Woolly Mammoth Skeleton

Woolly Mammoth Skeleton at American Museum of Natural History

I spent an insurmountable amount of time when I was a little kid staring into a postcard of a woolly mammoth skeleton. The card was postmarked sometime in the 1950s, and some guy wrote an incredibly general message to another guy upon the back of it. What was significant about the card – that which made me dream into it so often - was that it said that the woolly mammoth skeleton was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

I wanted to go there.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- December 19, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos -- Vagabond Travel Guide
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But New York City was much too far out of bounds for my parents, who are people who like keeping within proximity to home.

So I grew up with the woolly mammoth skeleton postcard ever stuffed inside of my student's work desk in my childhood room. Sometimes I would take it out and dream into it a little. I wanted to be a paleontologist or and archaeologist or some kind of ologist. I wanted to work for a museum. I wanted to dig in the dirt and find bones.

So I grew up and became an archaeologist. I dug in the dirt and I found bones.

But I had still not visited that woolly mammoth on the postcard.

When I came to New York City in September, this was one of my goals: to go and look at that damn skeleton. But I waited, I waited until I had completed everything that I had to do, I waited until I graduated. I wanted this visit back into my childhood to be the apple pie of my stay in New York City, the hallmark to this stay in the USA.

The day of the grand viewing of the woolly mammoth skeleton was today. I had finished my university coursework yesterday. I am now finished with New York City – ready to move on.

I like big museums. Walking through them is like traveling the world in microcosm, like traveling through time in microcosm. When I walk through museums I am in another world.

My friend commented on my stumbly way of walking through museums today:

“I would like to believe that you take more responsibility for yourself when you are not around me, but I see no evidence for it,” she said.

She was referring to the fact that I had walked aimlessly into some no-man's-land in an off corner of the museum some where.

“Sorry, babes, but I am just dreaming.”

I love museums because they are like a house of travel: you walk from one hall – one part of the world – right into another. I walked out of the Hall of African Peoples that the anthropologist Colin Turnbull designed into a corridor. I looked to the right to find the Hall of Mexico and Central America and to the left to find the Hall of Asian Peoples. I then had to choose where I wanted to travel.

I chose the Hall of Asian Peoples.

Of course.

Related Pages:
Archaeology Field School
Archaeology Education and Work
How to Become an Archaeologist?

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Photography Lesson in New York City
Time to Leave New York City
Travel Book Reviews on Vagabond Journey

Woolly Mammoth Skeleton at American Museum of Natural History

Archaeology Fieldwork Interview

Archaeology Fieldwork Interview

The following interview was completed to fulfill a request from an old friend for one of his university projects.

I have completed 7 seasons (2-4 months a year) of professional archaeology fieldwork in North America as well as stints on Copan in Honduras and on a Monteno site on the Manabi coast of Ecuador.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine, USA- November 30, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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What skills and attributes make you good at your job?

Being able to wake up in the morning and not coming to work too drunk. These are probably the biggest skills you need to keep yourself employed in archaeology. This sounds simple, but there are a lot of people who are not able to do these two things. Also, being able to work together with a group of people and not complaining are needed skills. It has become apparent that most employers know that anybody can learn the trade of the archaeologist, what sets you apart are the more basic skills of being a good, reliable person. These skills are the hardest to learn. If you are able to get to work on time, do your job without complaining, and get along with the crew you will probably find employment in archaeology pretty easily regardless of how much knowledge or schooling you have.

Shovelbums.org- the main database for finding Archaeology fieldwork.

What kind of schooling did you need to get where you are today?

I completed an archaeology field school with Florida Atlantic University in Ecuador and just about have a B.A. Degree in Ethnographic Journalism from the Friends World Program of Long Island University. A degree and a fieldschool are two credentials are pretty much requirements for finding employment in archaeology. Though you can do professional work on the strength of a field school, some university education, and experience alone. For the first eight seasons that I worked in archaeology I did not have a B.A. degree.

For more information on obtaining an education in archaeology go to these pages-
Archaeology Field School
Archaeology Education and Work

What type of people do you work with daily?

Nut cases. Seriously, perhaps due to the nature of the work archaeologists tend to be interesting characters. Putting them together in a crew and sending them out to the woods is a recipe for disaster. Many disasters happen on archaeology projects. I could not ask for a better cast of characters to work with.

What kind of places do you get to travel to?

I have traveled and worked in around 20 states of the USA doing archaeology as well as a season at Copan in Honduras, and my field school was on the coast of Ecuador. Doing archaeology fieldwork is a good way to travel.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of the job at the end of the day?

My favorite part is being outside all day long and traveling. I like being paid to travel and and being given a hotel room and food money. What I do not like is the fact that I have done this work for so long. I have recently move on to other professions, though always keep the thought of doing fieldwork in my sack of possibilities for making up the bean money to travel.

Photo of archaeology project in USA.

Related Pages:
Archaeology Field School- Question about how to enroll in an archaeology field school and fieldwork as a way to travel while making money to travel.
Archaeology Education and Work- How to get into doing archaeology fieldwork while traveling to make money for travel.
How to Become an Archaeologist?- Advice on how to get into professional archaeology fieldwork.
Guatemala- How to get to Tikal Guatemala
Guatemala- Travel Work Skills
Honduras- Mayan Archaeology at Copan
Costa Rica- Archaeology Fieldwork in Nicaragua and Copan
USA- The Archaeology
USA- Owego, NY
How to Find Work while Traveling

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Rites of Travel Website Construction
• Jet Blue Good Airline
• Can Cultures be Wrong Debate

Archaeology Fieldwork Interview

Downfall of the Maya

The following article about the downfall of Maya was published in Cafe Abroad InPrint, December 2008.

