In Search of Maya Sea Traders

CHAPTER 18. Coral Architecture

171 CHAPTER 18 CORAL ARCHITECTURE I n January, 1997, I returned to live on Frenchman’s Cay for six months during my sabbatical, taking a team of field assistants for large-scale excavations of the coral architecture . I was excited to be working in the dry season and to have a long time to horizontally expose the island’s stone architecture, the associated burials, and figure out the relationship of the island’s elite, who used the stone buildings with the elite Maya traders on Wild Cane Cay. Why were there two trading ports so near to one another? We arrived in the driving rain, wielded machetes to clear an opening in the dense undergrowth that had reclaimed the island since our departure, and found ourselves ankle deep in water. Evidently the dry season had not yet arrived. Because we planned an extended stay on the island, we had brought more equipment and supplies than usual, so I had hired Julio Requena to haul our tables, benches, three-hundred-pound army surplus tent, and other heavy and unwieldy supplies in his skiff. The dories were loaded with my staff, our gear, and food. Since the site looked more like a refugee camp than an idyllic Caribbean island, I wondered whether my Vietnamese field assistant was remembering her childhood escape from Vietnam by boat with her family. After unloading, we set up our tents in standing water, with heavy sheets of plastic carefully placed over the tent floors and up the sides like a dish to keep the water out. Huddled under a tarp strung between trees, eating sausages and crackers, with swarms of sandflies and mosquitoes descending with the setting sun, my focus was on the basics of food and shelter. The idea of excavating the nearby coral mounds seemed remote. 172 f r e n c h m a n ’ s c a y , 1 9 9 4 a n d 1 9 9 7 We didn’t have much time to acclimate to our new home since I had to pick up our first team of Earthwatch volunteers from Punta Gorda the next day. As I left the next morning in the Adel 2 with one of my field assistants, I hoped the others would be able to establish at least a semblance of our archaeological field station. Tents needed to be put up for each of the volunteers, and the assistants also needed to set up the water tank, radio tower, propane stove, and unload the food and other equipment. Most difficult would be the task of assembling the kitchen and lab tent we’d hauled on the plane, bus, and Requena’s skiff before Mai and I returned with the volunteers. The tent, which was 18 by 36 feet with a 10 foot ceiling, would provide the only public space under which to shelter, cook, read, and store our equipment, food, supplies , and artifacts. On my return with the volunteers later that day, we were greeted by a group of enthusiastic young women in rubber boots carrying machetes . They waded into the water to catch the dory. My field staff had managed not only to set up the big tent but also to carve a field station out of the underbrush. We were ready to begin the excavations. My objective was for the field staff and volunteers to survive and enjoy their experience as they helped excavate. The difficult living conditions could easily drive volunteers away, but they could also bring the group together, working as a team in adversity. Unlike the popular television shows of the early-twenty-first century, notably “Survivor,” where a participant was periodically voted off the tropical island, my goal was for everyone to survive. The field staff worked hard to make this happen. Excavations in the three mounds at Frenchman’s Cay were designed to piece together the role of the ancient community in sea trade, especially its relationship to the major trading port on Wild Cane Cay.1 Was the same coral construction style used at the two island sites? Were they contemporaneous? In 1994, we excavated a 3 by 1 meter trench in two of the three mounds at Frenchman’s Cay, exposing finger coral and coral rock, as at Wild Cane Cay. We returned in 1997 to aerially expose the earthen floors and stone foundations of ancient buildings, look for associated burials with grave goods — especially pottery vessels — to help date the structures, and...