And....we're back!

Wow, I've neglected this blog for far too long! It's been quite a busy month and a half, filled with visits from the in-laws, rubbernecking with politicians, stomach viruses, and dissertation related paranoia.

We met Steve's parents when their flight arrived in Guayaquil on November 1. We came right back out to Dos Mangas to celebrate Dia de los Santos. I wish I had a photograph of the crowds in the bus station who were traveling for the holiday. It was an absolute madhouse, with people stacked back to back. I think I really impressed Dad/Gene by the way I was able to get us right up to the ticket counter.

We spent a lovely day on the 2nd walking through Dos Mangas and stopping at friends houses and getting food foisted upon us. To celebrate the day of the dead, families prepare tons of foods, particularly the favorites of those who have passed, and lay it all out on a table. Then, while the family goes off to visit the grave site, the dead come and "eat" their food. Then the family comes back and people start circulating from house to house, eating up all the goodies. We got to try a few new delicacies that day! We also wandered down to the futbol field (soccer, for most of you) and watched a pretty good game in which Dos Mangas tied 4-4 with the near-by town of Olon.

One of the tables, all laid out.

That was pretty much the end of our adventures while Steve's parents were visiting. Mom/Norma picked up a bug while they were in Miami and then passed it on to Dad and eventually Baby Girl and me (though I definitely got a mild version of it). Mom and Dad spent a lot of time resting and bonding with their granddaughter. It was so great to see how much she loves her Oma and Opa. We even got to celebrate her 2nd birthday together, albeit a few days early.

Yes, that's right folks, my Baby Girl is now 2 years old! I may have to start referring to her as Big Girl, but BG will still work. The tantrums have also started, but so has all the extra fun!

On the 14th, Dos Mangas inaugurated a new Interpretation Center for the tourists who come for the hikes to the waterfall, etc. I put together a little display about the archaeological project and they hung that up there too. The Center was sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism, and the Minister of Tourism herself, Veronica Sion, came for the inauguration. She didn't know that there was any archaeology in the area, and was really excited about integrating it into the other tourism offerings. To the community's benefit she pledge her support for building a museum to house and display the artifacts once the excavations are over. It was really cool to meet her, get to talk a little bit, be mentioned in a speech by a big-wig, get interviewed a few times, and get lecture requests. We'll see what all comes with it, and I'm still looking for her speech on You Tube, but it was a really exciting day!

Me and Veronica Sion at the inauguration.

About a week after BG got over her illness (which required breathing treatments and antibiotics) she started vomiting, to the point where she'd even puke up sips of water. I also came down with perpetual nausea (I think I would have felt better if I'd just puked) and Steve had to deal with all kinds of digestive issues. Back to the doctor for more meds, and now everyone's better again, though BG is still puking on bus rides, which may mean she suffers from motion sickness (and let me tell you, a freaked out toddler puking on a bus is no fun at all, particularly when you can't get her to aim in the bag and she'd sitting on your lap).

Work at the site is drawing rapidly to a close, and I'm really not feeling confident about what I've been able to excavate. The much-desired house is still elusive, and I don't see us being able to find and excavation one completely in the next week. All I need is one (two would be better), just one, to be able to compare it to other sites! Instead of a house we've found two more burials this week. How many dead people are there?!?!!? I suppose I'll just keep plugging along, and hopefully it will all work out.

Things to look forward to: a Christmas visit by Steve's cousin Kathy and her husband David, and a trip to Cuenca for the Christmas Eve parade. And, mostly likely in time for my birthday, the long awaited visit by my parents!

And, I promise I'll update more frequently!

The Mound, a flood, and the Levantamiento (not necessarily in that order)

So, I’m realizing to my horror that it’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated the blog. A lot has been happening, not the least of which was Baby Girl baptizing my computer with a cup of tea. Between taking it apart to mop up the tea and let everything dry, and then waiting until I could get to Libertad to buy a new keyboard (the one casualty of the whole affair) I lost nearly two weeks of computer usage. But, we’re up and running again, so all is well in the world.

The community has been embroiled in a fairly interesting and lengthy political demonstration for the last few weeks to assert their control of community lands and access to different resources on community property. This has mainly consisted of blocking the main road going in and out of town, and setting up a 24 hour guard to monitor the traffic going in and out of town. It all started when someone who leases community lands decided that they’d go and fence off the road that the community uses to take tourists to some very pretty cascading pools of water, effectively declaring both that portion of the road and the pools to be private property. These same leasees also waved guns at community members as they went along this road, for trespassing on their “property”. The community set up the blockade to prevent these people from moving freely to and from the land that they are leasing.