Oracle Bones: Lessons for Today from an Ancient Mayan Burial

White flecks of bone glimmered in the archaeologists’ sifting screens and the excitement among the crew was building as the remains of a human being would soon be unearthed after an undisturbed slumber of more than 1,000 years.

I watched as the old Honduran archaeologist scraped off the remaining bits of parched, baked soil from the surface of an ancient Mayan burial. A shallow layer of previously buried stones were now the only barrier that stood between us and the skeleton that surely laid beneath: a slim barrier between the world of the living and the dead.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York- October 18, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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I recorded field notes into an old dusty notebook and prudently took measurements as the excavators peeled up stone after stone from the long-forgotten tomb. But, as we worked, I was unable to shake the notion that I was participating in the disruption of an ancient burial, and the cold blanket of scientific study did nothing to lessen my excitement. The skeleton that we would soon uncover, disassemble, measure, and coldly stuff into a Tupperware bin was once a living, breathing member of the greatest civilization to rise out of the jungles of Central America.

The excavators dug deeper into the burial, and I became ever more engrossed in my thoughts about the rise and fall of the Mayan empire:

The ancient Maya were one of the most prominent civilizations of pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere, and occupied Central America since the 2nd century BCE. They built elaborate cities out of stone and mortar which rival the ones of today in size, flamboyance, and complexity. Their towns were replete with towering pyramids, sky-high temples, and paved roads that stretched across their jungle terrain. The ancient Maya also possessed a technological ability that was without precedence in the new world, and they had a complex knowledge of astronomy, science, mathematics, history, as well as a complete writing system.

As the Mayan civilization expanded and its technological abilities continuously improved higher and higher temples were built, ever more elaborate ceremonial centers were constructed, and the cities continuously grew in size. Slash and burn agricultural methods cut through the surrounding jungle like a fiery plague and the Mayan population was able to sprawl out of control as the society urbanized. The Maya civilization was now at its peak, and ancient Meso-America was dotted throughout with thriving cosmopolitan centers.

I was thoroughly unstuck in time as I daydreamed about the ancient Maya while standing on the once living ruins of a world now gone. But I was snapped out of my daydream as the crew of well-worn and dust encrusted Latino archaeologists arrive at the terminus of the subterranean tomb. We were now at the crescendo of the excavation and were standing before the last large stone that blanketed the burial.

Fearless of any penalties propagated by Hollywood tomb raiding movies, the old and grizzled Honduran Archaeologists matter of factly lifted the last stone away from the burial. The crew then gathered closely together around the completely exposed burial shaft and apprehensively peered down at the spoils:

Laying in the dry dust at the bottom of the trench was a patchwork of crisscrossing bleach-white bones. As I bent over the discovery it became apparent that the bones still maintained the contours of a complete human being. Even more, the freshly unearthed skeleton rested in the exact position it was placed in more than a millennia ago: thin and decrepit skeletal arms still reached down to brittle knees, tucking them up for eternity into a ribcage that was long picked clean of flesh and life. The skull was crushed by the weight of the rocks and soil, leaving an empty, cracked and dismantled cavity. Still, connected to the bottom of the skull, a beaten and battered jaw hung ominously agape.

As I looked upon the bones of the long-expired Mayan, who continued to hold himself in the embrace of death, my jaw also fell agape with the realization that the factors which lead to the collapse of the Mayan civilization mirrored those that face my own today: environmental destruction, warfare, and the misuse of natural resources.

“The Mayan here at Copan cleared all of the forests and turned this region into a desert,” one of the senior archaeologists spoke as we stood above the brittle remains of the guilty party. “They cut down all of the trees to build their cities and the sun's rays heated up the earth like an oven.”

The Mayans built their great cities from huge blocks of stone that were assembled together with a mortar and lime mixture that was manufactured in huge kilns that were fueled by wood cut from the jungle. A large amount of wood was needed to stoke the fires to a hot enough temperature, and the surrounding forests eventually perished. On top of this, Mayan agriculturalists needed to continuously clear more land using slash and burn methods in order to cultivate enough food for the exploding population. The jungles were also hunted and fished to severe depletion to meet this increased demand for food. Individual Mayan kingdoms were also continually engaged in gradient states of war with each other, and this exuded a pressure that pushed the society to the brink of collapse. A great environmental backlash overtook the ancient Mayan civilization: they had totally depleted their natural resources, wrecked havoc on their environment, and destroyed each other through warfare.

This story sounded familiar.

“So the Maya essentially destroyed themselves through technology, urbanization, and war?” I asked, not wanted to hear an affirmative response. To my disappointment, the archaeologists agreed.

Through the same practices that made their civilization great, the Maya inadvertently destroyed their civilization. They sucked dry their land of lush forests and raging rivers, and left themselves to bake dead upon a parched, uninhabitable earth of their own creation. Most of the Maya’s great achievements and amazing works fell to ruins and their cosmopolitan centers were abandoned centuries before the arrival of the first ships from the Old World. The massive cities of the Maya were abandoned to the jungle, as the people migrated to the north, south, or to return to archaic means of living. Through an unbalanced, anthropocentric relationship with the natural world, the Maya became another great civilization to fall deep into the trunk of archaeological time.


As I looked upon the stiff and grim remains of the skeleton before me, I heard the lessons from the past howling hair-raising warnings from the depths of antiquity. Again humanity is standing at the precipice of an advance civilization that, like the Maya, seeks nothing more than to expand, grow and prosper. Again, rain forest destruction, urbanization, invasive agricultural methods, and overpopulation loom as threats to our civilization. Are we, at the beginning of the 21st century, again stretching the carrying capacity of the earth in the same ways that the ancient Maya did in Central America a thousand years ago? Could we, too, essentially wipe out our own civilization by abusing nature, natural resources, the food we eat, and fighting wars of mutual annihilation?

