Note: In the craziness of the last week (The program was 7 weeks in total), we didn't get around to posting this until just now.
This past week marked a bright zenith of our time spent exploring the Chavín monument. Each week we have had the privilege of expanding knowledge of the duct and canal systems in the site, but last Thursday we had a particularly special treat. After many hours of driving our robot down ducts and finding them full of little more than stones and spider webs, we found an unbroken ceramic vessel from the Chavín period with our robot!
The morning started like many others this summer - walking to the site after breakfast to explore ducts using our robot. Daniel and I, along with our friend, visiting Mechanical Engineering PhD student Margaret Coad, entered an underground canal below a main excavation area in the site. The day before, a French archaeologist named Melanie Ferras had taken us into the same canal to show us several small ducts that she hoped we could explore with our robots. Melanie had spent the past few seasons excavating this canal, but she was unable to explore all of the ducts connecting to it. Some were too small for excavation, while others were simply challenging and low priority compared to the main canal. We returned with the goal of exploring two ducts nearby each other, one with the wheeled robot and one with the vine robot. The canal was like many others - cramped, dusty, full of dead mice and lizards, and plastered with spiderwebs. After helping Margaret transport all of the vine robot components into the canal (an air compressor, power convertor, 10m extension cable, pressure regulators, and the main body of the vine robot - no easy task) Daniel and I started up our wheeled robot and put it into a duct connecting to the ceiling of the canal. From the entrance to the duct, all we could see we was the quotidian rubble we had come to expect from underground tunnels: scattered rocks and dried mud flanked by mortared stone walls, overhung by large stone beams. We started to drive the robot down the tunnel, and after only a few yards we noticed a large, globular object resting on the left side of the canal.
Driving closer, we clearly saw that the object, whatever it was, had been made by humans. It looked like a dirty vase or a bottle or some other container resting half-buried in the dried mud. Not trusting our limited experience, we had no way of knowing whether the object was ancient ceramic or modern trash. This summer we have found all kinds of refuse inside of ducts: candy wrappers, plastic bags, crushed water bottles, discarded film containers, plastic spoons, unsmoked cigarettes. It is unclear whether these objects were inserted into the ducts by irreverent and determined tourists, or whether they were left there by earlier archaeologists. We do know that one of the first archaeologists in Chavín used small children to excavate some of the ducts down which our robot has been exploring. Since then, small adults have continued to enter some of the larger ducts in the name of archaeological exploration.
After collecting thorough video documentation of the object with our robot we continued to explore the duct and then returned to the lab. Later, that evening, we shared the video with our PI, John Rick, who, upon seeing the shape of the object, instantly said, “that’s Chavín ceramic.” Everyone in the lab was thrilled by the discovery, and the question of how we could further study the vessel quickly arose. As with many archaeological artifacts, the route to a deeper understanding of an object often requires carefully excavating and cleaning the object. Then, in the lab, it is possible to critically examine the details of its shape, condition, and decoration (or lack thereof) with its position within the site in order to better understand the significance of the vessel within Chavín culture. The vessel was situated about 4 yards away from the entrance to the canal inside of a 16inch by 16 inch duct. Retrieving the vessel would require crawling through a very confined space and exercising utmost care while extracting it from the mud. Though the vessel looked unbroken, it could well have large cracks on its underside. Though we’d spent many days working in small spaces, I was hesitant about the prospect of crawling down that tiny tunnel. Daniel, however, enthusiastically volunteered for the job. The next morning, after talking extensively with John Rick about proper technique for extracting and documenting the position of the vessel, we returned to the canal. After taking some careful distance and compass measurements of the vessel, Daniel climbed through the ceiling of the canal, wedged himself into the duct, and started inching forward while pushing a cardboard box containing a trowel, a brush, and a cloth bag. The whole process went more smoothly than either of us could have expected, and the look on Daniel’s face when he finally pulls the vessel free from the mud is priceless.
