Belize 2003

In 2003 I participated in the Xibun Archaeological Research Project (XARP) project, satisfying my undergraduate field school requirement and giving me my first taste of field archaeology. The year before I had become semi-entranced with the idea of the Maya and once my restless desire to live in a tent for a number of months took hold, I signed myself up and shipped myself to Belize.

Belize is a strange place. "...if the world had any ends, [Belize] would certainly be one of them. It is not on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. It has no strategic value. It is all but uninhabited," quipped Aldous Huxley and indeed Belize felt like the end of the world and that was quite comforting. I got to miss the entire first part of the Iraq war: there is no news in Belize, just loud music to gyrate to, cashew wine, and old American school buses that take you to whatever mile you live on. I dream about moving back at times.

This project focused on small riverine Maya sites that consisted of small mounds and several strangely circular buildings. One site near the village of Cedar Bank was used as a backdrop for the Harrison Ford/River Phoenix film Mosquito Coast. The live pyrotechnics seen in the film were actually performed on top of one of the Maya mounds we were investigating, blowing a hole in the side. Indeed, Indiana Jones exploded that archaeological site.

For my final project I completed the infield preliminary analysis of the obsidian that we recovered. That very early work was published in the site report (2004 Prismatic Blades and Long Distance Trade: Obsidian from the Sites of Cedar Bank, Augustine Obispo, and Samuel Oshon, in Sibun Valley from Late Classic through Colonial Times: Investigations of the 2003 Season of the Xibun Archaeological Research Project, Patricia A. McAnany et al., eds.) and is available here. After XARP, I headed inland to a project in Guatemala.