In a great interplay of irony, the ancient Maya grew so strong that they destroyed themselves. After standing upon the ruins and looking into the death grimace of this once proud civilization, I must ask the question: can we learn from the errant ways and misdeeds of the past? Or will we, too, find ourselves disassembled, catalogued, and put on display in some history museum as the shining bones of a civilization consumed and destroyed by its own inertia.


Wade P. Shepard has been tramping around the planet for the past nine years; he has wandered into the outback of Mongolia, lived in a monastery in Tibet, ate a puppy in China, danced with mystics in India, thought he was a gardener in Ireland, and got really lost in Patagonia. He is now finally finishing his Senior Capstone semester in Brooklyn, New York with Global College, Long Island University. Visit his website at www.vagabondjourney.com and read his travelogue, at www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue.

Related Pages:
Vagabond Journey Travel Articles
Archaeology Page
Archaeology Field School
Archaeology Education and Work
How to Become an Archaeologist?
Song of the Open Road Archaeology Labels
Mayan Arhaeology at Copan
Wikipedia Archaeology
Pre-Columbian Civilization
Maya Civilization

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Herman Melville Pilgrimage
• American Groovy
• Photos from New York City

Oracle Bones: Lessons for Today from an Ancient Mayan Burial
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Photos from Tikal Flores Guatemala City

Photos from Tikal, Flores, Guatemala City

The following links go to travel photos from Guatemala, and include the bus station in Guatemala City, the comfortable village of Flores, and the ruins and pyramids of Tikal. Click on the below links to go to the photographs. For more photographs go to Guatemala travel photos.

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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Upstate New York, USA - May 22, 2008
Song of the Open Road -- Travel Photos
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Click on the links to go to more photos from Guatemala

Flores-

Flores Guatemala

Flores and Tikal Guatemala

Guatemala City-

Guatemala City Bus Station

Chicken Bus in Guatemala

Tikal-

Pyramids at Tikal Guatemala

Tikal Jungle Guatemala

Tikal Guatemala Ruins Stelaes Insect Bites

Photos from Tikal, Flores, Guatemala City

* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos *

Camping at Tikal

Camping at Tikal

Camping at Tikal. Got eaten by jungle insects; a loud drunk moron kept yelling all night long without regard or care for the other campers; and the only facilities at the campsite were a small palm leaf pavilion placed over a concrete slab. I think, though am still not sure, that we were suppose to sleep on the barren concrete (who the hell wants to camp on concrete?).

Mira and I arrived at Tikal at noonday by shuttle bus from Flores, Guatemala. Our plan was to camp at the front gate, and we figured that we would arrive early to secure our sleeping place before entering the archaeology site after three PM. I was also excited and could not bear sitting around in tranquil Flores when the great archaeology site of Tikal lays only 60km away. You see, if you enter Tikal after three in the afternoon you get a ticket that is good for the next day as well. So, being a thrifty vagabond, I figured that it would be a far better value to get two days of Tikal for the price of one. This seemed to be a given, but we could not know the perils that were to come.

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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Tikal, Guatemala- Early May, 2008
Travel Photos
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The pyramids of Tikal

First off, we had to hide out in a field by the front gates of the archaeology site so we would be detected by the park rangers and forced to pay and enter the park before three o'clock. It seems as if the park stooges have grown wise to the ways of beachcombers, and knew that many travelers like the idea of getting two days of Tikal for the price of one, and, consequently, were cracking down on this. So we hid for three hours in the grass. We then entered the park without incident, had a nice time among the ruins, and then went back out to the campsite for a night of jungle sleeping.

Insect bites endured while camping at Tikal

Now, as has come to be our usual way of traveling, neither Mira nor I were prepared for camping in the jungle. Our only equipment was a mosquito net and a sleeping back cover that Mira had the foresight to pack in her rucksack before leaving home. I seem to think that I have the dumb ability to handle any situation that I am thrust into regardless of how ill-prepared I may be.

Uncomfortable situations have the hopeful tendency of always passing. So I tend to not waste thought in preparation. So I smiled dumbly as I went on an entire diatribe of how I refused to sleep on a concrete slab in the middle of the jungle. Mira knew better but gave in to my bought of iron-willed resolve.

Bites from some kind of Guatemalan jungle insect all over my body.

I tied up the mosquito net to a nearby tree, and then laid down under it on the comfortable grass. I thought that I was smart. I thought that I had outwitted all of the other campers that were tossing uncomfortably on their respective concrete slabs. But Mira questioned my genius by mentioning something about insects coming up from the grass in the night and biting us.

"Insects? Bah!" I roared. I thought that just because I was not being bitten at sundown that I would be good and comfortable for the entire night.

I was wrong.

Around midnight a group of drunken idiot expat campers came rolling into the campsite. "Wow, look at all the stars!" one especially stupid one yelled. He had a USA southern accent, and really he continued yelling drunk yells for the next hour.

Jungle insect bites all over my hands.

Mira and I kept our cools and tried to go back to sleep in lieu of the idiot drunkard's onslaught. But then - suddenly - we felt the biting of some kind of small insect that we could neither see, kill, nor even feel. They were all over out bodies. Mira and I were their feast for the night, and we could do nothing about it. We swatted, scratched, grabbed, and slapped in vain. We could not see them or feel them. We only knew of their perilous presence by their little bites that would chomp on us a few times a minute. I did not feel so smart now.

Mira grumbled, and we retreated to the concrete slab. But it was all to no avail, as the insects - whatever they were - were already fully dispersed within the fibers of the sleeping bag. There was nothing for us to do other than accept our fate and be eaten.

"Uncomfortable situations have a tendency of passing," I whispered to myself. But ages passed, and I was still uncomfortable. I could not sleep. The drunken idiot kept yelling:

"Wow, dude! We are in the jungle! We are in the F' in jungle."

