Monday found the remaining members of the project in the lab. Sandra, bless her heart, is learning the ins and outs of the PADO ceramics. This is made all the more difficult by the poorly preserved surface of the sherds recovered this year. Bill has blown through the obsidian and chert from the past two seasons.
One of the intriguing aspects of the sites in Jesus de Otoro is that they are relatively close to an obsidian source near the highland town of La Esperanza. Nearly all of the obsidian analyzed so far can be sourced to La Esperanza. So, along with Don Nery Fiallos, we decided to spend this morning visiting the pre-Columbian obsidian mines, Los Hoyos ("The Holes").
Our first stop of the morning took us to the Casa de Cultura of La Esperanza. This was supposed to be a brief pause to collect an old friend of Nery’s, Don Francisco the director of the Casa de Cultura. One thing led to another and we spent quite a while exploring the interpretive center for Lenca culture, arranging for a more robust vehicle for the next stage of the mountain drive, and participating in an impromptu interview for the local television station.
For the record, this is the second time in as many weeks that Bill has been interviewed on camera. Either his Spanish has improved or, like a horrible car accident, Hondurans cannot look away.
The obsidian outcrop is located in the mountains to the north of La Esperanza-Intibuca, and surrounding the town are many modern Lenca communities.
Actually, the footpath to the obsidian mine begins at an elementary school. The head instructor arranged for our “guides” to skip class and take us to the site. As you may well imagine, they were eager to show us every aspect of the site and felt little urgency to get back to class.
Los Hoyos is a series of shaft mines. Each shaft is roughly 1 meter in diameter and between 2 and 10 meters deep. Scattered about the surface is a dense concentration of core preparation debris (i.e. mounds of jagged broken glass). We visited two of the outcroppings, separated by about 1 kilometer of highland agricultural fields (corn, potatoes, and broccoli).
Los Hoyos is another addition to a growing list of what makes the archaeology of the Jesus de Otoro valley and surrounding areas so interesting.
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