Sometimes adventure is lonely, sometimes it's not.

Sometimes exploring is about the people you meet. Today I went up the Sechin branch of the Casma River to the village of Huanchuy. I had initially planned to go to the formative site of Juerequeque and walk south, searching for late-period sites, but decided that I wanted to get to know the modern villages before exploring the archaeological sites at their boundaries.

It took a while for the colectivo to Huanchuy to fill up, and so my day started a little late. I ended up buying the two front seats in the colectivo because it's really uncomfortable cramming three people in the front seat of a small Toyota wagon. It was also because, as I joked, 'tengo un trasero hancho, pe.' I have a wide ass, man. Actually, this particularly self-deprecatory form of humor, which appeared to be much appreciated, was also a way of responding to the previous joke that 'el gringo tiene plata, se ha comprado dos pasajes.' The gringo has money, man, he bought two seats! For an extra $2, it was worth having the front seat all to myself on the bumpy ride to Huanchuy.

In Huanchuy, I immediately sat down on the Plaza de Armas and began taking a few notes about the villages we passed, the ruins I saw in the distance on the ride, and on some of what I had heard from the other passengers about local ruins. Before very long two elder men came and sat with me. They asked me who I was, where I'm from, and if I was on paseo, a little stroll. I explained I'm an archaeologist scouting sites for future research. As is often the case, one of the men, Feliciano Martinez (who gave me his permission to take and publish his picture) offered to take me through his chacras (agricultural fields) to visit a ruin that had been the site of huaqueo (looting). 

It seemed to me that I would get a personal introduction to a local archaeological site and I reasoned that - whatever the age of that site - there would likely be trails that led down the valley to other sites. So, together, we left the Plaza de Armas of Huanchuy for the east bank of the Sechin River Valley.

Plaza de Armas de Huanchuy

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Walking through the chacra Sr. Martinez explained to me the history of the area. It had been owned by hacendados named Monje and Blanco, but the land was redistributed in the 1970s during the Agrarian Reform. We walked a long time through corn fields and I noticed that the distant hills were also sown with plants. I asked if they used irrigation tubing to bring water and he explained that a combination of rain and asequia (irrigation canal) water was sufficient to sow the lower reaches of the hills; this is very uncommon in the lowest parts of the valley, where the hills are pure granitic bedrock.

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After crossing the chacras Sr. Martinez and I came upon an archaeological site that I decided to explore. In our exploration we went our own ways around the hillside settlement. Sr. Martinez went right to the top and I took my time exploring the terraces, taking photographs of the surface artifacts, of the architecture, and making notes about the site. I reached the top after Sr. Martinez had already made his way halfway down with a pile of cactus, or prickly pears that grow on wild cacti, called tuna. This kind of linguistic reversal from the apparent norm is not uncommon, and takes a little while to get used to. I surveyed the valley from the peak of our hillside archaeological site and then descended to share my lunch of avocados (locally, palta), pitless mandarin oranges (mandarinas sin pepa), and green olives with Sr. Martinez.

Sr. Martinez enjoying cactus

Sr. Martinez and me sharing lunch

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After lunch I explained to Sr. Martinez that I would follow the path south until the village of El Olivar. He confirmed that it is possible to do this, so off I went. He went back through the chacras to Huanchuy. 

My path was actually an old path that modern people thought might have been an ancient asequia. In attempting to revive the hypothetical asequia they created a very nice flat path that I followed around the contours of the quebradas (canyons), keeping an eye peeled for archaeological sites.

Path or asequia, possibly ancient, possibly modern, probably a little of both.

Before long, however, the path dissolved into the friable granite bedrock that I followed. The terrain became steep and thorny, and I was forced to descend into a very obviously modern asequia at the edge of a mango field. Before long I had to cut through the mango field and find the farm road back to El Olivar.

Following a modern asequia

Finally, I hitched a ride on a donkey cart driven by a kind man named Prospero. As we passed a small cluster of houses, all of a sudden, we heard cries of 'la carreta, la carreta, la carreta!' The cart, the cart, the cart! And so a gaggle of little children came running out of a house, ran alongside, and even jumped and hung on the back of the cart! We all laughed and eventually one of the children hollered, 'ya me bajo!' Alright, I'm getting off! And they all hopped down and scurried back to where they had come from.