Yes, I agree, Tikal is in the jungle. But I simply did not want to be reminded of such as I was being feasted upon by jungle insects at 2AM. I planned on waking up at the crack of dawn the coming day to go back into the archaeology site, I wanted to sleep. But I swatted on in futile submission.

On this night, I was the dinner of the Tikal grass insects. I suppose everything needs to be eaten by something someday.

I should have just gotten drunk.

Camping at Tikal

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Travel Work Skills

Travel Work Skills

I received the yearly travel work offer emails from the archaeology firms in the USA. Each year around this time I receive emails from three different companies inviting me to come and work on their projects. I usually take these offers, as this is the time of year when I usually start to go broke. But, this year, for the most part, I have decided to push through and to find other avenues of making up my bean money. I think this is a matter of self-imposed personal development. Traveling around the USA , working on archaeology projects for a couple of months a year is a good way to go to find nether-regions of my homeland, as well as to make up the money to take off and travel the rest of the year like a vagabond king. But this has gotten a little too easy. Save for some stints of doing farm labor in Europe and teaching English in Asia, I have been making up my traveling money like this since the year 2000; I am looking for other avenues. I do not mind working, and would not be oppose to working the whole year round on the Road broadening my horizons, rather than putting in two months and taking the rest of the year off. Hobos travel to work, no?

I have been writing magazine articles for a pittance (I am making so little money that some magazines even forget to pay me), as well as putting my nose to the grind-stone on the websites. I figure that I am working around 6 to 8 hours a day on these ventures, and am scarcely making $3 for my daily effort. I am happy, I am making something, and I am not digging holes. $3 a day is a dinner and a lunch. I am pleased. But my travel funds are running out of my pockets as if through a sieve, and I will soon myself on the beach, without a copper, if I do not even out my fractions soon. So the yearly archaeology fieldwork emails struck me as just what I need right now. They go a little like the following:

"Any time you want to work pretty much show up at the office at 8 am like usual and you and mira got a job. Call a day a head if you need a room."

"Starting in about two weeks we are getting slammed with wind tower stuff, even your old friend Empire. Let me know if your interested, or always call the office all summer, as we look swamped whenever you are free. You can hop on with me anytime/anywhere man. Talk to you soon."

So when I ask myself if I will dig some holes in some nowhere hill-billy town in the USA this summer, I must answer with a whole-hearted yes. But it probably will not last for too long.

On the path from Central America to Eastern Europe and the Middle East I should be running through the USA for 20 days between mid-May and the beginning of June. Archaeology work has been offered to me, and a true vagabond takes a traveling job whenever he can get one. So I replied to the email in the affirmative, and will probably dig holes for a week or two and slightly revitalize my travel funds. A couple of weeks of working a regular archaeology job will get me around $700 to $1,000. If I work with the high-paying company that I did last summer (I was making over $200 a day) this amount will be doubled. One thousand dollars gives me three months of traveling. I appreciate these job offers.

In my experiences of working on the Road and of working in general, it has come to my mind that there are two work skills that an employee needs to have to easily find employment, and two skills only:

1. To be able to wake up in the morning - to get to work on time.

2. To keep your mouth shut - to do what you are told.

If a vagabond has these two skills he should never go hungry.

Vagabond Journey Photographs

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 9, 2008

Mayan Archaeology at Copan

Mayan Archaeology at Copan

Archaeology at Copan moves at the pace of a tropical afternoon. That is to say, very slowly. Weeks of work by a crew of fifteen men and one woman amounts to only a few cubic meters of excavated earth. If one is in search for a career which has small chance of ever running out of work, I can fully recommend the field of archaeology- especially Mayan archaeology. I am confident that when New York City is a pile of ruins, and the heathen hoards have conquered and burned the civilized world, archaeologist will still be hard at work excavating the mysteries of the Maya. There will always be work for the archaeologist, and time only adds to the amount of research that has to be done.

I am now standing at the edge of the Copan site looking out at endless fields of un-excavated mounds - which are the buried remnants of this great city. Miles of archaeological ruins stretch out to the horizon of mountains beyond. Archaeological excavations have been going on at Copan for over a century, but the area that has been covered in this time is laughably small portion of what is still buried in the earth - buried in time. It would take the lifetime of a thousand archaeologists working 24 hours a day to even come close to excavating a minor portion of this site. Copan is a city - it stretches up into the mountains and beyond.

This ancient city of Copan has stories. Layer upon layer of human existence going back for hundreds, nay thousands of years. Like their pyramids, the Mayan culture was built upon the backs of its own history, until it became so heavy that it could only collapse.

Then the people ran back to the forests, ran to the northern cities, ran from the empire. Yes, it was a good run at civilization, but, as a famous archaeologist once said about the downfall of the Maya, “ruling powers have no natural defenses against those who simply walk away.”

I detect a certain amount of mania within the makeup of Mayan culture. They built and built, fought and fought, ever expanding the realm of control of their cities. The Maya did not live in an empire, but rather in individual city-states which continuously kept up on-going feuds with other cities. One king would topple another just to be toppled. Allies turned into enemies and back into allies. On and on and on, the story of the civilized human shown in microcosm.

This continued on for many generations, as the ancient Maya continued to alternately build and destroy their own kingdoms. Soon they depleted their natural resources. War, great cities, and feeding ever growing populations reek peril upon natural ecosystems in a way that was no different than today. The Maya were active, they built, destroyed, and then built again. They never seemed to sit still.

Chatwin’s theorys are ringing ever truer as each day of this excavation goes on. Perhaps human restlessness does find its outlets in other expressions if one does not change their landscape, does not migrate, perhaps they change what is around them in a way that is similar to traveling. I think of spring cleaning and the autumn restorations that are common in my own culture.

I think of Santoka Taneda:
"Too much contact with people brings conflict, hatred, and attachment. To rid myself of inner conflicts and hatred, I must walk."