The ceramic object turned out to be an unbroken, undecorated, and stunningly beautiful ceramic bottle: a classic example of polished black Chavín pottery. It was probably placed in the canal as a ceremonial sacrifice, which may explain the lack of decoration on the bottle. John Rick and others have posited that some sacrificial ceramics in Chavín were less likely to contain elaborate decoration. It was perhaps more important for a precious vessel to appear whole and unblemished before being smashed or entombed within the earth than it was to sacrifice a piece of truly elaborate pottery. One curiosity about this particular vessel is the position in which it was found – resting with the neck partially inclined against the wall. In the lab, debate continues over whether the bottle was carefully placed in that position or somehow washed or pushed by water or sediment down the canal and into that position.
When we brought the bottle out of the canal, work on the site stopped and everyone crowded around to get a better look. Unbroken ceramics of this size and form, from this time period, are extremely rare in Chavín, and artifacts like this only turn up every few years. Many folks commented on the proud parent look on my face as I cradled the bottle in the crook of my arm. Now, the cleaned bottle rests in the lab, most likely awaiting future examination in academic literature and a resting place in the Chavín national museum.
Besides the good luck of the wheeled robot, the rest of Margaret’s visit with the vine robot also proved a success. In some ducts the vine robot proved easily capable of passing over and through rock blockages that stopped our wheeled robot cold. We also grew the vine robot up vertical and near-vertical shafts in a different part of the canal system. The improved fabric body and new camera attachment that Margaret constructed before coming to Peru worked well, and the vine robot allowed us to expand knowledge of several key ducts in the site. We were all happy with how it performed. Daniel and I are excited to see how it continues to develop, and we are curious what improvements Margaret will design next! We will be visiting the Okamura lab once school starts up again to say hello and revisit some of the memories we made together in Chavín.
During the past week our work hours were dominated by time spent underground, but our time off was full of eating adventures. Despite the warnings of our elders and some of our peers, Daniel, a few friends, and I couldn’t resist going out to eat at a Chifa restaurant in downtown Chavín. Chifa is the Peruvian take on Chinese food, and it is generally fast, cheap, salty, and delicious. Two days after the meal, our stomachs as happy as they’d been all summer, we returned to Emily’s open air Chifa restaurant for a second helping of Aeropuerto and Combinación, dishes that combine fried rice, noodles, meat, and vegetables. After that success, Daniel and I decided to eat pollo broaster con papas (breaded and fried chicken with fries) from a street vendor. While waiting, we ran into the Chavín site tourism director, Anna, and started talking to her about Peru and archaeology more broadly. In the end, we waited on the street for more than an hour, but the warm, crispy chicken and the enlightening conversation was worth it. Before saying goodnight, Anna invited us to come to a pachamanca, or earth oven, feast that the site workers were putting on the next day. The following afternoon, Daniel and I walked down to the river, expecting a small sample of the food on Anna’s plate. Instead, the site workers generously gave us large plates of deliciously seasoned pollo (chicken), chancho (pork), papas (potatoes), camotes (sweet potatoes), choclo (Inca corn), platanos (bananas) and haba en vainas (beans). Anna and the workers encouraged us to eat all the food and compelled us to wash it all down with several large beers (all of which ended up in Jack’s stomach, because Daniel does not like beer). We left with taut bellies and wide smiles. So far, despite all of our adventurous eating, we have (mostly) managed to avoid any serious gastrointestinal distress. Huzzah for new culinary horizons! (A brief edit: as of this posting, Daniel is experiencing some discomfort (to put it extremely mildly) thanks to some pollo a la braza that we ate last night in downtown Chavín. But this has only somewhat dampened our triumphant tone.)
We are now in the midst of our last week in Chavín. So far it has been a time full of project documentation, writing up a report for the Ministry of culture, finishing explorations of some ducts, and saying goodbye to the places and people we have come to love here in Chavín. We hope to write at least one more blog post recapping our project and describing our final days in Chavín, entonces, hasta la proxima vez.
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