I’m now in my 2nd week of my trip. I think I have about 21 weeks left to go. It seems like such a distant time when I’ll be returning home, but there is so much work to be done before then that hopefully it will fly by and be productive. I’ve had a busy week. As I mentioned last week, there was no house for me in Teuchitlán and my only prospect was a pretty miserable one. Since my budget wouldn’t allow me to stay for an extended period in a hotel, I moved into the lab. The workers dug out a cot for me, so I was able to sleep much more comfortably after the first night in the lab, when I slept on a broken loveseat. There was a bathroom and I was able to use a coffee maker to heat water to bathe and wash my hair. Big issues were going to arise soon, though, from the lack of cooking facilities and the lack of a place to wash my clothes. I got to escape the lab and Teuchi for the weekend when I went with a friend to stay at his house in Guadalajara. He and his wife took me around all sorts of place, but unfortunately I was horribly sunburned from a trip to the new museum (that I will discuss in detail below) and I think also a bit sick from the altitude change. These combined to make me pretty ill for part of the weekend. I’m feeling much better now, although I’m starting to lose my poor burnt skin on my neck. If that’s the worst of my illnesses while I’m here, I’ll be thankful and glad that I got it over with early!
I’m happy to report that my living situation seems to have improved as well. As of today (Tuesday), I’m now living in a real house. Yay! It is in a town called Oconahua and located about 30 minutes west of Teuchitlán. There is a major late archaeological site here that some of my friends have been working at. Part of the town has expanded onto the site, so the state bought much of the main area of the site and the houses located on it. One of the houses, located right on one of the main structures at the site is a large and recently constructed house and is the home and lab for the archaeologists when they are working here. Right now it is the rainy season and the house is unused, so I was offered the opportunity to use it to live and work in. Once I figure out how to work the hot water heater, I’ll have nearly everything I need to survive here—including the kitchen and hot water that I was missing in the lab. The town is in a beautiful setting and is quite a bit less developed than Teuchitlán. I’ll be posting some photos from here sometime soon, after I make it through the photos of Teuchitlán that I already have taken to share with you. I’m sort of on the edge of town, but there are two guards who live a few yards away and are very friendly and helpful. It is their job to watch over the site and the house, and they’ve already told me that all I need to do if I need any help is just yell out the window or tap on my gate (that’s the usual way to knock on someone’s door around here—you tap on their gate with your keys). One of them offered his daughters to accompany me when I asked him about where to go shopping in town for the things I need for the house, which I thought was very nice.
Now for my real topic of the week—the site museum. There have been plans in the works for quite a while for there to be a museum constructed for the Guachimontones site. There are already a couple of museums in Teuchitlán. One is at the local government’s Casa de Cultura and contains what I think are mostly artifacts donated by people in town and some copies of things that are in museums in the US but originally came from this area. The other is more of a town history sort of museum with things from the more recent past. This new museum is one that will display artifacts actually uncovered by archaeologists at the site. When I was here 2 years ago they were excavating the land that would be the eventual location of the museum. This winter, there were announcements that the museum would open this spring or summer. Now the plan is for it to open in early December. It is supposed to open sometime this year as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebrations, so it has to open sometime this year if it is to make that goal. Right now it is still an empty shell perched on the hillside about halfway between the town and the site. The entire side of it that faces the town is constructed of glass and gives an amazing view of the town, the lake, and the countryside. It also includes things like a classroom and a theater. The lab will be moved here as well and has a giant window looking in on it so that people will be able to observe archaeologists working in their natural habitat. I’m not sure how thrilling watching someone count pieces of pottery will be, but people seem to enjoy that sort of thing. I always enjoy sharing our work with the public and am really excited about the museum and even about people getting to look in on us working.
We were at the museum on Friday with some folks who were there to help with planning some of the areas of the museum and its grounds as well as developing some flow to tours of the site. It was really interesting stuff, but I didn’t realize we were going to be outside for about FOUR hours, so I got a terrible sunburn on pretty much all exposed skin. My photos this week are not of my spectacularly burnt self, but of the museum. One photo is the museum up close-ish. The other is it as seen from the base of the hill leading up to it and the site. Since we are now about 3 months into the rainy season, the landscape is beautifully lush. I think the museum contrasts nicely with all the greenery and looks nice perched up there on the hillside. In the dry months, when the greenery fades and the area turns into a more desert-like environment, it won’t be as noticeable, I think.