Well, we made it through Week 1, despite having rain almost every day. Shawn and his crew were busy clearing the epicentre in order to start topographic mapping, and the map is already looking impressive! Out in the settlement, our crew finished surveying an entire property block (a big one), locating many additional pre-Columbian mounds along with the remains of the old banana plantation barracks. We also located some new granite sources, which made Tawny very happy, and collected some clay samples for our ceramic sourcing study. Next week, we will continue with the settlement survey and epicentre mapping, as well as visit some possible quarry locations on the property. Cheers from Belize! Meaghan

Well, we arrived safely in Belize a couple weeks ago and received our permit from the Institute of Archaeology. Last week was spent at the Belize Archaeology and Anthropology Symposium in San Ignacio, and today we (me, Shawn, Tawny, Lisa, Jesucita, and Brittany) arrived in Stann Creek. Tomorrow morning we head out to the site to meet some of our colleagues and field assistants from Maya Mopan, and to look around the site and decide our final strategy for the season.

Another update to come after Week 1 is over!

Cheers from Belize!

Meaghan

Hi Everyone,

Well, I (Meaghan) am off to Belize tomorrow morning! I’m arriving early in order to meet with the Director of Archaeology this week to (hopefully) pick up the 2015 permit. Then, I am off to Stann Creek to finalize all our project arrangements.

Next week is the 2015 Belize Archaeology and Anthropology Symposium. The SCRAP presentation will be on Wednesday morning (see attached schedule). If you are in San Ignacio, come check it out!

Shawn Morton is finishing up his season in the Central Belize-Caves Branch region and will be joining us for the conference and then the SCRAP field season. Tawny Tibbits is already in the country, traveling around to test granite outcrops and artifacts. She will be meeting up with me at the end of this week for the quick prep-trip to Stann Creek. Lisa Green, Jesucita Guerra, and Brittany Johnson will be meeting up with the rest of the team at the BAAS, then we make our way out to Stann Creek on July 5th and are in the field on the 6th!

Keep checking back to our site for updates from the field!

I have added two of our conference papers to the site (see the “Presentations” tab), and will add our BAAS paper as soon as it has been presented.

Cheers!

Meaghan

Hello Everyone,

Just a couple project updates.

We would like to congratulate one of our new project members, Shawn Morton, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on April 13, 2015 at the University of Calgary! His dissertation is titled Pahn-Ti-Pan: The Rise and Fall of Complex Socio-Political and Economic Systems as Attested in Subterranean Site Contexts of Central Belize, C.A. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Shawn!

Another bit of news. SCRAP now owns it’s own total station! We may have to have a competition to name it. We decided on a Nikon DTM-322 (http://www.nikonpositioning.com/dtm-322.aspx). This was an economical, easy-to-use, lightweight option, and we have already been out in the beautiful Calgary spring sunshine testing the machine by mapping park garden beds. This piece of equipment will be used to re-map the Alabama epicentre this season.

Some project members are off to work in the Calakmul Biosphere (Campeche, Mexico) in May, but we will be in Belize as of June for the second season of SCRAP. We will once again keep you posted with weekly (or more frequent) updates on our season.

Cheers!

Meaghan

Hi Everyone!

I wanted to let you all know that the final report of our 2014 season is posted under the “Publications” tab.

I just submitted the report to the Belize Institute of Archaeology this morning, and had a meeting with the Director of Archaeology to submit our application for the 2015 permit. It is shaping up to be a great season, during which we will complete our GPS survey of the settlement (1.5km2 to go); surface collect artifacts from all settlement sites in order to create a preliminary settlement chronology and to pinpoint areas for excavation in 2016; geochemically characterize and source granite, ceramic, and obsidian materials; and create a new total station map of the epicentre, including the new structures we found in 2014.

Also, Tawny Tibbits (a new project member) and I will be presenting on our research at the upcoming annual meetings of the Canadian Archaeological Association in St. John’s, Newfoundland in late April/early May (visit http://www.mun.ca/caa2015/intro.html). If you can make it, we’d love to see you there!

