Pambamarca Archaeology Project

Well another successful field season has come to a close. It was an event filled, student rich time in Ecuador. This year we know so much more about our experiences because of this wonderful blog (thanks Sam Krause!) and other online communities like Facebook (where we are sure the commentaries will continue). We were both very happy to have been a part of it all.

This year we had two groups on the project, the Foothill students and the UCLA students. Each has a different, yet integrated, experience. For our UCLA students the focus has been on archaeology, and it continues with their independent projects due in a few weeks. For our Foothill students the focus was on community service learning, archaeology, and experiencing the wonders of Ecuador.

It was great that this year the various communities alongside the road (San Antonio, San Pedro, Buena Esperanza) were involved with our project. Several schools in Buena Esperanza and Cangahua benefited from Foothill's service learning program and we hope to expand into more communities in the future. Thank you Foothill Students for all your involvement and commitment. The people in Cangahua and Buena Esperanza were very sad to see all of you go. Thank you Staff Members for all your help and providing advice for the students and teaching them your experience. And we thank everyone else that was part of our project and for sharing a part of your life with us for six weeks. We appreciate your feedback and comments and always strive to improve each year....Gracias a todos!

For us the 2008 field season was marked by a number of highlights:

- Looking up and seeing cousin Anjali climbing into the bullring.
- Minga Saturday with Chumillos
- David Morin's photo board
- chatting with Ernie
- climbing to the top of Quitoloma among the clouds on top of the world
- dancing in the plaza
- our children speaking Spanish
- Pukarito walls
- Buena Esperanza soccer game
- the chiva
- a late lunch with Chad and the Males family
- pumice
- the top of Peguche water fall
- Non-existent watch-towers
- Huayna Capac's pool at Caranqui
- survey treks to Cayambe and in the No Man's Triangle
- We love you Mo
- snow capped volcanoes
- Do you miss the bus?
- Are you warmer now?
- Is internet faster?
- How was the adventure?

--Sam and Ana, Directors

Being backin Ecuador has been great. I came here as a student three years ago and never have forgotten that experience. Thereś also just something about the scenery, the mountains, that appeals to a Midwesterner like myself. I just like mountians. However, some of the lower lands hold some great times. Two weekends ago I went to Mindo, a cloud forest where I got to hike to waterfalls and zipline over the tops of trees in wonderfully humid and warm weather. That was quite a trip, flying through the air above the treeline, my hair flapping merrily in the wind (and in my face). This past weekend we took a trip to Oyacachi, another town where the elevation allows for milder weather. We soaked up to our necks in deliciously hot water fed by natural hot springs. I haven felt so clean in weeks; I could almost feel the dirt seeping out of my pores. Wonderful. Oyacachi is also home to fresh trout farms and the locals sure know how to cook them. A heeping plate with steaming rice, salad, papas fritas (french fries), and a whole trout was exactly what I needed. To cap off the trip, we went by some ruins of Old Oyacachi, an abandoned colonial site that was unbelievably picturesque and archaeologically interesting. A hot soak, good food, and an interesting historical visit, what more could you wan? Apparently cuy, a local dish here that was served at the Casa that night.

Now that the project is nearly over, I starting to get that feeling where I know Iĺl be leaving Ecuador again soon. The self-denial is still in full swing. Luckily, Iĺl be sticking around South America for a few extra weeks travelling with my dad down to Macchu Picchu and Cusco and then back up for a Galapagos tour. I really excited. It makes the next several days of paperwork and goodbyes to come just a little bit easier to cope with. Until next time. Ciao!

--Becky
Staff

Just before coming to the Pambamarca Archeological Project I was watching one of my favorite shows--¨Bizzare Foods with Andrew Zimmerman¨--on the travel channel, and the episode happened to be about Ecuador. The featured traditional cuisine was cuy, or guinea pig. Though a staple protein for Ecuadorians, cuy seems quite strange to the average American who may have had a pet guinea pig as a child. We were given the opportunity to sample cuy when the cooks prepared them for dinner on Sunday night in the Casa. The taste was reminiscent of a salty duck, though the tiny legs with feet and nails sticking out of the peices of meat were a little disconcerting. Overall, the experience was definitely worth it, but I would probably not choose to eat cuy again.

