Bill began to chip away at the lithic analysis while Miranda slogged through the pottery. Katia got a brief tutorial in the basics of both ceramic and obsidian analysis before her parents arrived to drive her back to her home town of Santa Lucia (she called a few hours later to let us know that she arrived safe and sound).
Today Jorge and Milton (our old friends from Cofradia and Pueblo Nuevo) arrived to help us pack up the house and put everything into storage. Today we head out of town and tomorrow we fly back to the states.
Despite the shocking events of the last few days, it has been a fun and productive season!
Glad everyone made it back safe. How did the amount of obsidian you found in Operation 1 compare with Operation 2? Was there any material from sources other than La Esperanza, Ixtepeque, and Chayal?
ReplyDeleteNick Erickson
Overall there was much less material in Operation 1. In Op 2 we hit some stratified middens and nothing like that was recovered from the Main Plaza in Op 1. We think this has as much to do with the function of the buildings as it does with the practice of keeping the spaces around the central buildings clean.
ReplyDeleteNo other obsidian sources have yet been identified, but I would be suprised if we didn't come across a few of the other Honduran sources (Source Y or San Luis). The La Esperanza source is the closest and I would take less than a day to walk to the source from the Jesus de Otoro valley. Coming back would be quicker because there are waterways flowing from the mountains to the Grand Otoro River (aka Upper Ulua).
We're pulling together the informe and will post a link to it once it is finished.