So what can I say about a month's worth of excavations? Jesus, when I let my mind reel that all back, it's as though I'm going over a year's worth of memories. Each day was cut from the same colorful cloth, woven from the same characters, and snipped promptly around 10 P.M. Still, though, they were different as all of our days are. A lot of it is on the shadowy edge of my mind, about to tip over into “lost” forever.
I never told you, for instance, that the Rocas crew found gold underground. Technically, we weren't supposed to tell anyone (the natives might get restless), but I trust you. It wasn’t much, maybe $40 in beaten bits, but it certainly threw the canal into the limelight. That popularity continued as more interesting things stumbled over themselves in their rush to get out. Chavín-era pottery, more gold bits, a whole skull... it all appeared in that next week, the first of August. The North Atrium, the hill just north of the Circular Plaza, was gradually edged out of consciousness.
That’s not to say we weren’t busy ourselves. As we scampered over our side of the Atrium, Beth and I worried at the hill mercilessly, until [literally] tons of dirt were carried away in rusty, cracked buckets. We had help: Becca, Robert, Aimee, Juliet (before she left), Marcela, and the workers. Together, we stacked up a hip-high pile of camelid bones, coarse pottery sherds, and informal hammer-stones. We uncovered a maze of walls, which intersected at demented angles in coarse courses of stone. We didn’t come down on a house, or even an ancient outhouse. Instead, it appeared to be some sort of water-control terracing system. Whoopee.
As time went on, the West Atrium (our side) did develop a bit of an inferiority complex. Dr. John stopped visiting, and focused mainly on Rocas. We weren’t featured in dinner announcements anymore. And, perhaps worst of all, Rosa replaced Stephanie as supervisor, and though she meant well, her unrelenting and uncompromising overview was... stifling. We really labored, and came to tire of the achy backs, knees, hands -- all of our bits that spent eight hours a day moving ancient garbage (quite literally).
There was drama, of course. Caro and Marcus got together, after a lot of whispering. The Peruvian students left, to a lot of fanfare and loud music. One of the kittens died. I rebooked my travel plans, and, at a bit of personal cost, am going to Macchu Picchu. We had a bonfire in a random field, climbed on roofs, attended a freaky travelling circus (stories to follow), and one of us (Bodie) had to escape from a graveyard [after being locked in]. More and more, we began to talk about northern things -- American football, cable T.V., continuous hot water, and, most of all, Stanford. When class registration opened, talk kept burbling about that other place with red tile roofs, where are friends would be... so soon, but so far. Most of us got cabin fever thousands of miles from home.
That’s not to say we didn’t love it all. Though we didn’t get to do it, we did watch Rocas pull skeleton after skeleton from the entrance to Rocas. John kept rhapsodizing about what we were finding, inventing new theories every day at dinner. Was the Atrium the slum-town after Chavin? That would explain the poor building structure... Was Rocas used as a ceremonial flush-toilet; carrying away smashed drinking vessels? What did the burials mean? As time went on, there was a sense of growing purpose -- a well-oiled digging machine was crunching away. We could rub a bit of dirt with a thumb and tell if it had pottery, burnt clay, bone, slate, granite tools, or nothing at all. We grew a great sixth sense for lithics, and came to enjoy our nights together in the lab. Store owners called us by name, we adopted stray dogs, and had favorite meals the señora would fix for us. Home, unexpectedly, found us.
I may have mentioned that we were supposed to keep field notebooks. I wish these notes counted, but I kept one all the same. We noted oddities of the excavation, thoughts on material, or just lists of favorite things. We hand them over to John at the end, as little scrapbooks to help him stitch together the season back at school. They also serve as miniature soapboxes, and let him know what we’re thinking. I spent my last page on a small list of my own: Things I Loved / Things I Didn’t.
So what did I enjoy in Chavín, now that it’s over? The people were great, the town was safe, my bed was warm. All of my expenses, or at least most, were covered by Stanford. My Spanish improved [marginally]. I learned to count to ten in Quechua. I got a pretty decent primer in archaeology, lithics, and stratigraphy. I can use a theodolite. Oh, and I got to clean a skull with Q-tips, and note the cause of death. Yoric, much?
What could have been better? The dig wasn’t really well run... I mean, I don’t have much of a handle on how they usually go, but I did do Scouts. You sort of wince a bit when a leader over-compensates, and comes down hard with a series of orders (without explanation). Supervision wavered hugely, and sensitivity was a tad scarce. We were often told to ignore something and continue because “this unit isn’t that important,” or that we just had to “really just get this coarse pottery out of here.” Stephanie buckled a bit under the pressure of her PhD advisor’s stare; John kept hounding her to do better. There were a few awkward power struggles as Rosa took over the West Atrium. Oh well, that’s all done now.
We said goodbye on Wednesday, August 20th. We had been in Chavin for fifty-one days, or just over seven weeks. We took picture after picture with the cooks, the señora, and the Ricks. Everything we had was swept into bulging suitcases, and stood dustily in the courtyard, awaiting a colectivo. We waited idly, tracing loose circles on the flagstones with our toes. Leaving was not as hard as we expected; two months had dulled the sharp pain of a split. It was time.
A van pulled up, and as we began to pile in, haggling over the price, rain fell from the clear blue sky. We pressed our palms against the fogging glass as we pulled away, and mouthed “Adios” to friends on the street and in the plaza. They waved back as we bounced away, craning their necks to say goodbye to the latest batch of gringos.
Did I leave anything behind? Yes. I gave my kneepads to Pablo, the kindest worker. I gave a squishy toy to the toddler who plays in the gutter outside our hotel, and likes to say “Hola!” when we go to the site. May he not choke on it. I gave a Connect Four game to the girl who sometimes runs the corner store when she gets home from elementary school. The buttons are in English.
In the room, I left: one pencil eraser, still wrapped, two mechanical pencils, a 10¢ centimo coin, and somewhere on the right side of the room, the remote that controls my computer. None of this mattered; I was going home.
I’m going to make a few pit-stops, before I go. I booked a flight to Cuzco, home of Macchu Picchu and all that jazz. All in all, my tour around the rest of Peru should take only a week, and will be ridiculously speedy compared to my vegetation in the highlands. Don’t worry about me, if you’re prone to that sort of thing -- I’m now on the broad and safe tourist path.
Speaking of me, I am, right now, sitting on an overstuffed mattress in Lima. We just checked into our hostal after an all-night bus ride. Robert says we need to bounce -- it’s nearly breakfast time. He’s right, of course. The last adventure begins today.
One last thing -- I’ll write when I can. So this may be the last note. Who knows when wireless will appear?
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