Notes from the Field
 Kaminaljuyú Sculpture Project, Guatemala

Today Jenny’s friend took Zaida and me around Guatemala City in an attempt to map existing mounds and compare these to previous maps. I soon realized that there was a degree of confusion in what we wanted to do and what she could offer. She did end up taking us to a few mounds located adjacent to parking lots and other locations. One set of three mounds did not appear to be on the map that we had so I mapped them carefully and noted this. We did not get as much done as I had originally hoped, but this was simply because of the difficulty in mapping mounds in a large city and the severe effect the growth of the city has had on the Kaminaljuyu site.

Today we are at the site of Naranjo which is outside of Guatemala City. Dr. Barbara Arroyo invited us to the site to scan a stela that was originally found at the site but had since been moved to another part of it in order to avoid the affects of a housing development that is going in nearby. This was my first time scanning in the field other than Crystal River, Florida and although we hit some snags with the equipment at first, everything ended up working out well and we were able to scan an entire face of the stela and a portion of one side. We eventually set up a large tarp over our whole setup in case it rained but it also helped blocking the sunlight in the outdoor environment. Dr. Arroyo believes that the very faint carving that can still be made out on the stela will help her in her investigations at Naranjo, and preliminary results suggest that there is indeed distinct carving on the surface of the stone.

Scanning.

The rest of the week was spent scanning at the National Museum. Most of the pieces were portable fragments and several larger fragments from stela.

Today we scanned at the National Museum in the downstairs bodega. We scanned Stela 25, and a number of stone fragments with carvings.

More scanning at the National Museum. Today we are upstairs in the library because the museum is closed and we are not supposed to have access to the bodega downstairs. However, we are able to go downstairs, pick a few pieces that we need to scan, and bring them up to the library. This system works quite well, especially since the upstairs of the museum is so quiet and we are able to spread out on the table of the library. We did a few pieces on the turntable and some with single scans only (see Bart’s log).

At 2:00pm we left the National and headed to the home of a private collector. The family owns the collection at the Casa Santo Domingo in Antigua, part of which we scanned the other week. The house is beautiful and stacked to the ceiling (literally) with Maya art and artifacts, most real but some reproductions. We began by scanning a gorgeous painted vessel which turned out very well and will be a great demo piece to show people the advantages of laser scanning. We also did a very large tripod vessel, an eccentric flint (which was tricky needless to say), and a heavy post marker with an animal-like head. The collector was very receptive to the project and made us feel welcome in her home.

It is quiet around the National Museum today because it is Friday and I learned that Latin Americans, like Americans, consider Fridays casual, but mostly in terms of work. Everyone leaves work a few hours early after a long lunch break. Again we were able to make a bit of progress on our little wagon of Kaminaljuyu objects. I think we are coming back tomorrow (Saturday) to try and finish before we head to a private collector’s house.

Today we are back at the National Museum in the bodega to scan several pieces from Kaminaljuyu. We got quite a bit done, especially since many of the pieces were portable and able to fit well on the turntable. The smaller pieces were a bit tricky because we weren’t used to them, but once we figured out how they were being treated by the scanner we had a steady pace the rest of the day. We worked until the normal time of about 4:30 and realized we still had quite a bit of scanning to do at this museum.

Today Zaida and I were out and about around Guatemala City attempting to map a selection of the Kaminaljuyu mound structures. It is not as easy as it would seem. We encountered a couple of problems, one logistical and one having to do with community relations. First off I noticed that I was not getting good PDOP values, and I decided this was do to the location of the mounds between and amongst modern structures, including tall walls and apartments. Most of the mounds we saw today were in poor condition, heavily eroded, and poorly maintained other than the few parks that were associated with some of them.

In total we mapped seven structures in the vicinity of the Kaminaljuyu archaeological park. These were named “KJ1, KJ2”, etc. We also found out from Jenny at the National Museum that one of her friends is conducting graduate research involving mapping Kaminaljuyu. We will be contacting her with the hope of coordinating our respective projects. Her utility is that she apparently has GPS points of most if not all of the remaining mounds, while we will be able to offer more accurate locational data as well as the size of the mound bases.

Today was a very exciting day. We were in a nice quite and secluded room in order to scan two large pieces that had arrived from Japan (see photograph). They took a while, but seem to be well worth it. Bart’s notes has all the details of the pieces.

Today we are back at the National Museum to scan a series of pieces from Kaminaljuyu and vicinity. We set up in an area near a case housing several vessels.

The pieces we scanned today included a classic period spouted vessel, a stucco glyph vessel possibly from Kaminaljuyu, a Preclassic elongated baby’s head effigy from the south coast of Guatemala, three different stucco tripod vases (named A, B, and C respectively), and a figurine of a pregnant woman.

Today we returned to the National Museum to scan Stela 10 from Kaminaljuyu. This was scanned previously but only with the short-range lens, creating a very large file that is difficult to deal with. To remedy this, we scanned the two glyphic segments with the short-range lens and the rest of the piece with the mid-rage lens. This resulted in a more manageable file. The scanning process was relatively easy and the reflectivity didn’t give us too much trouble. We used the shade to block some of the ambient and florescent light. Most of Stela 10 is a flat surface (as it exists today) but there is a small portion that wraps around the upper right corner. We had to reposition the scanner to obtain this data as well as fill in some holes.

One of the museum guests that stopped by to ask about our project turned out to be an elderly lady by the name of Joya Hair, who apparently owns an impressive private collection of Kaminaljuyu material that we hope to scan. She was also the photographer of some of the pieces that appear in the Parsons book on Kaminaljuyu that Travis has.

Today we hope to wrap up at the archaeological museum here at the Hotel Santo Domingo. We moved to the art museum next door to scan several pieces in the private collection. We started with the largest, a flat carved stone monument from Kaminaljuyu depicting two (maybe one?) figures in a contortionist pose. The others we scanned were a small stone mask, an elongated and slightly concave stone piece that gave us some trouble due to its reflectivity, and a small stone figurine. The curator of the museum was very nice and receptive to our project and was an overall success.

Today we are at the archaeological museum at the Hotel Santo Domingo in Antigua, Guatemala. We are here to scan some of the pieces of the private collection, which are on public display.

The first object we scanned was a carved figure with a four-sided face and an extended “neck” on which it rests. This took most of the day.

We also used the turntable to scan a small stone carved figure with a mushroom-shaped head.

Today Travis and I scanned one piece at the Miraflores Museum. The piece was an unknown vessel that we called “glyph vessel.” At first we were unsure of whether or not the vessel was from Kaminaljuyu, but the curator of the museum confirmed that it was. The piece took approximately 2 ½ hours to complete and was scanned using the turntable. It was scanned in five sections from top to bottom. The vessel was flipped upside down on the scanner to get the last section, including the three feet. To obtain scan data of the bottom surface, Travis elevated the object by hand toward the scanner and a single scan was done. Overall the complete scan image came out well. After this, we packed up all of the equipment and headed to the National Museum to examine the collection not on display to determine what we will be scanning next week. Starting tomorrow morning and for the rest of the weekend we will be in Antigua scanning some pieces at the Hotel Santo Domingo, which houses a private collection and museum.