with permissions from property owners and local community leadership. Audio and visual permissions were granted from all film participants. #IAD2023 #scraparky #belizeheritage #mayaworld #stanncreekdistrict #archaeology

Hi everyone.

This Saturday, October 21, 2023, is International Archaeology Day! We have a special bit of content that we’ll be sharing with you on that day, so please make sure to watch it here or on our Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube channels/feeds.

Also, we wanted to apologize for cutting our field blog series short this summer (I think we were missing one last one). We had a crazy final couple of weeks (more on that another time) and just did not get back to it. You can see some of what was happening on our social media feeds. The season ended really well and we now have clear plans for our next field season, which will hopefully be in 2025, as we’re taking a break in 2024 to apply for new funding and to finish up some writing.

Cheers to everyone!

Meaghan

Our Principal Investigator, Dr. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown, wrote this week’s blog post. Although this starts out as a “me, me, me” piece, please hold on until the end, where you’ll see it is very much not!

I had no idea what to write about this week—I like to assign blog posts for others to write but regularly dread writing my own. I could have talked about what we’ve been finding this season, but I’ll leave that for next week, our final week of excavations. So, I thought I’d write about what it is I do as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project (SCRAP)—well, at least some of what I do.

Belize’s Institute of Archaeology (IA) requires one individual to take on the PI role of a research project/ program, even though we have multiple co-directors on SCRAP. The PI is the individual responsible for preparing, conducting, and administering a research project. In Belize, the PI must have a Ph.D. in Archaeology or Anthropology and have a minimum of 5 years of experience working in the Maya or Caribbean region. Additionally, they must have “employment and be in good standing with an accredited academic institution.”

However, hanging everything on one person is dangerous. What if something were to happen to me? That is why we also have an Associate Investigator—typically, Dr. Shawn Morton is ours for SCRAP. This individual is as familiar with all the project’s inner workings and can step in for the PI if necessary. For those who follow our Old Bezanson Archaeology Project (@obaparky on social media), Shawn is our PI there, while I serve as the Associate Investigator–as a result, we take turns sharing the load for our two projects! Reminds me of the old Sesame Street song, “Cooperation, makes it happen! Cooperation, working together!”

My primary role as PI is charting our project’s overarching research direction and design, with input from our co-directors (Dr. Shawn and Dr. Jill Jordan) and, whenever possible, local community members. This includes integrating others’ research desires and plans, such as those of graduate students. I’m also responsible for applying for our annual permits and the grants that fund our research. We’re currently finishing up a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant. We will apply for a future SSHRC Partnership Development grant to expand our Alabama research to other parts of the Stann Creek District and formally incorporate Belizean-Maya organizations as partners in the research. But more on that another time. Most of this work happens before we arrive at the field site, though the local consultation I engage with happens year-round.

If it seems as though I’m not in many of the field photos you see on social media, it’s because I’m often behind the camera, helping to document the day-to-day of our research (#scraparky #realarchaeology) and busy taking general notes. In the field, I also ensure everyone stays on task, provide ongoing advice on best approaches, and warn them when some strategies seem destined to fail (e.g., “That tarp set-up will not protect you or your unit from rain”). I always want to supervise my own excavations and relive the joy and relatively “simpler” times of my archaeological career, but I rarely get the opportunity to do so. This often causes me to live vicariously through (and annoy) excavation supervisors who get to be in the thick of the “real archaeology” each day. To be honest, I’m often a pain in the ass, after which I feel like a hag who should quickly retreat to the hovel from whence she came.

Over the years, as we have become a more established presence in the district, we’ve acquired more and more responsibilities as well as connections, networks, and communities that now seek us out for any number of reasons—these elements are what occupy most of my time while in Belize. Often, I have to leave the field site to deal with any number of tasks. I fetch a lot of stuff for the rest of the crew so they can do their jobs properly. I also prepare and implement our health and safety plans, organize food and accommodations, manage our finances, handle pay/social security, and plan and conduct outreach activities (including social media elements) with various advisers and representatives. I liaise with the IA on a number of matters, which at times requires me to travel to Belmopan. I’m also serving as interim lab director this year, as our actual lab director and project co-director, Dr. Jill, could only be in the field for a short time this season.