I return to Chatwin’s self-directed question: “Why do I become restless after a month in a single place, unbearable after two?”

Perhaps the Maya have lessons for the wall building possession havers of today.

Well, at least a bunch of documentary making dorks think so.

Pondering, pondering, as I laugh about the fact that John L. Stephens bought Copan for fifty bucks in 1839.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan Ruinas, Honduras
March 13, 2008

Mayan Warfare

Mayan Warfare

A four inch long conical arrow made of animal bone sits wedged against the spine of a skeleton buried in a residential area of Copan. During the days of this excavation I had wondered more than once at how this individual met his end. Now I know. He was killed by another human. Probably another Mayan. An arrow pierced through his abdomen and struck against his spinal column, as he died by a turn of violence. The history of the Maya, like all civilized peoples, is strew with the vestiges of warfare.

I stood in awe over the curled up skeleton that still harbored the sharp bone point that was plunged into him over a thousand years ago. He died in a flash of a bow string, but the story of his death has survived through the ages. Archaeologists now gaze upon the remnants of his skeleton and pick through his dry and brittle bones.

I think about the seemingly inlayed violent attributes of the human species.

Some blame warfare and inter-group violence on the advent of civilization, on the point in human prehistory that humans stopped wandering, built fences, stone houses, reared sheep and grain, and became sedentary. This is a romantic notion. I too like to dream into the glory days of past migration when humans lived in cohesive, egalitarian, peace loving, ever traveling communities. I like to think of the wandering way as being gentler and kinder than the systematic, status seeking, and spiteful ways of the cities. But I do not know if I can go this far.

I know that I am being romantic.

As Bruce Chatwin stated, “the argument, roughly, was as follows: that in becoming a human, man had acquired, together with his straight legs and striding walk, a migratory ‘drive’ or instinct to walk long distances through the seasons; that this ‘drive’ was inseparable from his central nervous system; and that, when warped in conditions of settlement it found outlets in violence, greed, status-seeking or a mania for the new.”

It seems to be a compelling argument, and one that I love to support up and revel in. I like the way these words sound as they roll off of my tongue. They make me feel as if I am just acting in accords with my own humanity, that I am the one who is vindicated.

But the place where I must diverge from this argument is that I have no evidence that the “nomadic alternative” - pastorialism, hunting and gathering, regular and continuous human migration - produced societies that were without war and violent conflict. I have read deep into the ethnographic annals, and some of my favorite studies were on peoples without fixed abodes, people who wandered in the jungles of the Ituri or Southeast Asia. But one thing that has struck me as curious is that even these people, so far removed from the improprieties of the civilized world, knew inter-human combat very well. The ever migrating Mbuti Pygmies were once known as the best fighters in Central Africa (and often served as missionaries); the peoples of the southern Asian jungles would often extensively tattoo themselves with their tribal marks so that they could identify friend or foe at a distance, as such distinctions often meant life or death. As much as I would love to blame civilization, I must assume that mortal combat has always been an attribute of the human species.

We kill each other.

Always have, and probably always will.

As I sit upon the ruins of an ancient city of the Maya, a city that sits on the graves of men and children who had died violently, I have come to terms with the fact that I do not believe in world peace.

But I still know that the world is beautiful.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan Ruinas, Honduras
March 11, 2008

No Photos of Copan Archaeology

No Photos of Copan Archaeology

Another day of excavating skeletons. Well, actually, I just stood around watching today. The Japanese osteology specialist was at the helm. He scraped, ever slowly scraped the grains of soil from the orangish bones with dental tools. Archaeology is a slow process. We are only making an few inches of ground a day, only getting further into the soil by the tedious scrap, scraps of small metal tools and plastic haired brushes. But archaeologist know time, and they know that what has been buried for a thousand years can wait for the patient hands of archaeology.

Photo which does not really show any discoveries or sensitive data. I think this photo is alright to publish.

I would really like to show my photos of this excavation on this blog, but I am not permitted to publish any details about the site- especially photographs- and I had to sign a document that said that I would obey this rule. I do not think that what they consider as “publishing” is really akin to the type of publishing that I do. I am just a blogger who is fortunate enough to have 300 visitors a day. I am still a small fry.

I am very pleased that I am even allowed to take photographs in the field. Although these must be for “personal usage only.” I do not think that a blog can really be considered “personal usage,” although, at the same time, it is not academic publishing. But, at any rate, this team of archaeologists have been really kind to me, and I want to respect their requests to the fullest extent that I can and still be able to write for my meals. I have probably gone too far already by writing about what we are finding. So no good photos will be published for now. But I do think that I could begin publishing photos of the “work in progress” that does not show any of the details of the site.

Photo of Copan excavation which also does not reveal any sensitive data.

I really feel as if I need to begin showing some photographic evidence of my work here, as I feel as if I am boring all of you with these unillustrated, bare-naked descriptions. Or maybe if I don’t start showing some photos soon, you will think that I am just making all of this stuff up hehehe.

Mira is with me nearly everyday, and she still thinks that I make everything up.

Maybe I am beginning to agree with her hehehe.

But, nonetheless, I would really love to be able to show these photographs because they are really interesting. Well, at least I think some of my good old archaeology nerd friends would get a kick out of them.

Archaeology is a profession of nerds.

I am no different.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan Ruinas, Honduras
March 10, 2008

Unearthing Skeletons at Copan

Unearthing Skeletons at Copan

Copan is the first archaeology site that I have worked on with the regular presence of human remains. Skeletons are growing out of the bottom of trenches as the soil is gingerly removed from their exteriors. The Central American and Japanese excavators stand over the remains and talk shop. Digging up the ancient remains of humans is all part of the day’s work for these weathered Mayan archaeologists.