B, the donkey

La carreta, la carreta, la carreta!

Announcement: Heritage Politics Lecture and Teaching Honors

This Wednesday I'll be heading to Huaraz, Peru to give a talk on archaeology, ethnography, and their interrelationship in the politics of heritage. Thanks to Jorge Gamboa and the Universidad Nacional Santiago Atunez de Mayolo for the invitation!

I've also been awarded an honorable mention in the Course Design Excellence Award from the University of Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning. According to the CCT,

"The Excellence in Course Design Award acknowledges graduate students' accomplishments in the area of course design. In particular, it recognizes graduate student instructors' clear and transparent organization of a course, clearly articulated plans to engage students in the classroom, and demonstrated ability to critically analyze student achievement of stated learning objectives."

My congratulations to the winner and the other finalists. Thanks to the CCT for their consideration and appreciation of my work!

Travelogue 19 July 2014, Part 2 of 2

As a kid I always wanted to go on adventures. I lived in a suburb, then an exerb, then another – more remote and older – exurb. We’d play in the woods and explore them, though we knew that on the other side of the woods was another development just like ours. Knowing that your adventures are limited to the area in-between doesn’t diminish the sense of adventure, not even in hindsight. There was something legitimately revelatory in finding the plywood shacks that older kids used for chewing tobacco and looking at dirty magazines. Even more exciting was finding the remains of old buildings that had fallen out of use when the farmland (it’s always farmland) was converted into a development.

Yet, the legitimacy of those childhood adventures doesn’t diminish the experience of finding archaeological sites at the edges of Peru’s rural valleys.

Today I took a trip up to Yaután. I’d always wanted to go there, as it seems my years of experience in this part of Peru are pretty concentrated in the provincial city of Casma itself. The trip to Yaután and, ultimately, the sites of Palka and its neighbors highlighted for me all the wonderful things about Peru, Peruvians, and Peruvian exploration in search of archaeological sites.

Last night as I did a turn around Casma, I checked in with the ‘colectivos’ that run to Yaután. Colectivos are semi-private autos that do fixed runs between small towns. They usually hold 4 passengers, plus the driver, and can range in quality from later-model Toyota wagons to very early Mopar vehicles. When they’re full, they go. The fare (pasaje) is cheap and – increasingly – posted in the windshield. The colectivos (which also refers to the vehicle, not just the service) get filled up by callers barking out the destination. They’ll identify people, point at them and call out – inquisitively – “YAUTÁN!”

As a gringo, this technique always tips me off as to where people think I fit in. Callers often look at me and holler, “Huaráz!,”because Huaráz is the mountain sports capital of this area (and maybe all of Peru).

Last night I conversed with the colectivo caller and he explained they run from 4am to about 9pm back and forth to Yaután. I said I wasn’t going that night, but would the next day. Well, today he remembered me. I walked up and he said “Ya vez? Yaután!”… “See! Yaután,” ‘cuz he knew I’d return. However, I needed some AA batteries and asked when we’d be leaving “ahorita!” he said. I always understand ahorita to mean, ‘in a couple minutes.’ It’s the Peruvian version of the proper usage of ‘presently’ in English.

I said I needed some AA batteries, would get them, and then return. But another caller resting on a bench in the colectivo garage corrected me. “En Yaután también hay!” It’s hard to explain the charm of this phrasing. To me it translates pretty directly as “They got’em in Yaután, too!” But the light sarcasm floating over the totally factual – and helpful – statement defies easy appreciation. The resting caller was right, they have AA batteries in Yaután. I wanted to get there and so did the 3 other guys waiting in the wagon to hit the road to Yaután.

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The road to Yaután cuts in between the two branches of the Casma River. The south branch is properly called the Casma River and the north branch is the Sechin River. They meet about at the town of Casma and then flow past the Port of Casma into the Pacific Ocean.

