We are working in the the cleared agricultural fields near Cara Blanca Pool 7, a pre-Columbian residential area in west central Belize. Hundreds of ancient Maya structures once housed a thriving community here. Now the area is being converted into farmland, and our job is to salvage what we can before the plows sheer off this history, layer by layer.
Jean Larmon and Erin Benson on boat crossing the Belize River.
Illinois anthropology professor Lisa Lucero is leading this work, and many of her students are getting their first taste of archaeology here. Working with field assistants from Belize, the students have begun by excavating small houses, exposing walls, plaster floors and domestic artifacts, including ceramics and stone tools.
Because the Maya buried their dead in the floors and foundations of their homes to keep their ancestors close, we often find burials at these sites. Anthropology Ph.D. student Aimée Carbaugh, an Illinois state-certified skeletal analyst, will lead the effort to determine the age, sex and health of the individuals buried within the house mounds.
There is a lot of information in these bones – about the person’s diet, mobility and genetic ancestry. Stable isotope analysis of a small piece of long bone can tell us what the person ate by finding chemical signatures of foods that were incorporated in the bone. Strontium isotope analysis of the crowns of molars can reveal the strontium ratio present in local food resources, which will help determine where people originated and how they moved across the ancient Maya landscape. The roots of a molar may yield ancient DNA, which gives us a way to examine the familial relationships between individuals buried in the same mound.
In the coming weeks, the work will move to larger mounds, where wealthier Maya lived.
The work is challenging. While the agricultural fields expose the Maya mounds, making it easier for us to find them, this vast open area also presents a problem. Without jungle cover, we are exposed to the elements, necessitating the use of palapas – shelters made of tree branches or trunks and plastic tarps or palm leaves. While palapas protect us from the scorching sun and heat indexes up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, they do not protect us from the gusting winds. Our team must repair the shelters daily.
The cleared fields also expose mounds to potential looting. Looters look for artifacts such as grave goods and offerings that they sell on the black market. Recently, while examining a residential complex we plan to excavate, we discovered a substantial looters’ trench.
Buying artifacts promotes looting, so don’t. Looting destroys the historical and archaeological record of the people who once lived here, robbing their descendants of a precious piece of the past. Once that record is gone, it cannot be replaced.
We had planned to map these mounds with a drone that could capture wide views of the landscape and pinpoint the location of each mound. Unfortunately, even with all the practicing, our plans were cut short. On its first flight over the fields at a height of roughly 75 meters, the drone (which we called Wilbur, as in Wilbur Wright) dropped out of the sky without warning, seemingly without reason. It is now grounded.
A drone named Wilbur is grounded for the rest of the season.
This was extremely disappointing, but represents one of the many challenges that archaeologists face: We have access to all sorts of wonderful technology, as long as it works. And when it does not, we turn to tried-and-true techniques – we are now using a GPS and a compass to map this expanse.
We will continue to work in the agricultural fields for the next four weeks, gathering residential data. This will complement the data gathered Cara Blanca Pool 1, the subject of the next blog.
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Editor’s note:
A University of Illinois Research Board grant is funding the salvage archaeology program. Research is conducted under the auspices of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History.
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