I cut my archaeological teeth in the forests of the United States and on the Manabi Coasts of Ecuador. A big site for me is a few post molds, a couple good hearths, and a scatter of lithic remnants and tools. Copan has pyramids. Copan is a city of mortar and art and sporting courts. Copan is far beyond anything that I have experienced in archaeology.

As I peered down into an excavation unit on my second day of working at Copan, I found the discarded remnants of a crushed human skull tucked away on the inside of a broken clay vessel. A single tooth sat neatly on top of the clotted, white flecked, and crushed mass of skull that laid untouched below the earth for centuries.

I gasped. The other workers joked, jested, and went right on talking about penises, cockfights, and girls- the usual conversational fare among archaeologists. My face felt stark white, as they laughed at the musical jests of an old Honduran excavator who was making up little songs about the ancient family whose child’s tomb he was uncovering with a curved, stainless steel dental tool. It quickly became apparent to me that these Mayan archaeologist excavate human bodies on a regular basis, and the corpse of a couple ancient babies was no reason to put a leash on the laughter of a good ol’ live-long-day.

I stood watch as three small skeletons began to take shape out of the sandy, brown earth. I took some notes, drew plan maps, and observed the excavation rituals as the soil was ever being chipped away to reveal the bodies more clearly. With an excited face the Japanese human-osteology specialist, who was sized and shaped like a baby sumo wrestler, nimbly stuffed himself into the excavation trench and hovered his face directly above the bones as he declared that he was gazing upon the rib cage of a small child. As the dirt was strewn off, it became apparent that he was.

The excavation unit where I have spent the majority of time these past few days was nearby to the one that I just mentioned. For the better part of a week I drew the plan maps of a rock filled pit feature that sat almost centered within the excavation unit. For days I drew the layers this circular rock pit that went down into the earth over a meter. We thought that was a burial. We were right.

Today we reached the bottom of this feature.

There, under the final large slab of rock that was lifted away, was the remains of another human skeleton. This one was of a man and was all tucked up with his knees pull up to what was once his chest. I thought for a moment about why skeletons from most ancient cultures are usually all tucked up in this fashion. My pondering arrived at the conclusion that if I was going to bury a body I would want to dig the smallest hole possible. So ball it up!

The excavators quickly went to work uncovering the skeleton in full, as they debated about what bone corresponds to what body part. Most of the excavation crew was now gathered around this burial. As they picked about the skeleton, the former occupant of the bones laid upon his side with mouth fully agape. I do not think that he could have closed his mouth even if he tried, as he no longer had a lower mandible. For all the poking and prodding that the archaeologist were subjecting him to on this day, he did not squirm an inch. He was taking the excavation like a champ.

I stood above the trench and observed the operation. I began wondering about who this skeleton was and what he did and how he died. My mind was wrapped into the depths of the past, as I learned how to sex a human skeleton and how to uncover their bones.

Excavating the works of the ancients excites any hunter of antiquities, but to úncover the dried up and barren remains of the ancients themselves seems to be an absolute delight to these Mayan archaeologists.

Perhaps Chatwin was correct when he proposed that the entire study of archaeology is cursed.
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan Ruinas, Honduras
March 7, 2008

Excavating at Copan Ruins

Excavating at Copan Ruins

I finally asked the Honduran field archaeologists why they call me Mario, and what is so funny about that name anyway. They just laughed. I can only imagine that this stretch of humor is found in that they think that I look Italian or possibly that the name Mario is a little too close to maricon- the Hispanic word for homosexual- to not provoke a grade school snicker. This is only my guess, but these Honduran men really like calling people maricons. It seems to be a never failing nor faltering joke. If work is looking a little dull on the horizon all you have to do is point to a normally astute man and say, “Maricon.” Everyone then bursts out in waves of laugher and the dullness of the day vanishes into no more. Field archaeologist are the same all over the world.

One of the archaeologist on this crew especially likes calling me Mario. He has really light skin and the other archaeologist call him “Chele,” which is the Spanish word for milk misspelled. He was the one who gave me the nickname one day because he could not manage to pronounce nor remember my real name. Wade is a difficult name for many people in Latin America to say. So rather than learning to pronounce a word that comes from a different language, Chele has reverted to calling me Mario. When he does this everybody laughs. “Hey Mario, hahaha, give me some nails, hahaha.” I give him some nails.

It is a little funny though, because I think that Mario IS a decent equivalent to Wade, as they are both water names. Mario essentially means “from the sea,” Wade means to “cross a river to the other shore.”

Sitting on a pyramid, writing on my Alphasmart, I am looking out at the northern residential section of the massive Copan archaeology site. Everything is going just like archaeology excavations tend to go: the techs come in on Monday morning and ask each other if they are hung over, jokes are made all day long- laughter is perpetually heard out of every vestige of the ruins- the men talk about women, the women are tough as nails, and I walk around all day just looking around. This ain’t bad.

The part of the excavation that I am working on includes two trenches in which ancient burials are located. The digging archaeologist are digging them up. I walk from trench to trench making maps. An old Honduran man with a hooked over Mayan nose is the primary excavator of the skeletons. One day he looked up at Mira and I and exclaimed, “This skeleton looks just like me!” We looked at him, we looked at the skeleton, we tried to figure out how a little bundle of ancient bones could possibly look like the man who was crouching over them. He then let us in on the joke. “It ain’t got no teeth,” while he flashed us a big toothless smile. I like these Honduran Mayans. They like to laugh. They like to smile.

Concurrently with the excavation, work crews are continuously renovating parts of the site that have been destroyed by time and by bulldozers. These men are rugged, wear big white cowboy hats, and seem to have been born with shovels in-hand. I often try to go over and talk to these men, but we usually only exchange more smiles than words. We both seem to be a little shy. They remind me of my father. I want to get dirty and work with them, but I probably will not be any good at it. I suppose I will just stick to drawing maps.

