Its Sunday which is kind of the only real day off from working in the week. Saturdays are usually spent at the market and shops of Punta Gorda trying to get supplies, which are available in unreliable forms and quantities. Yesterday it took 4 hours and about 6 shops, plus the outdoor produce market before heading home with enough food to last the crew a week. On the way back we picked up the new project truck, just purchased from our mechanic. It's the biggest truck I have ever driven on a daily basis, but is solid, spacious for the rain, and safe.

The excavations have been going well, despite the intense heat. It's now been over a week of solid 100 degree plus days, making everyones' humor begin to crack a little in the field, and leading to cold beers being a kind of first aid at the end of the day. There are real concerns about dehydration, and everyone now carries about a gallon of water for the day. Friday I did wind up in some houses in the village of Santa Cruz and some friends were gracious to let me snap some pictures. The kids are eating beans and corn tortillas, which are made daily from corn grown locally. There is nothing like a fresh corn tortilla. Every morning the women and children strip the corn seeds from the cob, soak them in water, and then grind them at the community mill. They make enough masa to last just for the day. In the house the tortillas a patted out by hand and cooked over an open fire on a comale.

Even though its Sunday we did some work. Holley and Mark and I started going through the 2009 ceramics from the mountain shrine complex overlooking Uxbenka. It turns out that my thatch house can also double as a field lab, which is useful.

Sunday there was a freak storm that passed through Santa Cruz village. During morning it was very hot, probably about 100 degrees, but suddenly in the afternoon the temperature dropped suddenly and then it started hailing and the wind picked up. At least one Maya thatch house was blown down, and complete chicken coops disappeared, blown into the jungle. In Big Falls, 15 km away, we got almost nothing, just a 15 minute shower and a good breeze. It's strange weather to begin with, but even stranger that the dangerous storm was so localized.

Saturday we burned the low secondary growth off the 1.5 acres that we now call Group I. For Maya farmers, and for us, the timing of the burn is important. If you burn too soon then bush is still damp and its does not work. If you wait too long it can rain, making it frustrating to find just the right window. We had chopped this about three weeks ago, just when I arrived in Belize. It turns out we timed it just right with the big storm on Sunday. Here's some before and after pics of the burn, one with Chris. The pictures don't show how hot it was up there.

Also, on Sunday, I moved into my new house, a few miles down the road from the camp and the rest of the crew. It's nice to have some privacy and somewhere to write. Here's a few pictures of the new digs. It's a lovely one bedroom cabana with a hammocked porch and sweet outdoor shower.

Here's a brief update from Punta Gorda, the hottest town in the tropics, and I'm not talking about the night-life. It's always sweltering here in the month or so leading up to the first rains of the wet season. That's both a blessing and a curse. We want the dry weather for working, since excavations in the mud are not fun, but we also suffer from the heat, which make work kind of like, well, work.

We have several excavations open but mostly small. This Sunday we'll burn the low bush off of a big architectural group and then start working there for about 9 weeks. There a pic of what we are doing now in a small plaza. Not much to look at except Margaret and Chris moving dirt.

Monday when we were at Lubaantun I took some pictures of several 1200 year old figurines found at the site since I last visited. They are mostly human figures, and mostly heads. The caretaker, Santiago, also makes beautiful replicas based on the ancient forms. You can see him, and them, above. While touring Norman Hammond around Geoff Braswell showed us his new excavations into a couple buildings and we posed for the obligatory photo. Three archaeologistson a ruin.

Today was our first day of fieldwork and it was hot. In the image above Brendan is looking over a new well that fed into a check-dam, supplying water to a few small houses some 1200 years ago or longer. It's exciting to get an image of how simple farmers lived in the past. The week we'll also start working in the newly discovered Group I, which is the opposite end of the spectrum, likely housing elites who had their own ballcourt. It's a huge area and we'll spend two months digging there.

Over the weekend my friend Norman Hammond visited from London. He also worked at Uxbenka and nearby Lubaantun in 1970 and 1971. We had a nice visit and he brought along a good bottle of imported rum for the entire group to enjoy. Norman just retired from Boston University. Despite his status, and his age, we still walked him up and down some pretty big hills. Good fun.

I had to go to Belmopan, the capital of Belize, to get my excavation permits for this year's project. It's generally a bit of bureaucratic brew-ha-ha, but went remarkably smoothly. Amazing. I stayed with my friend Jaime who is also the director or archaeology for the whole country and spent some time playing with his very smart two year old. On Sunday I took a trip to Xunantunich, a large capital of a Terminal Classic polity on the Belize River. It had been seven years since I visited, and now the site have been restored for tourism. Its a big site that dominated the upper part of the river for almost a century. Pretty fun being a tourist.

Now off to St. Louis for 3 days meetings, then back to Belize on Friday. A whirlwind tour of the US.

Bush Honey

Tuesday was warm, but not too warm. I hiked up to a new architectual group that is being cleared by the Maya village for us to excavate. The buildings were much larger than I expected, with a central platform about four meters above the plaza floor. There may be a new ballcourt and possibly some stela in the plaza. We'll find out after all the bush is burned and cleared.

The guys working found a dead tree full of honey, so we opened it up and had a feast. Wild honey, machete style. In the video Juan Teul is opening up the tree, while Elutario Mes and I eat honey. Click on the link below to see the video.

Arrving in the rain

It seems that I have brought the rain to Belize. According to my friends here, it has not rained a drop since January, until the day I arrived. By all accounts it started raining while I was still on the plane from Dallas, but I'm still considered to blame. Today is Town Day in my favorite place, Punta Gorda. Goals include re-registering one of the trucks, getting my expired Belize Bank Visa renewed, and trying to get out before the temperature tops a steamy 100 degrees. I'm thinking two out of three is not bad. Then up to Santa Cruz village and Uxbenka for a meeting with the Mopan Maya leadership group.

Here's some pictures of the field camp showing it in a relatively unoccupied state. It's just me until the end of next week, and I'm keeping my foot print to a minimum.