--Rachel Feinberg
Student

This morning, the members of the project went to the town of Oyacachi, a bit northeast of Cangahua. We set out on our buses early in the morning, driving up and out of Cangahua, past the communities above and up into uninhabited mountainland. As we traversed the roads across the eastern cordillera of the Andes, the closest we came to a paved road was lightly cobblestoned. After an hour of bobbling around these roads that wouldn´t pass for rural driveways back home, we began to descend into the beginnings of the Amazon. As we continued downhill, the hillsides became greener and the plantlife diversified. Waterfalls cascaded down the cliffs into the valley below, and as we rounded a curve the small town of Oyacachi sat below us.

The first order of business when we got to town was to pre-order our lunches. Oyacachi is full of trout farms, and at the time of ordering your lunch is still swimming around. Since there were so many of us, we decided to fill the time necessary to catch and prepare our food with a visit to the hot springs.

We cross a suspension bridge over the stream and strip down to our skivvies, then run down to one of the pools to escape the ridiculously cold air. If it weren´t for our visit to Mindo last weekend, I feel like I´d forget what summer is supposed to be like. I remembered which pool was ridiculously hot from our visit last year and led some unsuspecting first-timers over that way, and we hopped right on into the steaming water. After relaxing for a bit half out of the water (being in up to your neck makes it a bit difficult to breathe), a few of us decided to really get our blood moving by jumping into the ice cold stream running right below us. So we walked on over, still feeling warm and adventurous from the steaming pool, jumped in, and came clamoring back to the warmth we´d left. Once the tingling and numbness calmed, it was back to hot springs business as usual.

After a bit we went and ate our fantastic trout, wandered the town a bit and then went to the ruins down the road. These aren´t prehistoric ruins like we´ve been excavating, but the ruins of old Oyacachi. I´ve been told the town moved because of fear of landslides, but from where I was it seemed safely situated in the middle of the valley. Anyway, we bummed around there for a while looking at old abandoned houses, the church and the graveyard, and then came on home. Tonight we´re having cuy, or guinea pig, for dinner as a special treat. I´ve heard there isn´t much meat and that the cheeks are the best part, so I guess I´ll be finding out shortly.

Micah Smith
Senior Staff

As a staff member, my official title is "lab geek," which is a pretty acurate discription. I am privledged to see what happens to artifacts after they come back from the field. First they are carefully washed by Ecuadorian staff or students. They dry overnight then are cataloged. The next morning the artifacts are sorted. For example, all the bits of obsidian are seperated into bags of flakes, chunks, tools, bifaces and cores. Ceramics are seperated into borring body sherds, and the more important diagnostic sherds, such as rims, that can give us important details about the types of vessels that people used. Each bag of artifacts is given a cataloge number and its details are entered into a computerized database. All this work is done carefully to make the analist´s job easier later on. I am doing my own analisis of the ceramics from the the site Oroloma to determine the percentage of Cosanga, a trade ware, that we have in different contexts there.

--Christina Cox
Staff

Wow! Time certainly flies around here. Only 1 1/2 weeks to go, I can't believe it! Well, it has been a blast! My team and I have managed to dig at three seperate sites, that is, what is left of my team. Even thoguh we weren't rolling in artifacts like those people at Pitena, we did manage to find some pretty cool architecture. A wall at Sanchi Rumi and some strange, yet to be determined Cangahua structures at Pukarito. Time will tell, and of course we continue our never ending quest to find the golden llama.
There were some next experiences this year of course. The Chiva, the parade, the wheel of death, the hacienda and the staff hourse. I love the deck! There were also some oldies but goodies. Bull fights smd the Luti Ragmi partie where Ana, Ollie, and Chad battled to be the Last Gringo Standing. I think it was a tie in the end, but I'm sure they will dispute this.
I am sure that there will be many more memories to come, after all there is still a week and a half left and anything is possible.
So here's to next year! Viva Cangahua!

--Siobhan
Senior Staff

So…. Writing a blog… Another first for me. This trip
has been full of things I never thought I would do and
things I never even knew I might be presented to have
an opportunity to do. I’m leaving Ecuador with so
much knowledge and new interest. My journey into
archaeology has been like an Alice in Wonderland ride.
I continually and unexpectedly come across people who
are pointing me down this path. I’m leaving Ecuador
with my own direction into this path, which is
incredibly satisfying to me.