This go on Copan is probably the most extensive archaeology site that I have yet worked on. Copan is a city, though one that has been un-peopled for a millennium. Pyramids soar into the sky, intricately carved minarets are scattered through the old plazas, and the ball courts that once were the stage for ritual blood sports. Down beneath the mammoth pyramid-like structures are multiple layers of more pyramids and other colossal buildings of past glory. The Maya built on top of their own ruins into infinitum. When a new king would come to power he would build right over the top of the last king’s structures. The Mayan empire was ancient even in their own time, and their sense of history was as extensive as their ruins. Copan is amazing. Archaeology does not get any more interesting than this.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan Ruinas, Honduras
March 6, 2008

Mario of Copan

Mario of Copan

They call me Mario here. This is the name that I was given by the Honduran fieldworkers on the archaeology excavation that I am working on at Copan. “Mario,” they call out to me and then laugh. There is something funny about this Mario name. I don’t know what it is. Maybe there is something funny about me.

I would not doubt it.

I entered the village of Copan Ruinas in Honduras on Saturday after a long nebulous of a Tica bus journey from Costa Rica through Nicaragua. My mind now draws a blank when I think of all the nothing that I passed during the three day bus journey. It was truly three days of nothing. I looked out the window ever waiting for something to roll out in the landscape, something to jump up tp my window and get me, but the biggest disruption to the unruffled quilt of the horizon was the very bus that I was riding in- and I could not even look at that. Really, there is nothing in Central America. From San Jose, Costa Rica to A San Pedro Sula, Honduras there is nothing but glorious fields, rivers, and mountains. Maybe a village here and there pops up in the distance. But, for the most part, this is a land that is not dinged by the curse of things. Fields, fields, fields, an errant mule, an errant farmer, maybe a dirt encrusted kid playing with an old Tonka trunk on the side of the highway is all the visual stimulation that a journey through this parched and barren land can boast of. I like Central America.

I think of my youth in the USA and how everyone is drawn to someTHING. People do, own, and play THINGS there. Well, I am reacting against the pull of my culture and am stepping out on a plank of my own over an undulating and perilously endless sea: My attraction is for noTHING and all of the emptiness that comes on with it. My love is for lands that are empty. My love is for Central America, Mongolia, no-mans-land China, and the area around Cerro de Pasco in Peru. I want to look out from where I stand and see forever clearly. I want to know that my place in the world is in the middle of nowhere. I want no bearings, no direction, no ties, no path, nowhere to come from and nowhere to go.

I do not even want to know anymore where it is that I stand.

I don’t really care.

Oh yeah, my name is now Mario. Say it with a laugh, as I am the new ass of Copan.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Copan, Honduras
March 4, 2008

Fired from Archaeology Job

Fired from Archaeology Job

I just got fired from my archaeology job in Nicaragua. I suspect that the grad student who I was to be working really does not have anything going on. This is my suspicion. Oh well. Mira received this email letting us know that our “help is appreciated but not needed.”
-----------------------------------------------------
The email:

Hey Mira and Wade,

It sounds like things are really working out for you, I'm glad to
hear it. Unfortunately right now
the time frame I am working in is giving me a crunch. I appreciate
that both of you want to help
me, but at this point our different time frames don't seem to be
matching up. Things are going
well for me now and I have all the help that I need. So good luck
with your travels, interviews
and schooling. If you find yourselves in a situation where you need
something feel free to call on
me--even though your help is appreciated, your help isn't needed.
Take care.
------------------------------------------------------------

It seemed a little rudely written, as it was sent to two people who traveled across the world to help her. But I really do not think that much research is going on anyway. We were invited to work on this job six months ago, maybe it is a little sorry that we were dismissed only after we arrived in Central America, and the day before we were about to leave for Nicaragua.

But again, we were notified that she just arrange for a site to work on a few days ago, and that she was not going to get the permit applications into Managua for another two weeks. I think she is correct in assuming that she would not need our help, as it does not seem as if there is anything to help out with. Mira and I came to Central America to work. We do not want to go on a vacation to Nicaragua. We also do not really want to be sitting around a Nicaraguan farm with our nuts in our hands as we sit idle for weeks as the permits are processed.

I just laughed, as this is the great joke of archaeological fieldwork: you never know what is going to happen. Mira took this news a little hard. She was excited about the possibility of getting some archaeology experience in Nicaragua and helping the grad student with her dissertation research. We know the grad student personally, and I think Mira was a little hurt by the tone of the email. I suppose I have grown to be a little more callous about disappointment. After eight seasons of field work, I am a cynical old archaeologist, as I know that absolutely nothing in archaeology is a given. People travel all over the world to work on archaeology sites just to find that there are no sites to be worked on. This is normal.

One wilted possibility just leads to one that is in full bloom

We are still confirmed to begin working at Copan in Honduras at the beginning of March.
Now we have three weeks before going to Honduras that are open for travel. Maybe we will go to Panama, maybe Guatemala. I want to get out of Costa Rica.

Oh well.

Thanks for getting me to Latin America.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Heredia, Costa Rica
February 12, 2008

Traveler Photographs.com * Vagabond Fieldnotes * Vagabond Journey Travel

Archaeology Fieldwork in Nicaragua and Copan

Archaeology Fieldwork in Nicaragua and Copan

By living, I call myself a traveler, by aspiration, a writer, but by trade, I always refer to myself as an archaeologist. I learned the profession on the Manabi Coast of Ecuador in 2000, and I have been doing professional fieldwork whenever I needed to make up a little bean money ever since. It is a real traveler’s profession, as it is difficult, no impossible!, to find work that keeps you sedentary. Travel is the muse of all archaeologists. This is the main quality about the profession that I love: I can sign on to a job, travel to the site, work for a month or so, and then travel on with money in my pocket. It is fun outdoor work, keeps me traveling, and generally only requires short commitments. Archaeologists also tend to be rather odd, solitary, misanthropes. I fit in well in this profession.

