HONDURAS!

Long time no post. I'm back from Honduras! It was SO MUCH FUN. Do click on the pictures to see much much bigger ones!


The flight was uneventful, though I did have a hyperactive bilingual child next to me. It's two-plus hours to Atlanta and two-plus more to San Pedro Sula. From there we drove 2 more hours to Copan.

Don Udo's Hotel:



This is a lovely little place with cozy rooms, gardens and hammocks, and delicious food. I wish I'd taken a picture of the complimentary breakfasts, which ensured that every day started off on a good note. I stayed here all seven nights, and Kate was staying there with me for part of the time, since she had to move out of Bill and Barb's house to make way for their son Ben. I've been inspired by the Honduran cuisine to learn how to cook something that doesn't come in a Betty Crocker box.


The Site of Copan:


This is IT, the center of everything here. One of the greatest cities of the ancient Maya world. Bill and Barb have been working here since the 1970s, and it has developed into a multi-faceted archaeological project. But in the past it was a place of sixteen kings, of ritualized ballgames and some of the finest sculpture in the ancient New World. It was very hard to select pictures for this section because there were so, so many. But to non-archaeologists, I thought I should narrow it down. The main ruins open to visitors are in the "Acropolis Group," where all the royal and ceremonial structures were located. Much of the rest of the ancient city is unexcavated or covered by modern settlement, but all the flashy, "sexy" stuff is right here.


There are at least twenty of these large carved monoliths, known as "stelae," in the plazas of Copan. They commemorate rulers and are often covered in glyphic writing.




This is the ballcourt, where the famous ballgame was played.






This below is the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Barb's longtime pet project. It has 63 steps and is carved with one continuous inscription, the longest of any Maya text. The stairway was erected to revitalize the city and reinforce dynastic legitimacy after Ruler 13 was captured and beheaded by the ruler of rival kingdom Quirigua in modern Guatemala. Flanking the stairs you can see a sculptured balustrade, which does not have writing but is covered in sculpture. This is the part of the project I am working on.





It's impossible to accurately portray the scale of Copan in these pictures. There are so many buildings and they are all so impressive.








This is Altar Q, a monument which lists all the kings of Copan.





We descended into the tunnels beneath the pyramids. Above on the left, a deep shaft tomb. On the right, you can see how the plaster floors look in cross section when we dig through them.



The inscription before the tomb of the first Queen.


The Tomb of Ruler 12.


Barbara illuminates the beautiful stucco sculpture of the Founder's Tomb.



The macaw design symbolizes the name of the first ruler.



I'm getting a Legends of the Hidden Temple vibe here. It's really incredible.



Bill among the ruins.


The beautiful macaws would fly overhead sometimes, screaming. There were also adorable orange geckos, bats, and funny little deer-things, all of which were too elusive to photgraph.





The Sculpture Museum:

To protect the sculpture at Copan from further erosion, much of it has been replicated, removed from the site and relocated to the adjacent museum. Barb basically designed the place herself, and it's as wonderful as the ruins are.


Me, Kate, and Barb in front of the great mouth of the jaguar monster that forms the entrance to the museum.


The tunnel entrance opens up on a huge replica of the Rosalila temple. This building was perfectly preserved, color and all, many layers beneath the more recent temples. The real thing is visible down in the tunnels, but they only excavated one wall and have it covered in glass panels for protection. The colors are all exactly like this. Everything in Maya land was bright.


The museum is constructed around the temple. I got the whole tour from Bill and Barb, which was a real treat.


Bill and Barb!


This is one of my favorite sculptures. It's the Rain God, Chaac.


Whole building facades are reconstructed in the museum. Most of them had fallen to bits when Barb found them!


Lots and lots of skulls all around the face of the Central Mexican storm god.


More skulls, and what look like dog biscuits!


A full-body glyph of the moon goddess and her rabbit .


The bat was the emblem of the kingdom of Copan. Apparently they had a House of Bats where they tortured war captives.


Macaw themes are everywhere here. The huge red stucco macaw has a snake coming out of his belly with one of the "Hero Twins'" arms in its mouth!

Again, there were more pictures here than I could possibly post. The museum is such an inspiration for the kind of work I'd like to do.


The Town of Copan Ruinas:

All Bill and Barb's work at Copan has really helped this town grow up. It's very charming.


Kate taking a stroll.


Morning.


That sign literally says "Honduras is Love." XD




The town square.


Here we have Molly, a total rock star in her sixth year, at the Red Frog, a fun bar in town. You can draw on the walls.

Work!



I spent most of my time in the lab, scanning old photos of sculpture from the balustrade of the hieroglyphic stairway. The scanner had a mind of its own, so it got frustrating at times. I had to compare the photos with the inventory of leftover sculptures being stored in the bodega. Basically, my task is to do a new reconstruction of the balustrade on the sides of the stairway. The last reconstruction, the one currently at the site, is from the 1930s and full of errors. In the storage bodega there are a hundred pieces from the balustrade that didn't make it into that reconstruction. So I have to put on my detective brain and my artist brain to try to figure out how it really was supposed to look. The ostensible "reason" I went to Copan was to access the real sculptures and their photo negatives to facilitate this project. In this picture you can see Harold, Alex, Barb, Carina, Erasmo, and Aldeso, who have all been working hard here and in the field for months.

Other people have cool projects they're working on too. Alex, an epigrapher (glyph decipherer) who just got his Ph.D., is working on a 3-D scan of the entire stairway inscription. This is extremely cutting edge technical work that is difficult to explain, but he needs to work at night with his huge and very expensive equipment. This work will enable us to see parts of the inscription that are too badly eroded to see with the naked eye. Here he is with his scanner:



The dig site, the lab, the main ruins, and the town were all pretty close together, but we'd get a ride from Bill's longtime friend and project foreman Moncho. We all squeezed into his truck every morning to get dropped at our various workstations. I'm the one on the far right looking rather squished and pale.


Kate and Carina were working with the group at Rastrojon, a site not far from the main Acropolis group that might have served as the gateway to the city for outsiders. They've been finding a lot of serious sculpture there, some of which is in the museum. This is where most of the current archaeological work at Copan is happening, though Molly is also digging a tomb that might have belonged to Ruler 2.




The Rastrojon team has to excavate and organize these stone blocks so the buildings can be reconstructed. Crazy stuff.


On the final evening, the Harvard group went for dinner at the Hacienda San Lucas, a beautiful old farm that was revitalized and converted into a hotel and restaurant. It overlooks the whole valley: you can see the Acropolis group and the town and the lab where I worked. We made it up in time for sunset.





Kate and Molly. I avoided getting pictures of me. XD

The whole trip was marvelous. My Spanish is not as awful as I had feared, and it came back fairly quickly. The weather was better than I expected, and I wasn't ready to come back home to Boston rain. I definitely got the archaeology bug again, and am so excited about continuing in the field. I will have more to say about all this later, but right now I'm just overwhelmed with pictures and want to get this all posted! Hope you enjoy the photos! Hopefully I will be posting more. I don't know why I got out of the habit, and my comic has fallen by the wayside too.