The most memorable time on this whole trip for me was
in Mindo. We decided to go up to the waterfalls. We
were dropped off at the top of the hill and took the
gondola across the canopy and hiked down. We made it
to a waterfall and ran into some other people from our
group. We went swimming and decided to hike on. We
hiked barefoot and wearing only our bathing suits
through the mud and pouring rain. This moment was by
far the most memorable to me in the whole trip and I
think it was probably the most spiritual moment in my
life. I felt strong and alive and connected to the
earth. And for once in my life, my brain was quiet. I
just took it all in.

Thanks to everyone who made this experience so good
for me. I’ve learned more than I imagined I wold. I’ve
met a few people that I think I’m going to be friends
with for a long time. I’ve taken a lot from you people
and I’m so grateful.

I am hopeful for next year, that I can come back and
work on my own project while still contributing to
this archaeological project. Thank you again to
everyone, health and wellness to you all.

--Gina Bravo
Student

My objectives for the weekend were as follows
-Watch The Man-Bat in his latest madcap adventure,
-Have as much fun as was morally/legally possible

So, let’s do some guided imagery for a minute. Imagine you took an American college student -me, for instance- and stuck him out in the boonies of Ecuador for three weeks. Watch as the thin veneer of civilization surrounding his bestial, animal nature is rubbed away by days of pickaxe swinging and spotty shower opportunities.

Now, without warning, throw him on a bus back to the big city. It was seriously a Beverly Hillbillies moment for me- there I am, Sam Kettle, covered in dirt with jagged fingernails and still blowing black boogers into a handkerchief, in the trendiest section of Quito.

I sounded like a total rube. “Look at that! A restaurant without a dead, gutted pig hanging in the window! Wait, wow, coffee that isn’t instant! Holy crap, is that a bistro?”

I was prepared, going on this trip, for a certain amount of culture shock. I didn’t expect it to happen when I got back, however. After weeks of trolling around Cangahua with a helping of Chicken Lady in one hand a bottle of stomach-rotting moonshine with the other, I was totally unprepared to see people with mousse in their hair. Not just gel, mousse, teased into fantastical shapes, reminiscent of dragons and unicorns. I, in my relatively clean jeans and very hypothetically clean thermal shirt, felt not unlike a toothless fisherman from the Ozarks dropped into a Latino version of MTV’s Spring Break.

I’m not used to seeing people without survival instincts, either. I saw a blond girl in short shorts and a halter top, her wrists covered in jangling gold bracelets, walking drunk down the street alone with her wallet in her hands. Please, muggers of Ecuador, she is saying. Please, just roll me over. The muggers of the Mariscal probably just wrote it off as too easy. I mean, everyone likes an easy mark, but really.

Saturday was punctuated by medical emergency and The Dark Knight, which was basically the cinematic equivalent of taking every moment of joy I have ever experienced in my twenty-one years and condensing it into two and a half hours, only with eye socket intrusion and Maggie Gyllenhall being infuriatingly indecisive. He’s a handsome kung-fu billionaire who adores you and owns a really cool car, woman! Come on, it’s not that difficult.

Sunday was sad, though, since I said goodbye to Brandon and Glenn, two out of three of my BFFs on the trip. Glenn showed me American Astronaut, and Brandon said I was awesome, forming bonds that will never be broken.

So, in total: I ate a scandalous amount of chocolate, saw the best movie ever, didn’t get mugged, said goodbye to awesome people, neglected to go on a party bus, drank actual coffee, ate in charming bistros, and had several hot showers with actual water pressure.

Objective: Have More Fun than is Reasonable in a Fair World. Status: Success!

Today it’s back to work, back to digging, back to Chicken Lady, and back to dirt in my hair. Quito was awesome, but it’s good to be home.

Sam Kettle
Student

I’ve always wanted to be a bird. Staying in a cage where everyone feeds and loves you is not something I truly want. I want to fly away, I want to see what is behind those bars.

