Josh Feola

San Bartolo is a Maya site in the northeastern part of the Petén, the northern "panhandle" department of Guatemala. It was discovered in 2001 and has since been the site of a large-scale regional archaeological project. It has recently produced one hat, two Doctors of Archaeology, a handful of undergraduate theses (mine included), and more than a few amateur experts on Maya art and culture. It has been my home for the last six weeks.

The Petén is densely forested and when living in it one becomes accustomed to encountering two distinct types of landscape:



1. Jungle



2. Jungle with ruins

This is a subtle distinction that takes time to appreciate. It's sometimes difficult to comprehend there's anything for miles around even when you're standing at the foot of an enormous architectural complex. Though recent scientific breakthroughs (with direct connections to San Bartolo, incidentally) have made it possible for archaeological sites in the jungle to be remotely sensed from space, detecting Maya settlements in the Petén brush has been historically difficult and there are subsequently many un"discovered" (because it takes a licensed, typically non-local archaeologist to "discover"), unexcavated (though unfortunately not unlooted) sites pockmarking the jungle, visible only through a subtle rise in the earth and tiny dots of vertical inconsistency in the treeline.

San Bartolo is one of these pockmarks, about 1 km² consisting of four main architectural groups (including temples, palaces, ritual structures and administrative compounds), two large plazas, and a road running north-south for about half a kilometer between a ball-court and two residential groups. San Bartolo was discovered by chance and propelled to the forefront of Maya studies (and then thrust into the media limelight) because of its unique mural paintings:





The murals are significant because they index a fully articulated origin myth and cosmology (and attendant writing system) in place in the Maya lowlands at a date much earlier than was previously surmised for these cultural innovations (ca. 100 BC). If you're interested to learn more you can read my 80-page microtome on the subject (esp. Ch 2). If not you can enjoy my two favorite mural details. Above: The Maize God, having founded civilization at the world center and established the institution of kingship, dives into the underworld so that we (humans) might live, wrapped in this crazy abstract red-black-and-white death snake. Below: A slick jaguar hangs out on Flower Mountain (an iconographic motif with connections to Central Mexico, basically a topograph signifying the place of wild and beastly nature), where he snacks on an Oropendola (a weird-sounding, gold-tailed bird with its own Central Mexican connection: it was Montezuma's favorite).

As per Guatemalan law I can't reveal explicit details about the excavations I've done this season until these have been reported in full to the Institución de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH) at an annual Simposio in July, so instead I will dispassionately list the classes of artifact one might find in the course of excavating a lowland Maya site and maybe I will at a later date indicate what exactly I did and did not do in relation to these artifacts, which are at this writing only hypothetically related to San Bartolo:



A spindle whorl



Skulls



Polychrome pottery



Obsidian



Ceramic figurines



Ancient holes in the ground (not to be confused with Contemporary holes in the ground)



Benches



Bone jewelry



Mandibles



Friezes




Stelae. These last two are from Xultun, a large site to the southwest of San Bartolo. I was part of the first sustained mapping and excavation efforts at the site last year, and with full scale excavations set to commence next season, I may work up from the ground floor of Xultunian exploration. Which sounds kind of cool when I put it like that.



So I'm back in Antigua now, as evidenced by my favored motif of the omnipresent Volcán Agua, my constant reference point. It's an overcast morning and I'm slowly (2.5 hrs and counting) sipping away at a cappuccino at this super bougie cafe in the northwest corner of the Parque Central, which I was reduced to patronizing because my favorite wifi-friendly cafe (which is less bougie if no less "western", maybe the only difference is mean age of clientele?) doesn't have electricity and I needed to skype out to Beijing at 7am sharp for a job interview. Such is my life. I am of course and as always at a crossroads, but one that will hopefully be in my rearview within the next two weeks. Which way will I go? A note of suspense to tantalize my bewildered readership...

Regardless of what route I will take I am immeasurably satisfied with how the last few months have gone. I dug deep and got to the bones (yeah, puns) of the subject that I recently received a degree in, gained a visceral and spatial appreciation of time, made myriad little philosophical connections in a million different directions, became functionally fluent in Spanish, and had time to read a few good books. I realized how much I like archaeology. Archaeology is ethically useful because it encourages humans to think inclusively about humanity. Superficially (another pun) archaeology is a study of "the other," but so was anthropology until the ethical timebomb of regarding living, breathing, communicating humans as an "other" exploded and the discipline became "postmodern." The difference between anthropology and archaeology is that the people with whom the latter is concerned are neither living nor breathing. The similarity is that all people—past and present—communicate.


That said I'll terminate this particular communication. If you're going to be in Boston, Austin, Atlanta, Savannah, or San Antonio during the month of May, hit me up because we may cross paths. In the mean time, be good and make it a



-Josh

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Spanish classes are wrapped up and I'm leaving tomorrow for the densely forested unknown. Here's what I've been doing for the last two weeks, the last month, the last few days, from my last day in Antigua.



Last weekend we went to Lago de Atitlan, a 1,000'-deep freshwater lake in the mountainous/volcanic Guatemalan highlands. The lake abides in a caldera formed by an ancient eruption, and has since human time observable been a site of great significance to the Maya who populated the region in the pre-Columbian era. There are actually archaeological sites beneath the water, but to observe these you must be high-altitude deep-water dive certified, a task for which I am doubly unqualified.

