Welcome to Teotihuacan, Land of Tiny Glass Bitsies

I meant to write every day and do small posts, but this week has gone by very quickly. Now, at the beginning of the weekend (we work a half day on Saturday) I can finally catch up.

I landed in the afternoon on Tuesday and immediately sought out food. Let me tell you, finding food in the Mexican airport past customs is a bitch. I ended up at a place called WINGS that did not serve wings, but did serve excellent huevos rancheros, bread, and coffee. I tipped my waitress a massive amount for tolerating my atrocious Spanish. I waited around for the rest of my group and then drove an our through rain and lakes of water (ayy never build a city in a lake basin kids) until we got to the compound.

Located in San Juan Teotihuacan, the compound is home to the first Teotihuacan Mapping project run by Dr. George Cowgill. It has since expanded and now is home to the Altica Ceramic Project, and our project PATT (Projecta Archaeologica Tlajinga-Teotihuacan), which focuses on obsidian lithic evidence. The cool thing about obsidian is that a whole system of technology was developed to form it into blades, and the debitage (leftover glass bits) and the blades themselves are highly diagnostic for the level of development of a society. The fragments can also be sourced, so we can see where they got their obsidian from, and thus build economic models of Mesoamerica. Its super cool.

My room, shared with Sarah, featuring my obnoxious red-orange suitcase.

Also my room, from the tiny doorway (Mexico is not really built for people taller than 5'10")

Sarah, Sean, Dr. Hirth and I are here alone at the moment, though more people will be arriving in late may and early June, including others from our university and from different projects. Mark, who is a PHD student at Tulane, but was trained by Dr. Hirth, joins us tomorrow for analysis.

Ceramic typology in the lab, courtesy of the Altica Project 

lithics

even more lithics (boxes can hold up to 10,000 pieces)

 So PATT's purpose is to analyze lithic evidence from lots 17 and 18, which were excavated over the last few years. These are workshops located off of the Avenue of the Dead, and contain hundreds of thousands of fragments, or whole blades. When we are finished, this will be the largest body of analyzed lithic evidence in Mesoamerica, hitting roughly around 300, 000 pieces of analyzed evidence. We are currently sitting around 250, 000, so we have our work cut out for use in the next two months. We've made good progress though, probably doing at least a couple thousand every day.

My work space.

First Bag!!

What is really neat about this specific shop is that we also have evidence of sequin crafting (called lentjijuelas) and a large amount of exotic bifaces, sometimes in the shape of animals, like puppies!

               

From the type collection.

           

                                                 I found this one!! Looks like a Varren.

All in all, its a wonderful opportunity and I am adoring my work. Its constant and monotonous, but very wonderful and exactly what I want to do for my masters work, in all honesty. Hopes everybody is well and taking care of themselves! I'll just be over here, coffee in hand, navigating a sea of ancient glass.

Cheers!

Cas

Avenue of the Dead, Teotihuacan