When I first got to the States a year ago, I felt like I was in another world, seeing people of different cultures and lifestyles. It was like going up on a Ferris wheel, slowly rising up and seeing more and more of the vast world. However, when I came to Ecuador, flying to the States was only like opening the bird cage; it is only in Ecuador that I have found the most beautiful treasure in the world – I have found where I want to be.

For the past three weeks, I have been traveling to different places in Ecuador at the back of a truck. I saw many different faces on my way back and forth to my destinations. I have never said so many “Holas” and “Ciaos” in my life before. But here, even when you know you may never going to see those people in your life again, you still take your time and greet them as if they were your closest friends. I guess everyone whom you have met in your life – even for only once – are still stars in the sky to make your brightest night.

Everyone knows, and I am 100% certain that, I only have one life. I can never do all the things I want to do nor see all the faces I want to see in my life. Life goes so fast that days pass like moments on the back of the truck. Therefore, I want to capture all these moments as much as possible. I know what I can do is limited; but I still want to make use of this opportunity that my parents allow me to do as much as possible. On one hand, excavating the treasures that I long for; on the other hand, giving back not only to my family, but also to the society.

In Ecuador, when you greet the people, they always have the brightest smiles on their faces; they look so content. But what we see is most of the times different from the truth. Many of these people are living a life so hard that we could never imagine. They lack an element in our lives – choice. When I looked at most of the children’s faces, I see their fates. Many could not even afford to go to school. They are deprived of the opportunity to explore the vast world; all they can do is to stay in their little box. They may find their little box warm and fuzzy. However to me, if they, one day, have the chance to push open the lid, why not try and explore both sides of the world instead of staying in the center of the earth?

We are the lucky ones. We should be the ones to help them and give them a helping hand to crush down the walls of their box. I admit that everyone has their own interests and everyone’s power is limited and it is impossible to help all those in need. Nevertheless, we still have to try. Even if we failed and only a small group could step out, at least someone has benefited. That is my interpretation of the purpose of our lives (or at least mine) – satisfying ourselves and, at the same time, help and support one another.

I have found my wings in Ecuador. I figured out that I want to fly to as many places as possible. I want to explore different places and different people so that I can understand and help those in need. And at the same time, look for the meanings of life.

I love Ecuador.

Jada
Stduent

A Climbing Adventure

This past weekend, Martin, Holly and I set out to climb Cotopaxi. This turned out to involve seeking out a mountaineering travel agency that actually used certified climbing guides, getting fitted with crampons and ice axes, and later on being very very tired and very very cold. Our travels took us from Quito to a hostel about halfway between the city and the volcano, where we had a fantastic lunch, and then we moved on to the Cotopaxi park where we climbed up to the refuge with all of our gear. Then came the mountaineering training, which allowed us to play with our crampons and ice axes and learn how to fall down the mountain safely by stopping ourselves with our ice axes. Everyone took a brief post-dinner nap in the network of bunk beds that required us to sleep like sardines. That was actually pretty nice, as the refuge really only protects you from the frigid whipping wind. At midnight everyone started suiting up and getting ready to set out for the summit at 1 AM. It was freezing. The wind was biting and we were covered in a thin layer of ice. By headlamp we climbed up for five hours before our guide told us that unfortunately, at our pace, we wouldn't be able to make it to the top by the 7AM cutoff when we had to begin returning to the refuge before the sun melted the snow and ice. We climbed until the sun rose. It was really amazing, having been climbing in the dark, to see how far we had come up the side of the volcano. We reached 5500 meters. By 9AM we were all packed up and ready to return to Quito, via a bicycle race on the Panamerica and the backstreets of Quito. We rewarded ourselves with lunch at the Magic Bean and rested up for the chiva hilarity that would ensue later that evening. It was a fantastic adventure, despite the lack of actual summit. It was incredible, and a great start to a fantastic weekend.

Laurie Bramlage
Imposter Archaeologist :)
(AKA Student)

When I sat at the airport, waiting to board the plane, I felt incredibly alone. Coming into the project, I was terrified. I felt that I didn´t know what my role would be, or whether I would fit in. ´

We are now three weeks into the project. I feel more at home. Ecuador has a numbing beauty to it, not just the environment, but also the people and the culture. I can navigate the buses. I feel comfortable with my Spanish. I am in love with the site that I work at, and every day of work is thrilling because we come one artifact or wall or bone closer to putting the puzzle together. Every day I try to imagine what it would be like to live at this site, who the people were, what they believed in, what their lives were like. I can´t believe that this will be my job. I rarely feel more at home than I do with dirt on my face and a trowel in my hand.