The road between these branches cuts between a series of large, rocky, and almost completely barren mountains. The landscape is lunar or Martian in appearance: authentically extraterrestrial. Of course, this is because it really is an extra terrestrial landscape. It was formed under the ancient shoreline by volcanic activity and gradually elevated by tectonic uplift. These geologically recent origins also explain the distinctive pointy peaks of these Andean foothills, and probably why there are so many large rocks on top of granitic bedrock. All the sand was washed away by the ancient ocean or blown away by more recent winds. Indeed, there are some ancient fossils of bivalves in the hills, but very few plants in between Casma and Yautan, which is to say cutting between two sets of these mountains.

Eastward view of the mountains between the Sechin and Casma Rivers,
between Casma and Yautan

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Peru might be a small country, but Peruvian downs are definitely small towns. After only a little discussion about what I, a gringo, might be doing in Yautan, it turned out that the director of public relations was in the front seat of the colectivo. He was eager to help me find my way to the archaeological sites in the area, especially Palka. He explained that from the Plaza de Armas - the obligatory central square in every Peruvian town - I could take a mototaxi to the dirt path down the valley that would take me to Palka. He helped me find the taxi and off we went.

Yautan's Plaza de Armas

Now, I wasn't particularly interested in Palka. I know it's a very old site (i.e. Formative or Pre-Ceramic, ca. 2000BC or older). I also knew that the university in Huaraz had been doing projects there and found a Middle Horizon (ca. AD 500) settlement there, too. However, I reasoned that if there were an archaeological site in easy reach, there would be a path, too. Usually the sites are perched on the border between the cerros and the agricultural land and linked by worn footpaths. I could go check out Palka and then continue on looking for the archaeological sites that I'm interested in, which date to about AD 1000-1500. 

I found Palka and a pathway that I followed westward for a while. There were indeed some other archaeological sites, but I won't comment on them here. Instead, I want to comment on some unexpected finds.

Main temple terraces and mound at Palka (middle ground).
Notice that it mimics the mountains in the background

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On my way down from the walk through Palka's trails, I noticed a series of aluminum cans filled with charred corn fiber. At first, I thought these cans were used to create smoke for harvesting honey from any one of the many beehives that are found around these sandy, rocky cerros. However, many - if not all - of these cans were arranged along the trail, as if to illuminate it. 

Why would someone be illuminating a trail to an 'unimproved' archaeological site? My guess is that there are rituals of some sort that take place here at night. Archaeological sites remain important places for modern rituals ranging from the occult to overt nationalist purposes (e.g., Evo Morales being sworn in at Tiwanaku, Bolivia and Alejandro Toledo and his wife holding important political events in Cusco's sacred sites).

I wish I could have done more investigating of this mystery. On the one hand, I fully recognize and appreciate non-academic uses of archaeological sites. I think it's essential that archaeologists not monopolize the use and interpretation of sites. On the other hand, if I knew who was doing what out there, I might be able to provide some pointers on safe and sustainable practices for preserving the site for continued and future use by academics and non-academics alike.

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Archaeology, like any job, can lose its joy rather quickly. The most romantic notions of archaeology are pretty well wrecked as soon as you start that umpteenth day sifting sand for the same small scraps of broken ceramic vessels. The first time you run a project, you get a crash-course in endless acid reflux. Archaeology becomes a series of frustrations with broken equipment, bureaucratic barriers, and bundles of paperwork - much of it of your own making.

Yet exploration of millennial archaeological sites reminds me of the thrill of adventure. It feels like real exploration, real adventure. It really does.

Looking north over the Palka River/Rio Grande, 19 July 2014

Travelogue 19 July 2014, Part 1 of 2

Arrived in Casma last night after a long trip to Peru. I flew a budget airline, which was mostly fine; but it prolonged what is already a moderately long voyage that always feels very long. No matter what, it takes all day to get from the US to Lima, Peru and then it takes all day to get from Lima to Casma. I gave myself a day in-between to visit some of my favorite sites in Lima before boarding another metal tube full of humans for another long voyage.

