This week was plagued by rain and mechanical problems. We have surveyed all the mowed portions of the orchard, identified mounds, conducted surface collections, and mapped any areas of interest. Unfortunately, after working a full day on Monday we ran out of mowed orchard rows because the tractor AND mower brokedown. We spent a day in the lab cleaning and cataloguing artifacts, as well as making clay briquettes (see previous post), while crossing our fingers that the tractor and mower would be fixed. On Wednesday, folks at the orchard were able to mow a bit for us before the mower broke again. We headed back home and did artifact analysis instead. All the while, Shawn and our field crew from Maya Mopan were able to keep mapping in the epicenter, which is looking amazing (preview to come)!

On Thursday we woke up to thunder and pouring rain. We went to the site and tried to get work done but it wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was mowed and the rain just kept coming. Instead we took a rain day and headed up to the nearby site of Mayflower in the Bocawina National Park in northern Stann Creek. The site is similar to Alabama in that it also has much granite used in its architecture. The site is small but gorgeous with jungle canopy overhead and waterfalls just a short hike away.

Instead of posting a picture of Mayflower, we will post a picture of SCRAP crew members trying to spell out SCRAP at Mayflower!

After we finished exploring and learning about Mayflower, we drove up to Dangriga. Shawn had the best day ever because we went to Marie Sharp’s factory and took the tour. Plus we got to have all the samples we wanted. He was in pepper heaven!

Friday the weather gods were smiling on us and we worked a full day in the orchard. Nothing was mowed but we trudged through tall grass to surface collect on mounds that SCRAP had located in 2014. We made great progress and checked quite a few mounds off the map.

We were exhausted after a long day in the hot field but we knew we had an exciting evening ahead of us! As mentioned (and blogged), earlier in the week we made clay source briquettes in order to determine which clay sources may have been used by the ancient Maya in the area. So Friday night we got permission from the hotel owner to fire them, which obviously meant we had to have a bonfire and it only makes sense that bonfires need s’mores! SCRAP s’mores nights are possibly the best nights. We had a great time using biscuits/cookies instead of graham crackers, Cadbury chocolate bars instead of Hershey, and chocolate flavored marshmallows.

Firing clay sample briquettes and eating S’mores!

Saturday we did a half-day, focusing on cleaning and analyzing the artifacts we found this week, and Tawny analyzed the granite with pXRF. After our half day we had arranged to take a tour of a nearby Maya chocolate factory. It was awesome! We got to see cacao trees, learn what kind of environment they thrive in, how they are harvested and then treated in order to go from white, slimy beans to delicious chocolate nibs. But to be fair, the slimy beans were super delicious to begin with.

Fresh cacao bean

We also got to grind our own chocolate with a basalt mano and metate! We ground up our beans into dark chocolate and then enjoyed the spoils of our work after they had been in the freezer for a bit. The chocolate was delicious but we all agreed that it was best left to the professionals; grinding that much chocolate is hard work!

Jesucita trying her hand at cacao grinding

Now that we have enjoyed our weekend making chocolate and relaxing on the beach in nearby Placencia, we are rested and ready for another week of hard work!

Cheers from Belize!

Lisa & Tawny

Part of SCRAP 2015 research is conducting clay sourcing analysis to determine where and with what the ancient Maya of Alabama were making their pottery. Today, while waiting for more of the orchard rows to be mowed so we can continue our settlement survey, Tawny, Lisa, Brittany, and Jesucita made briquettes from the clay sources we have sampled within the Alabama area. After they have dried, we will fire them in an open fire and export them to Canada for petrographic analysis and comparison with local ceramic types. This source data will be made available to archaeologists working in other areas of the Maya world for comparison with their ceramic materials.

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