Sunday, July 29, 2012

A little bit of archaeology on Burns Ave...


POTS

Quick recap: Burns Ave is one of the main streets in San Ignacio, the city I’m currently living in.  I guess they were working on the pipes and doing a ton of digging.  Mid-way through the project they found something spectacular.  They found complete pots.  Not just any pots, but late preclassic maya pots.  For those of you who don’t know this about me, I’m in archaeology.  The reason I came down here was to pursue something that would give me back the passion that I think I lost over the last 4 years.  And here it was.  Pots.  Things that I've only seen in pictures.  However, I missed the opportunity to dig with the archaeologists once they took over the construction site and dubbed it an archaeologtical site.  This is entirely my fault by the way, for not wanting to dig under the hot sun and partially because I didn’t know students could volunteer until it was too late.

After a couple of days of digging, another amazing discovery was uncovered: bones.  Now, they were certain they had stumbled across a burial site. 

Cleaning books with fellow classmates and Ryan
The wonderful thing about the burial is that it's average.  Completely average in the sense that it is a Mayan villiger.  An everyday person, just like me and you.  Unfortunetly, its a partial.  This could be due to the fact that a bulldozer and plow were tearing up the streets earlier.  We actually don't know.  The skull was missing.  

Another week or so passed by and more digging continued and more pots were discovered.  In wonderfully good shape.  Now, here’s the exiciting part.  Both of my favourite professors here are amazing archaeologists - it's been fantastic learning under them. 

Thanks to Sherri Gibbs, I had the privliage of cleaning and taking care of the remains that were uncovered!!!!  I also had the job of putting together the pottery shards and broken pieces of the pots with Jaime Awe.  

I am absolutely stoked to be working on this project.  

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