When I arrived in Casma, the first thing I did was check in to my hotel. As is often the case, they weren’t quite certain that I had a reservation because all the rooms were booked up during the middle of my supposed stay: for Fiestas Patrias/Peruvian Independence Day. However, once I showed the attendant my email correspondence substantiating my claim. I got a room that maybe had been forgotten for a while. There was no shower curtain and the floor was not swept. Peruvians always keep floors clean, I think as both a matter of pride and as a sign of respect to others who might visit.

As a matter of self-care, I took a spin on foot all around Casma to get my bearings. Then I ate at one of my favorite restaurants, El Tio Sam (Uncle Sam), Casma’s best-known restaurante turistica. I've been going to Tio Sam for a long time. I’d stopped here during my first trip to Peru in 2001, have run into countless archaeologists there just by accident in subsequent years, and I spent a lot of time eating there eating alone during my stay whilst completing my dissertation field research. Now, as was the case in 2011, it seems that Tio Sam is doing bangup business contracting a pension with the OHL road construction crew. 

Last night, men in yellow fluorescent uniforms were lined up out the door to sign the register and receive their dinner. The menu appeared to be roast chicken and puree de verduras, served over a pile of rice. Naturally the puree nearly slid off the plate: a Peruvian serving technique that says, ‘I’ve given you all this plate can handle, engordate!’

I ordered my classic favorite dish here, a dish done so well here that there’s almost no point in asking for it elsewhere: tacu tacu solo con sarsa criolla. Tacu tacu is exemplary as a Peruvian coastal dish. It includes a combination of indigenous, European, and Asian ingredients prepared in a stick-to-your-ribs recipe that nourishes people who begin work during cold, foggy mornings and end in hot, dry afternoons. Tacu tacu must have been hacienda food that was made cheaply and in bulk to feed to farmhands and corvée laborers.

In its foundation, tacu tacu is Peruvian rice and beans. I've been told that the rice must be leftover from yesterday and the beans are typically canarias, which are like Mexican pinto beans. The rice and beans are mixed with piquant spices that almost certainly include one of the innumerable Peruvian chilis, collectively called aji, salt, and citrus. Some cooks use breadcrumbs on top and make a yellower version. However, Tio Sam does it much much better. They use cebolla china (green onions) and no breadcrumbs. The tacu tacu always has a reddish-pink color to it. The sarsa criolla served on the side is mild red onions mixed with lots of lime juice (exclusively a variety like the key lime), and hot pepper rings. They marinate together to create a refreshing and satisfying dish that is somewhere between a condiment and a salad.

The key here is that the sarsa’s tart and sweet juices flood around the rice and bean pancake and then mingle with its base. I could eat tons of this, and I have. I sometimes have asked for a double order of doubly hot sarsa. Some young (American) archaeologists from these parts have been known to collect the extras from their colleagues and save them for late-night snacking. Such a good dish.

Having stuffed myself full of the savory and sour tacu tacu con sarsa criolla, I made my way back to the hotel. On the way back I ate some picarones: Peruvian fried dough rings made with pumpkin flour and anise, topped with clove-infused molasses 'miel' (honey). I also ran into my old friend and colleague Felix, who - when not expertly excavating with an American archaeological project - serves as the de facto harbor master for the mototaxis that serve the Sechin branch of the Casma River.

Finally, I returned to the hotel, crawled into bed, and failed completely in reading any of Don Quixote (who is perhaps the archetype for all archaeologists). I slept for a solid 9 hours.

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I think that it’s important to attend to various kinds of self-care when travelling, especially when traveling alone. In this case, getting my bearings by doing a pass around Casma – a city I knew pretty well 3 years ago – is a good way to feel at home again in what is, admittedly, quite a strange place for a gringo. Eating familiar and favorite foods really helps one to acclimate to a new place, too. In this case, the tacu tacu was not only one of my favorite foods, but a food that I've eaten together with friends and my wife; it's become a bit famous among us, and so it is doubly familiar. It's familiar to me, but also the food I've shared with my familiars.

Tacu Tacu with Sarsa Criolla from El Tio Sam

Academic Publishing: the Oddest Economy?