Well, I decided to come back to Latin America and try my hand at some Meso-American archaeology. A project with a grad student from the University of Buffalo in Nicaragua fell right down in front of me and I was quick to pounce on it. So in a week I will be going up to the Nicaraguan side of Ostional to work on a site near the Pacific coast. I know nothing more about this project, other than I have to step off the bus in Rivas on the ninth of February. A free bed was offered to me- hopefully food comes with it- and this is all I need. I will be able to catche my precious travel funds for a little while as I try to find advertisers for the Vagabond Journey.com site hehehe.

I think that I will be working on this project in Nicaragua for around a month before traveling up through Honduras for what seems to be a really great job at Copan. For the past two weeks Mira and I have been making arrangements with a university professor in Heredia, Costa Rica to get us on a project in Honduras. We had no idea that we would be offered work on Copan, one of the largest and most famous archaeology sites in Central America- nay,the entire world! What is even more interesting is that we will be working under the legendary archaeologist, Dr.Seiichi Nakamura and his Japanese team. I am excited. I am seriously, honestly, in the midsts of a jumping up and down type of excitement. This is the kind of project that I only dream about in the best of my Indiana Jones fantasies.

I also love being around Japanese people.

All smiles.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Barva, Costa Rica
February 5, 2008

Photographs from Archaeology sites

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A Visit to a South Indian Archaeology Site

A Visit to a South Indian Archaeological Site
And a head first jump into the folk-lexicon of village Karnataka

It was mid-September and the beginning of a very temperate South Indian Autumn; a group of students and I were on a visit to a local archaeological site just outside of Bangalore city. We all packed into a mini-bus and rode out the sixty mile journey to the Ramanagara Taluk Valley, where we soon came upon the ancient environs of the Kunagal Hills. Our guide in this venture was the archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, and folk-lore scholar, Dr. M. Byregowda.

Dr. Byregowda is a man of action who possesses a great love for pre-history, folk-knowledge, and old-time Indian tradition. He took his doctorate degree after doing an extensive field study on the Iruligas tribals. “My thesis on the Iruligas for the PhD comprised 480 pages. But I ended up writing 18 books, including children’s plays based on folk-tales, practices, traditions, and games,” he was quoted as saying in an Indian newspaper. The article, which was entitled “Unsung Heroes,” also said that, “For him [Byregowda], the tribal is a natural scientist, the master of local knowledge, the best teacher and learner in nature.”Byregowda regularly walks through the hills of Southern India as though he’s the Indiana Jones of the east; ever searching for any clue that could direct him towards a better understanding of the region’s long buried pre-history. He keeps his head towards the ground, least he step over an ancient pot-sherd, and his ear towards the wind, so that he doesn’t miss any old-timer’s folk-tales. “In every village next to a hill, you can find interesting legends related to the hill,” he said. Byregowda’s attempt to assemble and re-vitalize fragments of past ways and knowledge has been a true passion for him since he was a child. “The rocky hills of Ramnagar, where I hail from, have always fascinated me,” he shared in the above referenced article. It was Byregowda himself who found and preliminarily excavated the site that my class and I were now about to explore.

We all piled out of the mini-bus near the edge of a small village and, acting like the eager American university students we were, began pointing our cameras at anything and everything. The landscape that we stepped into seemed as ancient as time itself; and row of huge rock spires protruded from the ground, gently flanking the small village in its’ crest. This was pre-history in the raw, and I could feel the temporal displacement that comes from being near archaeological sites. We then walked through the village and began ascending the hill at its edge.

At the apex of this hill was a flat area which was the location of the pre-historic habitation that we came to visit. It was on a small level plan, no bigger than three or four acres and it had a few square test units dug into it. As a field-archaeologist myself, with six years of professional experience, I intuitively began inspecting the work of my Indian brethren. The site appeared to have been left dormant for a while so I could not, nor really did I wish to, make any value judgments on their field methods. The other students soon gathered around the main test unit and Dr. Byregowda began telling us about the pre-history of the region and the artifacts that were unearthed from the excavation that he initiated, and I assume, directed. The area had been inhabited by a grand succession of cultural occupations; including the Shathavans, Gangas, Noloambas, and the Mysore Wodeyars. There are also the remains of once-upon-a-time forts and metallurgy foundries scattered throughout the hills.Byregowda then presented us with some local artifact samples; which consisted of lithic choppers, axe heads, large scrappers, and a couple of bi-faces. We passed these pre-historic tools amongst us and then we followed Dr. Byregowda’s lead up a steep hill.

When we arrived at the top of the hill we found a large cave that was formed by a few huge stone spires that had come together in ‘tee-pee’ like formation. Dr.Byregowda told us that an annual poetry celebration was held in the cave and people from all over the region would come to recite poems. We were then led trough the dips and curves of the cave and out the other side. There was another hill on this side that I ran up jovially and embarked for the edge. Once there, I could gaze upon the entire valley, which consisted of agricultural fields that stretched on and on ad infinitum. This was the Southern India that I set out for; all of those Bangalore ideals of progress and cultural-denial did not seem to exist here. This was the first time since I came to India to study that I felt as if I were experiencing something genuine. Dr. Byregowda then began to tell us about how the people who attend the poetry celebration also drink water from the natural spring that was near the cave. He then launched into a folk-tale about how the spring originated.

His story, which came from the folk-lexicon of the nearby villages, went something like this very much abbreviated version: there were two sisters who lived in a local village; one of them was good and the other was bad. Then a prince came into town and made springs out of them. The good-sister-spring contained water that was good for both heart and soul and the bad-sister-spring was poisonous. On the hill, right were we stood, were two springs side by side; one of them emitted nutrient rich, mineral water and the other would make people ill if they drank from it.