The details of my role have shifted over the years as our project has grown. Here are some of the additional tasks I took on each season in addition to those mentioned above and below:

• 2014-2015: I was on the ground with our small team surveying (walking, observing) along every orchard row of the Alabama property. Those were extra hot and tiring years! Mr. Juan Paquiul, who still works with us today, was also part of that work.
• 2016: This was our first year of excavations, uncovering small house mounds in the settlement, so I was training field supervisors and local field assistants on our excavation methods and recording while Dr. Shawn mapped the monumental core (“downtown”) of the Alabama site. Mr. Idelfonso Cal was with us that year and is still helping to train new field assistants.
• 2017: This year, we took a short break at the end of our one grant while we applied for the next. I spent much of the year writing about and presenting the results of our first three seasons. Also, I returned to Belize to do some outreach in schools and present at the annual, public-oriented Belize Archaeology Symposium.
• 2018: We hosted an undergraduate field school, so much of my time revolved around organizing, directing, and accommodating our group of students alongside our research team. Mr. Justino Chiac joined our team at this stage and, thankfully, has remained!
• 2019: I actually supervised my own excavations!
• 2022-2023: These last two years have primarily been filled with outreach and getting our artifact assemblages and type collections in good working order for future researchers.
• 2024: This coming year will be full of partnership and consultation meetings to plan future stages of research for SCRAP, as well as lots of writing!

I also must keep updated on local cultural, economic, and political developments, particularly as they pertain to SCRAP—this is challenging but necessary and requires me to talk with (“network”—blah! I hate that term!) many diverse peoples, communities, and organizations across the district and beyond. This is inherently challenging as I often suffer from significant social anxiety. But it helps that Belizeans are extremely welcoming people and are intrinsically interested in their pasts and not shy when providing insight and feedback; working with people in the Maya communities of the Stann Creek District is particularly rewarding.

I’m responsible for coordinating the pulling together of our field results each season. These come in the form of a preliminary report, submitted to the IA before I leave the country, and include copies of ALL our documentation from excavations (e.g., notebooks, forms, artifact counts/catalogues, photographs, spatial data). Then, before we are granted our subsequent permit (these are given annually), we must submit our final report, which is a detailed write-up of our results, including layer-by-layer descriptions of our excavations. These reports are typically 100s of pages long. We present all final reports to the IA and post them on our project website. Using information from these reports, I coordinate academic and public presentations for our team members to give and help publish articles, news stories, etc., about our work. In fact, right now, we’re writing a book all about our project—if you see me, Dr. Shawn, or Dr. Jill, with our heads down in our computers, that’s likely what we’re up to as our manuscript is due to the publishers in August 2024!

Being the PI of a research team in Belize is a lot of work, but suggesting you do it alone is disingenuous. An essential part of being a PI is gathering a group of dedicated, intelligent, qualified, eager, and trustworthy individuals who can ultimately do the job with little required interference from you. You must also be willing and able to delegate to these other capable team members (not an easy task for many of us control freaks). Over the 7 field seasons of our project, we’ve gathered a fantastic group of Belizean, Canadian, and American researchers and assistants and an excellent network of supporters, advisers, and colleagues. I’m really proud of our small team.

Finally, being PI requires you to constantly think about the future and ask what it is we contribute to Belize and local communities—beyond just providing “knowledge”—and how we can continually improve. That is both the challenge and the reward!

Cheers from “The Field,”
Meaghan

While this season’s second and third blog posts focused on “Lasts” and “Firsts,” this post, by Ph.D. Candidate Matt Longstaffe, is all about “Transitions” or “Shifting Gears.” Enjoy!

After a few hours of bouncing along an old logging road and saying my goodbyes to Yaxnohcah, the truck turns onto the paved road travelled by most people who visit the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. This nature preserve – today one of the largest protected sub-perennial rainforests in the world (7,231 km², or 14% of the Mexican state of Campeche) – is home to numerous Maya towns and cities, including its namesake, the archaeological site of Calakmul. This city was home to the infamous Kaanul dynasty, or “snake dynasty,” one of the major political players of the Maya world during the Classic period (AD 250-800). The city and its surrounding regions were among the most densely populated areas of the Maya lowlands. Passing through the biosphere, this is readily apparent: at every turn, the landscape is dotted with house mounds and house groups (small, large, and enormous), temples, marketplaces, plazas, ancient roadways, reservoirs, fields, terraces, and so much more.

Before joining SCRAP for the 2023 field season, I was undertaking archaeological research at Yaxnohcah, located about 20 km southeast of the site center of Calakmul, just one of the many cities in the biosphere. Since beginning my Ph.D. (with a hiatus during COVID-19 travel restrictions), I have split my time between Yaxnohcah and Alabama, as both sites are essential for my dissertation research (you can read about this in my field post from last year). So, after a few weeks in the Yaxnohcah camp and some well-earned days of rest in the bank, I arrive in Belize to join the SCRAP crew.

For many reasons, shifting gears takes work.

First, the archaeology is vastly different. Alabama was a small town near the eastern edge of the ancestral Maya world. At the same time, Yaxnohcah was a large, sprawling city in a densely populated landscape. The environments are vastly different, which creates an extraordinary array of choices and strategies. As archaeologists, we observe this in the ways people made their livelihoods. For instance, we know that the Alabama Maya made their house platforms out of clay faced with granite blocks; at Yaxnohcah, in contrast, house platforms were typically made of limestone cobbles and boulders and faced with cut limestone blocks. Obsidian, a material that we find quite a lot of at Alabama, is rare at Yaxnohcah. This may speak to differences in access to this imported material between these two sites (or perhaps the preferences of the people who lived in these settlements).