It's no secret that there are weird things about in the political economy of 'academia' these days. In a nutshell, it seems that demand is higher than ever for the stuff that academics produce and that people are paying more than ever to get those 'products.' In plain terms, more people are going to college than ever and they're paying extraordinary amounts of money to go. Yet, teaching positions that pay living wages - not to mention wages that are commensurate with the cost of becoming qualified to teach - are amazingly rare. But I want to leave that aspect aside for a moment and think about publishing.

Academic products qua writing fall into a bizarre economic limbo that deserves some attention because, I think, the limbo depends on the fact that no one talks about it. In brief, researchers win and then spend lots of money doing research, for which they are not personally remunerated. Research grants typically cannot be used to pay rents, mortgages, utilities, student loans, etc.: all those things that adults need to pay while living as adult members of society. 

After conducting research, researchers spend endless unpaid hours writing up their research into 6000 word articles 100,000 word books, and countless public presentations. The texts they write are then evaluated by unpaid peers who spend their own uncounted hours - without pay - anonymously (and thoughtfully) reading, commenting upon, then rereading and reporting upon their colleagues' articles. Unpaid journal editors, who are not anonymous, ferry the texts, comments, and revisions back and forth, from colleague, to peer, to publication platform. 

Those journals then publish the articles in print and online, where they are accessible to institutions and individuals who pay for subscriptions. Institutions, like universities, pay particularly high fees for access to these journals. 

So where does the money go?

Recently, I asked a colleague who had published a peer-reviewed article in a well-known journal, "So what's the split on the royalties for your article?" My colleague drew a total (and reasonable) blank at the question because the topic isn't even broached. The economic dimension for text-producers is totally ignored, even though the whole publication system is supported by fees. 

I joked that even in the micro-economy of independent music production, where every publication is understood to be a money-losing endeavor, we still talk about splitting the profits after expenses. Usually labels and bands split the profits 50/50. Labels usually keep a spreadsheet of the income for releases, which ideally come in runs of 1000 units. And labels usually demonstrate that they've lost money. But everyone's happy to support this labor of love for a form of cultural production that - like academic research - is a good unto itself.

Happily, ProQuest does discuss royalties with respect to doctoral dissertations. Royalties came up, for me, when I paid $90 to have my dissertation available 'open-access.' I chose to pay for open access because many of my peers overseas, distinguished and active archaeologists, do not have institutional subscriptions to major academic databases. ProQuest informed me that, by paying for open access, I was relinquishing a claim to any royalties from my dissertation. 

As I understand it (and I'm willing to be educated better on this, if I'm wrong), ProQuest sells dissertations in hard copy to anyone who is willing to purchase them. Now, I paid $90 for my dissertation to be open access. I should still have access to the royalties from sales. What if it becomes a runaway hit and sells a million copies? Why would open access (which I paid for) annul my right to royalties?

Well, of course all contracts are negotiable. So I attempted to negotiate. I told my dissertation office staff that I wanted to retain rights to royalties. ProQuest responded that this was not an option. Negotiation attempted and failed.

Now, one might also ask, "Must a PhD publish their dissertation on ProQuest?" Honestly, that was not something that was presented as an option. Embargoes exist, wherein one can have their dissertation's publication delayed by up to 2 years, usually to protect informants and other people named in the dissertation. But that requires special permission. And it's only for 2 years. 

What if I really wanted to press the issue? How would I go about doing that? I'm not sure that there's even a structure for that sort of negotiation in the dissertation publishing system.

Well, no one will actually buy my dissertation anyway. I'm mostly glad that it's available via open access to my peers, especially in Peru. Yet, sadly, when I try to access it through the ProQuest site, it's surprisingly difficult to find it...and to find where one would even look to download it. 

The point is that there are always things that appear to be fixed, and we should push back on them when we feel they're badly built. Sometimes we'll hit walls and that will be enough for the moment. Yet, sometimes it's worth it to keep pushing and pushing until the structure is reconfigured to a better form. 

In the meantime, I plan to employ a workaround. When the dissertation is finally published, I'll post a copy on my personal website, free of charge, and easy to download.

Que los dioses bendiguen a Univision...well, almost...

"May the gods bless Univision...well, almost..."