Cheers from Stann Creek, Belize!

Meaghan

Hello and welcome to our new project website and blog! Below are the blog posts from our 2014 crowdsource funding page, https://experiment.com/projects/city-growth-and-trade-at-the-ancient-maya-site-of-alabama-in-belize, where we raised over $5000 for our inaugural field season (thank you again to all our wonderful supporters). I have copied the posts here in order to get everyone caught up on our project’s recent activities.

I am in the middle of completing our final report of the 2014 investigations, and as soon as it is submitted to the Institute of Archaeology – Belize (this will happen in February), I will post it under the “Publications” page for all to read.

For 2015, we have some changes to our crew. A couple folks are leaving, and a couple new members are joining our team (see Project Members page). We welcome Shawn Morton and Tawny Tibbits, who are both amazing young scholars and are looking forward to their first SCRAP season!

That’s all for now. Cheers!

Meaghan

The SCRAP team has completed our third (and final) successful week of the 2014 project! It was hot and humid as we raced to complete the pedestrian survey of the area surrounding the site epicenter. We also had a chance to hike out along some of the creeks on the property to locate some of the sources for the rock used in epicentre architectural (monumental)  construction.

We spent our last day in the village going around to thank our hosts for all of their kind hospitality! Talk about leaving everything out on the field– our crew was amazing this year, and we could not have completed our goals without Morgan, Julilla, and the three workers from the village.

With the successful end of the project, we are back at our respective universities, working on writing up the field season, and looking forward to next year’s excavations. Meaghan has taken up a Visiting Scholar position at MARI/Tulane in New Orleans, and Sonja has started teaching at Penn State Erie. We will soon begin the planning process for next year, including seeking grant support.

As Jean Luc would say… “Make it so!!”.

Meaghan and Sonja

Well, we have completed Week 2 of the Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project at the Alabama Site, and other than nursing some very tender feet and sore muscles, we couldn’t be happier with our progress!

All week we (myself, Sonja, Morgan, Julilla, and three assistants from the village) were out surveying the settlement within a kilometre of the site epicentre. This involved walking MANY an orchard row and GPSing and mapping the mounded features discovered (which we will hopefully begin testing and excavating in a couple years), presumed to be primarily the houses of the commoner Maya of Alabama. We have been extremely surprised to see how much is actually still visible at ground surface despite the many decades of modern agricultural activity in the area. This work will provide the foundation for our larger research questions regarding the development of the urban centre over time. Next week we will continue survey and also visit some of the potential quarry areas (stone and clay) that the Maya of Alabama were likely accessing.

Life in the village is still as charming as ever. We really are so happy at how welcoming and friendly everyone has been!

Meaghan

We’ve completed one week at the site, and we are so excited about how the work is proceeding! Meaghan, Morgan, Julilla, and I got settled into the village a week ago. We were warmly welcomed by folks in the village, quickly finding some rooms to rent, and a family to cook for us, as well as a few local workers to assist us in the field. We were lucky this week to have great weather– despite being in the Stann Creek District in the rainy season! We completed an assessment of the site epicenter– and we were all excited to locate a few buildings at the site that were previously unknown. We assessed the amount of looting that has occurred at the site, and did rudimentary maps and photographs to record this damage. We’ve now moved on to focus the work on the outlying settlement survey– locating and taking GPS coordinates on mounds that are in the vicinity of the site center. This settlement work will continue this week in a more systematic fashion, and we hope to update everyone again next weekend!

Sonja 🙂

We have been in-country for a week (June 2014), and both of us (Dr. Peuramaki-Brown and Dr. Schwake) have been busy getting things set up for the field season! The most important news we have to share is that we secured our research permit from the Government of Belize last week! We are presently in the village making arrangements for when the project starts next month. We met with the village alcalde (mayor), and we were welcomed to the village with a delicious traditional Maya caldo and cacao drink. Our team member, Morgan Moodie, has also arrived in Belize, so we have just one more person to arrive from abroad- Julilla Paul will join us shortly. So far, things are going smoothly– we will update you again soon! Sonja and Meaghan