It feels good to be out of Los Angeles; my time here is like some other life which cannot possibly exist. It is hard to explain to my friends that riding around on top of a bus and ducking under low power lines or our taxi driver getting arrested while he is driving us to the bus station are just things that happen, not occurrences which are particularly out of the ordinary.

The project ends in two weeks, and then I am on my own until late September, embarking on an entirely new adventure. Right now I am comfortable, relaxed even. I have learned how to fix a toilet, a life skill which I am sure my future husband will appreciate. I know that in two weeks, I will be equally terrified as I was just before my flight left.

I have fallen in love with Ecuador, and I know that I will be back. For now, I am not going to fear or dread the end of the project, but rather, embrace each day and the excitement it brings.

Scotty Norman
New Staff

Estamos en la tercera semana del programa y creo que tengo una idea concreta sobre lo que voy a discutir en mi trabajo independiente. Pienso investigar una virgen en particular (la del Quinche, un pueblo en esta región andina) y su iconografía, historia, e igual como la gente ecuatoriana la percibe según sus pueblos respectivos. Es curioso como un ensayo se puede transformar en un placer de niño cuando el escritor está en toda proximidad con el objeto. Lo que quiero decir es esto: mi proyecto se me presenta como un juego de investigaciones. O sea, estar en esta región me emociona porque tengo la oportunidad de viajar a pueblos cercanos y comunicarme con los habitantes—aprender de sus historias según ellos en vez de nomas un libro. A parte de aprender las metodologías de la arqueología, estoy viviendo el Ecuador por parte de sus paisajes y su gente. La semana pasada me fui al Quinche para averiguar sobre la historia de esta virgen famosa y me encontré con una escultura de una mujer indígena, lo que había interpretado como la virgen. Pero me dijeron la gente del pueblo que no era la virgen del Quinche sino un símbolo de las fiestas del solsticio; cierto, no sé si creo en las pocas opiniones que recibí ese día y estoy determinado a encontrar el origen de esta escultura que encontré justamente en la plaza central. Qué emoción estar trabajando en este país!

--Robert Castillo
Student

Aquí estoy en la segunda semana del programa, estábamos haciendo prospecciones en el páramo alto que se encuentra justamente atrás de la Hacienda Guachalá. Se ve que estoy un poco distraído con la belleza de las montañas y nubes que realmente se ven como una pintura de óleo de lejos.


Panorama desde el páramo, o sea nuestro “salón de clase” en donde estábamos aprendiendo como calcular las distancias entro los “sitios” que definimos según la cantidad de pedazos de cerámica y obsidiana en el suelo.


Esta es una escultura de una mujer indígena, la gente del Quinche la metieron en la plaza central para el festival del solsticio. Cierto, no tiene nada que ver con la iglesia católica que se encuentra en el fondo de la fotografía. La verdad es que la escultura daba un poco de miedo porque se movía con el viento, tanto sus brazos como sus ojos.


Aquí se puede ver como la gente del Quinche pusieron la indígena no solamente en frente del edificio católico, sino justamente a bajo de una figura de la biblia. La yuxtaposición de las dos imágenes me interesó bastante.

Agave. Apart from delivering a delightfully drunken stupor when fermented into Mexico’s favourite swill. What purpose does it serve? I learned the hard way yesterday that its sharp skewer like leaves deliver a particularly painful blow when plunged deep into the back of a calf muscle. I learned this while mapping a Cayambe site known as Pucarito. Standing atop a Cangahua block wall, I slipped, and slid and what broke my fall? A giant agave plant. Calf first into the end of an agave spear; I yelled and I swore then cleaned up the blood. I inspected the wound to make sure it was clear, then, hobbled off like an Andean grandma. By the end of the day the data was captured and the map was finished. But my leg was aching and starting to stiffen. After some Tylenol, chased with tequila, it was off to bed and by morning I was better. Agave. What purpose does it serve?

