Hi all,
Things are moving along and the 2011 field season at San Pedro de Aguacatepeque is starting this week! Luisa Escobar and I made it out to the field site on Thursday to check in with the landowners, workers and community members and to take a peek at the site. We had not yet seen the site during the dry season (Nov-May) and it sure looks different! The coffee plants have lost a lot of leaves, and workers are busy harvesting the coffee berries off the plants in these months.
A bonus for us is the lack of leaves on the plants, as we can actually see from row to row and get a better sense of the topography of the site and more easily see artifacts on the surface. In addition, digging between the coffee rows will be SO much easier with out huge, leafy plants pushing in on us from all sides…
Just a couple of pics from our visit to give an idea of how nice it’s looking out there:
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- Volcan de Agua, shrouded in some clouds.
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- Acatenango Volcano!
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- Volcan de Fuego smoldering in the background.
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- Our field vehicle parked on the farm road that cuts right through the site.
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- Coffee plants losing their leaves for the season = happy archaeologists
More posts coming soon, we are laying in test units and starting excavations this week, and I am putting the finishing touches on the recap of GPR work carried out in July 2011.
Thanks for reading!
-guido