The original plan for the Marco Gonzalez Archaeological Project (MGAP) was to have the first field season during the summer of 2020, but due to the global pandemic, field schools with undergraduates were not supposed to run in Belize. Thus, the summer of 2023 was the first year of MGAP.
Staff members traveled to San Pedro, Belize, at the end of May. We spent a week organizing with vendors, surveying the site, and getting the lab set up before the students arrived.
Once the students arrived, we spent four weeks working in the field from 7:30 am to about 12 pm every Monday to Friday (with half days on Saturdays), followed by artifact washing and counting during the afternoon. The heat and humidity were difficult to acclimate to in the beginning, and there were many mosquitos on site. Even with these obstacles, we had four full, fun, and productive weeks in the field.
This year's excavation units focused on Structures 14 and 18. Two units were focusing on the architecture on the north and the sound sides of Structure 14, two units were on Structure 14 (an eastern unit and a western unit), and one unit on Structure 18 in the location of a looters trench.
The unit I was supervising was located on the western side of Structure 14. In previous years, over three dozen burials were excavated from the eastern portion of the structure. The original expectations were that we would encounter burials in the unit I was supervising, as well as the one on the eastern portion of the unit. The eastern unit did encounter more burials, however, the western unit did not. Since the western unit did not have burials, we were able to excavate much deeper into the structure. We reached (and surpassed) the salt processing layers, where we found many artifacts, mostly ceramics (including a sherd with glyphs in the Late Classic layer that says "the drinking vessel [of]..."). On one half of the unit, we encountered a series of large rocks that were potentially related to another series of large rocks in the eastern unit (maybe a potential hearth). We stopped excavating on that half of the unit, but continued to the water line in the other half of the unit.
One of the most (in my opinion) interesting finds in the unit I supervised was what we thought was a burial cache, but with no burial. Located in the northern wall, the first thing that caught our attention was a large amount of red soil - later we determined that it was probably cinnabar or hematite. In the cache, we found a bone fan handle, a pair of shell ear spools, several worked shell beads, a chunk of rubber that probably was on or was held by some sort of fabric based on an imprint on the rubber, a shell ocarina, half of a carnivore mandible, and two herbivore teeth. With these findings, we decided to extend the unit in each direction, but did not find any human skeletal remains.
After three and half weeks, we covered the bottoms of the units with plastic and backfilled everything. Next year (or in future years), we will further explore whether or not the large rocks in both of the Structure 14 units were actually a feature or not.
After the students went home, another staff member and I stayed for a few extra days to go on a Maya medicinal tour. This tour taught us more about the local flora and how they could be prepared and for different types of illnesses. The information that we learned on this tour will be integral part of my future dissertation research. If your interested, you can learn more about my future dissertation work here.
You can learn more about the 2023 field season through these publications:
1. Kratimenos, P., E. Graham, J.J. Aimers, G. Wrobel, A. Marshall, R. LaLonde (2023). Catbirds and Crabholes: The 2023 Field Season at Marco Gonzalez, Belize. Archaeology International.
Once the students arrived, we spent four weeks working in the field from 7:30 am to about 12 pm every Monday to Friday (with half days on Saturdays), followed by artifact washing and counting during the afternoon. The heat and humidity were difficult to acclimate to in the beginning, and there were many mosquitos on site. Even with these obstacles, we had four full, fun, and productive weeks in the field.
This year's excavation units focused on Structures 14 and 18. Two units were focusing on the architecture on the north and the sound sides of Structure 14, two units were on Structure 14 (an eastern unit and a western unit), and one unit on Structure 18 in the location of a looters trench.
The unit I was supervising was located on the western side of Structure 14. In previous years, over three dozen burials were excavated from the eastern portion of the structure. The original expectations were that we would encounter burials in the unit I was supervising, as well as the one on the eastern portion of the unit. The eastern unit did encounter more burials, however, the western unit did not. Since the western unit did not have burials, we were able to excavate much deeper into the structure. We reached (and surpassed) the salt processing layers, where we found many artifacts, mostly ceramics (including a sherd with glyphs in the Late Classic layer that says "the drinking vessel [of]..."). On one half of the unit, we encountered a series of large rocks that were potentially related to another series of large rocks in the eastern unit (maybe a potential hearth). We stopped excavating on that half of the unit, but continued to the water line in the other half of the unit.
One of the most (in my opinion) interesting finds in the unit I supervised was what we thought was a burial cache, but with no burial. Located in the northern wall, the first thing that caught our attention was a large amount of red soil - later we determined that it was probably cinnabar or hematite. In the cache, we found a bone fan handle, a pair of shell ear spools, several worked shell beads, a chunk of rubber that probably was on or was held by some sort of fabric based on an imprint on the rubber, a shell ocarina, half of a carnivore mandible, and two herbivore teeth. With these findings, we decided to extend the unit in each direction, but did not find any human skeletal remains.
After three and half weeks, we covered the bottoms of the units with plastic and backfilled everything. Next year (or in future years), we will further explore whether or not the large rocks in both of the Structure 14 units were actually a feature or not.
After the students went home, another staff member and I stayed for a few extra days to go on a Maya medicinal tour. This tour taught us more about the local flora and how they could be prepared and for different types of illnesses. The information that we learned on this tour will be integral part of my future dissertation research. If your interested, you can learn more about my future dissertation work here.
You can learn more about the 2023 field season through these publications:
1. Kratimenos, P., E. Graham, J.J. Aimers, G. Wrobel, A. Marshall, R. LaLonde (2023). Catbirds and Crabholes: The 2023 Field Season at Marco Gonzalez, Belize. Archaeology International.