-Ollie
Staff

Greetings from Ecuador, this has easily been the most amazing country I have ever been to. In the course of the last two weeks, I have attended a cock fight where by the end of it, it looked like someone was going to be stabbed; a Toro fight where there were the most ridiculously stupid/brave transvestite clowns I have ever seen; went to a Fiesta which I dont remember but have photo evidence of my presence and someone managed to fit in some actual Archaeology.

Our group first excavated the most ridiculously deep hole which would have been awesome had we been geologists. This past week we have been tearassing up to Janchirumi, which has been awesome. There really isnt anything that can top standing in the back of a pickup truck listening to Pink Floyd and watching Mt. Cayambe. I cant vouch for the safety in it, but its awesome when your not being ejected. We have started excavating at what can only be described as hell. Janchirumi is either a fort, a magical rock, or a rock, but the Eastern Face has 50-80+ mph winds at all time, and you are so high up that clouds just fly past you in the sky. Hopefully I will be hiking Mt. Cotopaxi this weekend, but if not, Quito is always a party.

--Martin Cavanaugh
Student at Cal State East Bay

Hi everyone!

Sam K here again, your official blogmaster of the season! The PAP project has been going very well, and I hope you all continue to enjoy our posts from staff and students alike! The work in the field has been going smoothly. The project has a team up on Quitoloma doing architecture survey, two teams up on Yoga Loma with a ton of units open, a survey team scouting for more sites, a team at Pukarcito, and a team processing all the samples in the lab. Aside from that, there is a team of students working to create a medicinal garden in the community. There are also many side projects with the community going on every day!

Tonight the team will attend a lecture by Cristobol, one of the owners of the Hacienda Guachala.

Meanwhile, don´t forget to check out our photoblog, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pambamarca/sets/
More photos have been uploaded and even more will come! Stay tuned!

--Sam Krause
New Staff

There´s dirt in my pants, there´s dirt in my ears. My eye crusties are black, and when I blow my nose, dirt comes out. I love it. I love that the force of each step loosens a dirt clod from my jeans. I love that.

Dirt is the best coagulent, the softest pillow, the most consistantly reliable ephrodisiac. Dirt is my neighbor, my long lost friend. Dirt is my mother, my daughter, my priest and my favorite record album.

I´m two and a half weeks in, and here just now I´ve been hit with the sickness. Nausea.

I´m not concerned. Dirt will cure it.

--Jen V.
Student

In any small community, ¨love conncections¨ and the hushed eager gossip that follows are inevitable. The Casa Communal is no exception. Still, it´s all shared without malice. I may be naively optomistic, but we all seem to get along well. We have a good group here, and the archaeology interest (among other things) keeps the nerd-quotient respectively hight.

We mostly move about together, reluctent bearers of the title ¨Gringo¨, and yet it´s this label that melds us together; it is our shared and unavoidable distinction as foreigners, even as we wish it had a ¨culturally sensitive and intellegent¨ alternative definition. Within the group, nationality comes into play, and I am suddenly more concretely Canadian. ¨You Canadians, you can take the cold¨. Said a shivering Rob on return from Quitoloma´s blustery hilltop. ¨You guys really do say ´eh´¨ was another bemused comment made last week. Cold tolerence, polite apologies, a propensity to say ´eh´. Canadians always seem to identify by their lack of amalgamated culture, but here we´re oddly quick to seek each other out as though Toronto and Vancouver were but an hour apart. ¨Todos Americanos¨ one group memeber said in responce to a local´s inquiry. ¨Y Canadiense!!!¨ someone added in playful defiance. It matters and it doesn´t. However reluctantly, we´re nearly all Gringos here.

........
¨We need some duct tape and llama wool to fix those darn cracks in the wall!¨Sam exclaimed as though it were a classic American stand-by for chilly night drafts. Our room is cold. I laughed at her exhasperation. ¨Well, how ELSE do you fix a cold room in Ecuador?¨ How else indeed.
........

A week ago we had a rousing game of pictionary in the evening. We broke into competative teams, desperately scrawling what we hoped looked like ¨altitude sickness¨ or ¨freudian slip¨ on the whiteboard upstairs. Her time having expired, one girl (who shall remain respectively nameless) could not get her team to correctly guess, and shrugged hopelessly aty the crowd. ¨I didn´t know what else to draw. I mean, it´s a native american man!¨ With resignation she read off her slip of paper ¨Sasquatch!¨ The room then erupted into laughter.