As you might imagine, the police and local and provincial governments got involved in this dispute, which still does not have a resolution. The leasees claim that the community is trying to kick them off the land (and there is some claim on their part that they bought this land, though that is impossible because the whole territory belongs to the community), while the community contends that the leasees are trying to develop tourism privately and thus deprive the community of an important source of revenue. You might be able to guess where my sympathies lie. I got invited along by community members on one of the inspections by the provincial government because I could record video with my camera. The rhetoric each side was using was really interesting – “cultural patrimony” versus “my property” – and it was also pretty clear that the Inspector (the third one to check out the situation) was fairly well in the pocket of the leasees. There is certainly a lot at stake in the outcome of this dispute; not only the livelihood of community members but their physical safety as well. In the course of the dispute it was revealed that one of the leasees was released from jail just a few years ago after serving 13 years for robbery and double homicide. And most of the problems started after he arrived on the scene.

Last weekend Steve and I became godparents to a newly married couple in the village. It’s not the same as becoming godparents to an infant – more like a cross between being godparents and the best man/matron of honor – which made it all the odder that we didn’t really know these people that well. It was one of those things, though, where I felt like I couldn’t say no, like the act of asking obligated us. Steve was still sick, so put in a brief appearance with Baby Girl and then took her home to sleep. I on the other hand had to stay and drink until the wee hours of the morning, and even then I chickened out and headed home around 3. I just don’t have the stamina for it like I used to.

On Thursday we closed up excavations at the mound. I was actually quite disappointed in how things turned out. The mound appears to be a natural hill that was modified to have a platform on top. The surface is covered in artifacts, but we found virtually no sub-surface features. I was particularly keen to find a structure on the top of the mound, but alas, no joy. There was also very little evidence for use of the flat space around the mound. We did test pits every 5m to recover evidence of different use areas or house floors, but got very little for our efforts. It’s definitely made me question my interpretation a bit more, but I don’t have any new answers.

I feel like the community might be getting a bit disappointed, because they want me to find things that they can use to start a museum, but so far it’s just been the usual ceramic fragments (though my friend Alex reminded me that the spindle whorls, copper bell, and copper tweezers that we found up at the cistern are pretty good by coastal Ecuador standards). Hopefully they have patience with me, and all of our hard work will turn up something interesting and also let us tell the story of life at Dos Mangas back in the day.

The house situation is still at a standstill. We found another place in the community that is REALLY nice, even by general North American standards (hot water and a bathtub – HEAVEN!) but we just can’t afford what the owner wants for monthly rent (like, twice as much(. Right now it’s a bit of a poker game…do we come up a bit, spending money out of savings, and hope that he realizes that he can either rent to us at a lower price and make some money or have an empty house and make no money. We’ll keep you all up to date as thing progress.

Celebration Weekend

We went to Agua Blanca this past weekend, where I used to work, to celebrate the solstice, Steve´s Birthday, and Father´s Day. It was really nice being able to see old friends and also to introduce the family to the place where I spent so much time.

For the first time ever, the community arranged a huge solstice celebration this year on Saturday. They had a shaman come in who did a sweat lodge and ceremony the night before the solstice, with the idea of waking up an watching the sun rise up on the site at the building that aligns with the summer solstice. There was a guy there who does an outdoor/adventuring program who really seemed to be calling the shots in terms of staging the ceremony, and that was quite weird. The whole thing was very new agey and American Indian-esque, but people kept claiming that they were reviving practices that died out 500 years ago when the Spanish came. As an archaeologist, I was quite put out by that, and the fact that people were camping on top of the ruins. But the thing that bothered me the most was the fact that the community members seemed to be incidental to the whole thing.

The sweat tent where the ceremony took place, and the sacred precinct outside of it. Don Isidro is adding more hot stones (abuelos) to the sauna inside.

Your intrepid explorer, emerging from the tent after three rounds (I couldn´t take the super heated sulphur water any more) and being interviewed by one of the many camera crews that were swarming the ceremony.

On Sunday we did the tour of the site and I think Taylor and Steve were impressed. It was also good for me to see it and remind myself how different the materials at Dos Mangas are. After touring the site we relaxed in the laguna, and Steve and Baby Girl had a ton of fun splashing around. I think it was the highlight of his Father´s Day.

I promise to post pictures soon! Internet speeds can be prohibitively slow, and I don´t have my flash drive with me to add more, but I´m hoping to get a little more internet time this weekend.