There are differences between and within Belize and Mexico along various cultural, linguistic, historical, political, and social lines. As a native English speaker (and a relatively novice Spanish speaker), communication becomes more straightforward once I am in Belize. That said, just as listening and communicating in Spanish when doing fieldwork in Mexico is an enriching experience, one of my favourite things about researching at Alabama is learning and working with members of the adjacent community, Maya Mopan. Every day, I hear and, from time to time, learn a little Mopan, and about the histories and interests of our Maya Mopan team members.

Finally, although the process of conducting archaeology is essentially the same regardless of where you are working – excavating, record keeping, cataloging artifacts, analyses, and report writing – archaeological projects with different histories, people, goals, and research objectives will operate in slightly different ways.

Now firmly settled into Belize, the backfill from last year’s excavations units has been removed, and I am back into the swing of things. Excavation has begun, artifacts have begun to be processed, and with each passing day, we are learning more and more about people who lived at ancient Alabama and building new relationships along the way.

Shifting gears is challenging, but in the end, having new experiences and gaining additional perspectives make it all worth it.

This week’s blog is by Canadian undergraduate student Riley Steidel, who joined SCRAP this year as a field assistant/volunteer. While last week’s blog by Dave talked about “Lasts,” Riley’s blog focuses on “Firsts.”

It was nearly one year ago exactly when I contacted Dr. Meaghan and Dr. Shawn for the first time in the small hope of being able to work on their Alberta-based Old Bezanson Archaeology Project (OBAP; see @obaparky on Facebook/Instagram). It didn’t exactly feel like something that would pan out for me (despite my best attempts at optimism, disappointment is often the rule rather than the exception). Still, I’ve habitually jumped at opportunities, no matter how far-fetched they seem. It turns out that working on OBAP wasn’t as ludicrous as it first appeared. They hired me that summer, and I got to work on an archaeological “dig” for the first time.

That experience in Bezanson solidified my introduction to archaeology. Before that summer, I was still humming and hawing over what I would inevitably do at university, with my degree, and in the workforce. While it’s impossible to say definitively what will happen in the coming years, I can confidently say that my path seems more straightforward. Now that I am in Belize (another situation where I anticipated disappointment), I am getting an altogether new perspective on things, but one that does nothing to dampen my resolve.

Back in Alberta, I drove to the site around eight every morning. I was staying at home, sleeping in my own bed, and living the same as I had been for most of my life. Working in Belize has been different. Here, I hear other languages (e.g., Mopan, Belizean Kriol, Spanish), taste different foods, see new plants (funnily enough, one of my greatest interests), and live altogether differently. One evening a few days ago paints this picture quite perfectly.

The season’s first rain had just fallen, and we were invited to join Mr. Ernesto and Ms. Aurora’s family for dinner. As always, the food was home-cooked and delicious. The menu on this particular night was a lovely turkey soup with a side of rice and candied pumpkin. To drink was this absolutely delectable rice juice (“Horchata”). After we finished dinner, Mr. Ernesto stood up. He told us we were entering the planting season for corn, an important staple crop in the Maya diet. He explained that traditionally, Maya would do certain things to predict how the crops would fare. One such activity is Bul or Puluk. In this game, two or four players try to get as many points as possible by going from one side of a board to another, moving according to four pieces of corn marked on one side—essentially, two-sided dice. It sounded like a fun game, and I was honoured to participate in it as SCRAP’s representative! It was a fun game, even though I wasn’t particularly good, and I was up until midnight playing with everyone. It was tough waking up the following day to head into the field, but it was well worth it!

So what am I getting from all this?

The first thing is a new perspective on how archaeology is done in Belize as compared to my experience in Alberta and seeing another country’s actions toward their Indigenous Peoples. Both are critical topics that have the potential to be very applicable to my future back home. Another important aspect is our personal interactions with the communities within which we operate. It can be seen in how we, as project members, take part in local traditions, be it Bul, a blessing and offering ceremony by Mr. Ernesto and Ms. Aurora, or any of a dozen small customs that are a part of the daily life of the Maya Peoples we work and live with. The honour I feel for being allowed to partake in, and the respect I see in the project for these crucial traditions, give me hope for the future of archaeology because if one project can do it, all of us should be able to.

I wasn’t sure what I would do at school a year ago. Six months ago, I was pretty confident I was on the path that I had chosen. Now, as I sit in the darkness of another Belizean night, I am sure. I know it is a long road ahead, a practically unfathomable distance before me. I don’t know where, when, or with whom I will work. Still, I can confidently say that archaeology will be a part of my future. I hope each new experience—each of my “Firsts”—will show me new perspectives that I can carry forward in school, work, and life.