......
The food here is excellent, but I haven´t been able to enjy it for the last two days as I´ve been struck with the communal stomach bug. (One prone to excite digestive tracts into rebellion.) There may have been buffeting through the aformentioned holes in our bedroom (which still lack any manner of llama hair) but I found myself trembling for entirely more sinister reasons. After one horse-back-riding-less day flat in bed and another spent with the other invalids in the lab, I hope to be back on track tomorrow for some good old fashioned excavating tomorrow!

--Eleni
Student

First of all, I would like to dedicate this entry to Bucky!

Today we took a field trip to the pre-Inka site of Cochasqui. As cool as the history behind the site and the structures themselves were, I think it is fair to say that it was the llamas that made everyone´s day. From feeding te llamas to kissing the llamas, it was hard to avoid the massive herds of them floating through the mountains. Big llamas, small llamas, llamas with deformed faces, oh what a day it was! Their majestic quality added to te educational purpose of the tour. I will never forget it. WIt thousands of photos taken, the spirit of the llama will never be forgotten. With the feel of their sandy tounges against the palm of my hand and with their random yet playful charges towards us, the llamas welcomed us into their home.

As hard as it was to leave them behind, one llamas, who we named Bucky (he had a sever underbite) was particularly hard to part with. Their wooly mammoth like fur, their disproportinatly long necks and their fluttering eyelashes made them so ugly they were cute.

And then, we went to Cayumbe!

--Sarah Stepec
Student

This past week my team, "Team Mate" has been excavating a 3x1 at Molina Loma,. Our unit has proved to very interesting, which is rather rewarding after last week's sprinkler pipe incident. About 50 com down we've uncovered a stone floor which is faced on the North Side by a stone wall. The floor has a layer of burnt red cangahua rock, topped by white pumace in between rounded river stones. We didn't find any pottery at the floor surface, but upon removing the stones in the flooring we found a few pieces of pre-Inka cermanic in our 4th level. We plan to continue excavating with a 2x2 to the North to see if any other walls lie parallel or perpendicular with our wall. I hoper we also excavate to the west, since we found a promising cornor (despite what Sam says) and a lot of fractured rock marerial which indicates a great amount of heating.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what we find! Other than planning for future excavations, our team mostly mapped today. We completed one Stratigraphic map of the wstern wall which supports my idea that the cangahua and ash were acting as some sort of loose mortar between the rock flooring because there was no cangahua or pumice on top of the rocks in the stratigraphy. We also mapped the north wall. I drew, and Holly measured. Our map was almost complete when Sam came to visit and offered some constructive critism. Weŕe going to make a few changes to our map tomorrow and then we move on to the new units. It should yeild some interesting results!!

Kat Eichner
Student

Someone would think that the Archaeology project we're part of is only about digging and doing Archaeology work. This is not true. The night before we had a only-Foothill meeting where we discussed what community projects we could do aside with Archaeology. The next day we only worked in the field for a couple hours and then we split up in to groups in order to brainstorm and come up with ideas. The two major sections where we think the community needs help with, was Education and Economic development. Although that's what we think, we can never know exactly what the community needs, because the people are part of a different system and culture than our own. So we decided to make up some questions and try to arrange a meeting with people of the community in Cangahua. We basically know nothing without talking with the local people themselves. Some problems we might encounter are that schools are out for summer this time of year, we don't know how many schools are between Cangahua and Cayambe, and we don't know how many communities exist. We've heard that almost forty different communities exist, some smaller and some bigger than others, in the area. So we have to answer all these questions before proceeding with our projects, and the best source would be the people of the community.

Aside from the big project, we also thought we should do two smaller ones. A Minga, which is an already existing community type of project where many people contribute to it. Our people contributed last year to this project and it was really successful, so we thought it would be great if we do it again. The second thing we thought of is organizing a soccer game. Maybe local kids versus us. We're thinking of buying jerseys and refreshments for the kids so we can create a very pleasant event. I think working with the community is a great idea and I hope the projects we're working on will be truly helpful to the community.

Theo Kontizas
Foothill College