The purpose of the trip was to relax for the weekend, but I was keen to imbibe the distinct local Maya culture. There are over 20 Mayan groups living in Central America today, with distinct languages and cultural traditions. The villages around Atitlan are comprised of predominately Kaqchikel and Tzutujil Mayans. In a neat bit of colonial treachery, the Kaqchikels were enlisted by conquistadores at the dawn of Spanish conquest to defeat their then neighboring faction, the K'iche Mayans, before themselves falling victim to subjugation. Now the Kaqchikeles and Tzutujiles enjoy relative cultural autonomy, maintaining a more or less traditional way of life in the villages around the Lake, such as the one I visited, Santiago de Atitlan.



During my one full day in Santiago I took the opportunity to visit a Cofradía, a meeting hall where an interesting amalgamation of Catholicism and the shamanic Tzutujil religion is practiced. A few other students and I witnessed the blessing of an American philanthropist (and funder of excavations at San Bartolo). Two Tzutujil nahuals, or shamans, presided over the ceremony, one swinging incense around those to be blessed and the other (pictured above) playing guitar. In this picture the elder nahual has just inundated his guitar with incense from the Copal tree, floating a generous amount of the fragrant smoke into the cavity of his instrument. He played with his guitar nearly vertical and as he did a stream of smoke slowly trailed out around his hands and engulfed him in a pale, sun-inflected cloud. Cool image.



After the Cofradía we visited this guy, Maximon, a rather enigmatic Tzutujil god. Maximon is a local legend, and spends each year at a different house, making his annual trip during Semana Santa (the week at the end of Lent). On his way to his new home Maximon spends a few days at a Tzutujil temple adjacent to the Catholic church in the center of Santiago. The Tzutujil equate Maximon with Judas Iscariot, and when he is placed in his temple he is simultaneously viewed as hanging on his suicidal tree and jeering at the imposed religion of European others. Local legend has it that Maximon fights Jesus on Easter. When I saw him he was accompanied by a lit sculpture of Jesus in his sepulcher and two attendant nahuals. Maximon gets by on donations (such as those I paid just to visit him for a few minutes), and he puts the money to good use, "consuming" 40-60 eighths of liquor and a few packs of cigarettes a day (he smoked two cigarettes while I was there). I was told by our translator that while he's drunk he is taken advantage of by witches, who take away his curing power. However, when he wakes up to the holy nahuals he sobers up to his mistakes and regains his supernatural efficacy. Interesting guy.

To conclude our day we visited a Franciscan church where the Catholicism was a bit more clear cut. The main claim to fame of the church, however, was a fantastically intricate carved wooden altar, a towering masterpiece that took its craftsman eight years to complete. The iconography of the altar complicated a completely Catholic reading of its symbolism, as it featured such undeniably Maya adornments as the maize god and nahuals dressed as Maximon surrounding and ascending such expected imagery as Christ crucified and the mournful Mother.



My weekend concluded back in the unambiguously Catholic Antigua. There is an elaborate church procession every Sunday during Lent through the streets of town, featuring two marching bands, giant lit floats, and innumerable purple-robed Padres and altar boys. I managed to catch a lull in the motion long enough to capture this image of Jesus. He is attended on this float by lilacs, a tree, Greek columns and very Western angels, perhaps a no less conspicuous admixture of divergent cultural elements than what I saw in Santiago.



Now that I'm leaving Antigua, a quick word as to what exactly I've been doing in between all these disturbingly vacation-like side trips. Besides Spanish class, I've also been working in the laboratory that houses all of the artifacts unearthed from San Bartolo for two hours a day. As I've mentioned, San Bartolo possesses now-famous spectacularly preserved Maya murals dating to around 100 BC. Over half of the murals, however, exist in the state visible here, that is, in the form of over 9,000 (and counting) fragments of destroyed stucco wall. One of the main objectives of the archaeologists working here is to piece together, literally, the amazing imagery of the murals, using as a rough guide the art of both Preclassic maya predecessors and San Bartolo's iconographic descendants, notably illustrated manuscripts of the 16th century K'iche Mayan creation myth the Popol Vuh and the numerous lived Mayan religious and artistic traditions practiced today, one small part of which you have glimpsed here. In fact, the nahual guitarist pictured above has been to San Bartolo, making the 8-hour trip with full religious paraphernalia and a small orchestra of traditional instruments after hearing about the murals in 2004. My professor, William Saturno, described the ritual to me, which involved the burning of Copal and playing of guitar and drum. It moved him deeply, he says: "this is the first time these walls have heard this music in 2,000 years."


I know this is terribly long, but it's two weeks and many introspective days-worth of images and observations. The next week might slow my roll a bit, as I'll be on the road. Three nights in Copan Ruínas, Honduras, where I'll visit the country for the first time and see the artistically sophisticated Maya site of Copán. Then three days in Flores, Guatemala, where I'll revisit the most monumental Maya site, Tikal. After that, it's off to San Bartolo for two and a half months of mural-gazing, hard-digging, hammock-sleeping, no-running-water-but-somehow-constantly-internet-connected tent living. There will be much more to write.


-Josue

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