I've long had an issue with cable TV. Actually two issues. First, there's so much crap on cable TV that directly contravenes everything I'm trying to do as a knowledge-worker that I really don't want to support it. The History Channel, of course, is enemy #1 for continually broadcasting anti-science (worse than pseudoscience) so intensively that it's often impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone on the street about archaeology. Typically I end up spending a few minutes kindly explaining that, while I wouldn't rule out the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, there is no evidence at all that extra-terrestrials had anything to do with any of the amazing archaeological sites that raise the profile of archaeology. I think that's a pretty accommodating and appropriately open attitude to have. Unfortunately, it also means that I spend a few minutes undoing the bad work of the History Channel and never get to talking about basic things like some surprising similarities and differences between our own and prehistoric societies.

Secondly, I cable is expensive. With my meager budget, cable is not a monthly expense that I want to take on. So, I make do with broadcast TV and whatever I can find through online on-demand subscriptions. Frankly, I tend to watch only PBS News and Masterpiece Theatre. That's plenty. Plenty to make me a real snob, probably, too.

But it also means that I'm completely unable to watch hockey, soccer, many American football games, rugby, cycling, and many other sporting events that are incredibly important to a lot of the rest of the world.

For example, today is the first semi-final World Cup match being contested between Brazil and Germany. I checked my local TV listing and it's not on broadcast. This is one of the most watched sporting events on the planet. And it's not on broadcast. That's to say, it's not on English language broadcast TV. The other FIFA affiliate is broadcasting Katie and Eyewitness News while Germany perpetrates what will be one of the most memorable soccer games ever by 5PM tonight. No one will remember either of those daytime programs on the English language station.

So, while the gringo networks snooze along mid-afternoon, Univision is broadcasting - free of additional charge - the semifinal. Now, I'm not offering a full-on and unconditional applause for Univision. Like many media outlets, it certainly has its issues; not least among them is the role of women on television and machismo, more generally.

However, what it is certainly doing is providing a consistent and dependable opportunity for virtually the entire world - certainly the entire Spanish-speaking world - to contemporaneously experience a major world sporting event. For example, when I travel to Peru next week, I feel confident that I'll be able to discuss with my Peruvian friends how Univision's comentaristas declared this game Brazil's worse loss since the 1920s. That is, only 30 minutes into the game, with at least 60 yet to play. At 34 minutes in, was this game a fait accompli? Maybe so. More important is that the rest of the Spanish-speaking world and I will now have a common point of reference for an interesting debate.

Univision's foresight to broadcast (or is it that they would never consider not broadcasting?) the World Cup is an example of the production of a global public. Literally, an enormous segment of the world population tunes into Spanish-language television because it's the most dependable and economic means to tune in. Myself included because - among other things - cable is expensive.

Rather than sincerely thanking Univision, what I might do instead is to highlight the pleasure of participating in a 'culture' beyond the one in which I was raised. All critiques of media-consumption-as-participation aside, it's pretty great to be able to watch the World Cup at home (and not by paying table-rent at a bar) and to do so knowing that much of the world is following the same video feed.

PS: A note on the actual contest between Brazil and Germany. This game highlights for me the power of teamwork. Four of five goals by Germany were scored because a potential shooter passed the ball. Each time, Brazil's players converged on the attackman, thereby leaving open one or more players slightly behind. In each of those cases, the likely shooter passed back to a less-likely shooter who shot and scored. I don't know if this is unique to World Cup soccer. It may be a reasonable strategy to assume that players from diverse club teams will shoot rather than pass because they're not accustomed to assisting their fellow national team players. Alternatively, it may be that Germany has absolutely focused on fundamentals that the Brazilians had entirely underestimated.

Tourism copy as self-fulfilling prophesy?

They say the Bass Harbor Head Light (aka Bass Harbor Lighthouse) is reportedly the most photographed lighthouse in New England. So, once you hear that and you find yourself near or at the light, how can one not take a photo and - consequently - make it the most photographed lighthouse in New England? I dared a couple from Wisconsin to refrain. They could not. I, myself, climbed out into the rocky, algal, tide zone (so full of lively pools and slow snails) to snap a few shots in digital and analog. It's a damn beautiful light house and extremely photogenic to boot.