phillyb doing archaeology and poo in peru: a running photo blog for teh huddle

[PhillyB]

oh yeah and the best part is i stumbled across human remains in a burial pit. it looks to have been looted based on the context (and the fact that there's bones everywhere.) part of a femur is jutting out of the sand fill in the middle, a tibia is on the ground, as well as a couple of vertebrae and a piece of the skull cap. a now-decaying textile was left behind by looters who see no value in it (they usually go for stuff like gold and pottery.)

 

 

 

 

[Hawk]

if you find a full skull...will they let you keep it?

 

 

you could bring it back to camp, name it Wilson....would make a hell of a movie....you and Wilson!

[Kevin Greene]

 

I wouldn't touch that burial site.

 

 

 

.

[Bronn]

keep your eyes out for meteorites out there... Got a magnet with you?

[SCP]

The deserts there are pretty close to the coastline aren't they? That sand in your footprint photo looks almost like beach sand. I assume that area may have been submerged at one point or are you at higher elevations?

[PhillyB]

The deserts there are pretty close to the coastline aren't they? That sand in your footprint photo looks almost like beach sand. I assume that area may have been submerged at one point or are you at higher elevations?

 

yeah this is only about a mile or two inland from the pacific ocean. the wind is insane along the coast so much of the sand comes from thousands of years of constant wind erosion. as far as it being underwater, that i'm not sure. the water levels would have actually been lower during the pleistocene (ice age) 10,000 years ago and beyond.

 

i am no geologist though

[Cat]

yeah this is only about a mile or two inland from the pacific ocean. the wind is insane along the coast so much of the sand comes from thousands of years of constant wind erosion. as far as it being underwater, that i'm not sure. the water levels would have actually been lower during the pleistocene (ice age) 10,000 years ago and beyond.

 

i am no geologist though

 

lol 10,000 years ago...sure you crazy scientist.

 

on a serious not....that's two miles from the ocean! That's crazy. I need to see more of this world while I'm around.

[PhillyB]

yeah i can feel my fundie friends on facebook cringing when i post archaeological dates for things

[stirs]

Good Stuff

What kind of room do you have? Share with professor?

When is the family coming down? think you mentioned they were

[PhillyB]

Good Stuff

What kind of room do you have? Share with professor?

When is the family coming down? think you mentioned they were

 

i rented a small apartment located about thirty second (by foot) from the museum i'm working in the basement of, which is itself located on the northern edge of the plaza de armas (a sort of commons area that's characteristic of spanish colonial towns.) it's a small one bedroom deal but it's plenty big for two months. it's 500 soles a month including power, water, cable, and wifi, which equals out to i think $185 USD. a damn good deal.

 

my wife will be flying to lima with our daughter on july 2, and then catching a commuter flight to arequipa, where i'll meet them and take the bus back to moquegua with them.

 

we'll stay here until the last week of july and then fly to uruguay for a week and a half so i can finish writing my book and then it's back home to the grind.

[stirs]

A damn good adventure

props to you

props to your wife

and lucky kid to be exposed to more than just NC, as long as the adventures continue at least

[PhillyB]

headed back out to the desert in the morning to map the site in more detail. if i find anything cool or take pictures that aren't redundant i'll post them.

 

edit: until then here's a peruvian flower

 

 

 

[PhillyB]

If you're doing archaeological survey in the field and don't have the lab analysis equipment to determine if an object is bone (as opposed to shell, wood, ceramic, etc.) one way to find out is to stick it on your tongue. If it sticks to your tongue, it's bone. If it falls off, it's something else.

This was definitely bone.

 

 

[PhillyB]

^ that was taken in the middle of a day-long survey/mapping project at this site that was recently discovered. basically we're doing some basic analysis to determine when it was occupied and what we can tell about it in relation to other cultures/empires. on the first go-round last week we found pottery, which told us it wasn't pre-ceramic, as feared. the roughness of the pottery (as opposed to the fineware we're processing in the lab) suggests that it's a late formative site (which would place it around 200 CE.) however, today's analysis proved even more useful, if more tedious... on one of my many routes on an imaginary grid imposed over the contoured ridge composing the site, i came across this small lithic (stone) projectile point. comparisons to sites surrounding it suggest that it's significantly thinner than formative projectile points, indicating an advance in lithic production that's distinctly middle horizon (roughly speaking, around 600-800 CE.)

 

here's the projectile point

 

 

 

 

of course there can be multiple layers of occupation in a single site, so that complicates things, but we're far from that stage. right now we're just mapping everything - archaeological features (foundation bases, wall bases, etc.) and noting the presence of an abnormal number of burials that will likely prove to be extraordinarily different than the surrounding ones, which makes it an extraordinary discovery, and something that's going to be incredibly interesting for andeanists over the next decade or so.

 

what complicates it is that a major flood is proposed to have washed through this area around 700 years ago, scouring the site and spreading the ruins across a wide plane (which explains the odd diaspora of incredibly heavy lithics down the shallow slopes of the site.) this will make finding things in their original context (critical to understanding an ancient culture) difficult, but excavations should reveal plenty.

 

especially when we get to those burials. good god, those burials. those are going to be incredible.