Hey, Pachuca!

Hello, my dear heart. And Hello, to the rest of you.

Tonight is a bit of a long post, given the large amount of down time that we have from the storms and everyone being in separate stages of work. The storms are nothing new; every evening seems to bring a massive thunderstorm that flickers the power and sends us ducking for the inside of the great house. Speaking of the great house, I figured I'd show you where I'm living for these two months.

View from the entryway. Behold Central America, land of concrete.

I dunno if I mentioned it earlier, but the lab is inside a locked and gated compound that only we have keys for, which were registered to us when we arrived. The great house where Sarah, Dave, and I are staying is in the very back of the compound, through the door by the car in the first picture. The lab is to the left, us working in the second story with Dave in the bottom one. Both floors feature space for analysis and probably several elephants' worth of lithic, ceramic, and bone evidence that has been excavated, not to mention the archives from the original mapping project. Across from the lab are three tiny houses, called casitas, where Dr. Hirth, Sean, and Mark are staying. 

Stairs to upper lab, and the casitas. They are one room, one bathroom.

More of the casitas.

Stairs and areas for ceramic washing.

The space is nice to have, and although it can feel empty at times, we will have more people arriving at the end of the month so we should savor the quiet while we have it. Last year, there were almost 25 people working out of this compound, on multiple projects including PATT and Altica, including the actual excavations. 

In adition to showing you my space, I wanted to say a little more about what I do as a lithic analyst and lab technician. In a nutshell, the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica used obsidian glass to form various tools for their uses, developing flake and blade technologies to suit their uses. We, as analysts, can look at these tools and classify them, according to their place in the technological series, the source of the obsidian, and even their use, according to patterning of wear on the blades. At Teotihuacan, the city held a monopoly on a specific site of obsidian that produced green obsidian, called Pachuca. This type was highly desirable across Mesoamerica, because its color had ritual significance. At Teotihuacan, however, it was just the most readily available, so most of the assemblage is comprised of this green obsidian. This isn't to say we don't have other colors, such as grey, but the Pachuca obsidian is by far the most common.

Green obsidian blade tip, specifically a third series distal.

3rd Series Medial section of grey obsidian, from Otumba.

Tonight is wierd because we just finished our first massive set of bags from a site that Mark excavated, that alone weighed 7.5kg. As Sean, Sarah and Mark wrap up the last of that bag (recording, counting grey and decortification debitage,) I started the next set of bags, which are about 3.5kg each. Each of these bags is filled with thousands of pieces of obsidian. Its an exhausting process, but the amount of data we are gathering is awesome, and we get some super cool stuff too, like the exotics or even bifaces.

Grey Biface, probably a projectile point!

A lot of work is still ahead of us, but its great stuff and really less work hours per week than all of last semester by almost half (70-80hrs of work last semester each week.) And, the benefits of the excellent food and fruit and coffee and great company make this a very easy time, more vacation than work. 

I am leaving the introductions to Tali to Hill, as they have a billion more pictures and a thousand more things to say. Suffice to say I am fully in love with this little girl and I can't wait to meet her. Welcome to the family, Tali'Zorah. We are so very glad to have you.

Missing you much, lover mine. Looking forward to our next skype date. :)

To the rest of you, have a lovely week, look for a post come the weekend. 

Cheers,

Cas

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3