I not having much luck on the internet finding the city or nearest city to the Mayan Cave of the Witch at Lake Atitlan. Anyone have this info?

After spending a few days with Juan Pedro Laporte and talking to Jon (who does type:variety in the Southeastern US, I've got to say that a big ceramics book/conference is long due.

Juan Pedro is doing amazing stuff, and manages to do ceramics like they were meant to be done, which few have managed. Here's how the type:variety system works in the Maya world--you look at surface decoration (slips, incisions, etc.) and organize them into types in specific time periods--so all of the Early Classic shiny black-slipped stuff is Balanza Black, and all of the stuff that looks like Balanza but has incisions is Lucha Incised. Both of these would be organized in the same group (Balanza group, as Balanza is the "basic" type in the group). All of the groups which have the same basic forms and slip characteristics are grouped into wares (Balanza's a part of Peten Glossy, because it's, you know, glossy. It's actually a ware that exists throughout the Classic period and began slightly before it when people started experimenting with different slip types--all of the stuff before it was waxy. In the Late Preclassic it was Paso Caballo Waxy, to be specific). The wares and forms come together in different sites and regions to different phases. So in the Central Peten the stuff from the Late Preclassic (all wares during the same time period) are called Chicanel and the Early Classic is called Tzakol.

So how many of you knew (or cared) that Tzakol ceramics are not an accurate marker for Early Classic settlement in the souther Peten? Juan Pedro Laporte has been doing extensive research throughout the southern and central Peten and has found that the ceramics typically associated with the Early Classic at most of the major sites in the Maya lowlands during this time period are only existant in ceremonial contexts. People were continuing to use earlier ceramics (Chicanel) throughout the Early Classic.

This really helps me out, as I've got a ton (many, many tons, actually) of Tzakol-sphere ceramics in my caves and basically none outside of them. Not that I have a whole lot of Chicanel either, but I do have significantly more of it than I have Tzakol.

At the Simposio last year, I ended up meeting a Guatemalan archaeologist named Raquel Macario, who saw my paper on the cave archaeology we've been doing. She expressed an interest in the field, so I grabbed Brady and introduced them. About 10 minutes later, Brady came back with Raquel and told me that she had found a new artificial cave near Q'umerkaaj (see a bit of background here).

What is so interesting about caves here and in other parts of the highlands is that they are artificial--the Maya dug caves where they didn't have them naturally and used them for ritual activity (and still use many of them today). They were first studied by Brady and Veni, but with a French project working at Q'umerkaaj and around the area, more are popping up.

Un gran problema que hemos encontrado en Centroamerica es que la mayoria de estudiantes no tienen mucho acceso a libros, articulos, y otras cosas academicas que les puede ayudar a ser mejores antropologos y arqueologos.

Si alguien tiene dudas o quiere encontrar informacion que necesitan, eso es el lugar para preguntar o pedir.

One of the things that I do while I'm working with communities that are close to major roads is help to set up cave tourism. I've been fortunate that we've had a lot of help from USAID and the Ministry of Culture in that, so we can afford to do a good job and adequately train people to manage caves. Since there's such extreme poverty in northern Alta Verapaz and the southern Peten, anything that will end up helping the people and help them to value the caves is a good thing.

I got into a conversation with members of the Ministry of Culture yesterday about a cave that is being opened for tourism in July, and gave them a checklist of stuff that I think is important to have successful cave tourism:

It's quite entertaining to see where people are coming from who end up at mayacaves.org. Most of the stuff is unrelated to cave archaeology, and has more to do with the lack of resources in Spanish on the internet--people have come from different parts of Latin America looking for "angels drawn with carbon," "old and strange Maya sports," and a slew of "new discoveries"--at Teotihuacan, in the Maya world, in Guatemala, and (my personal favorite, for which we're ranked #5) on the moon.

Mirza apparently has a bit of a fan club in Sweden, with the largest amount of hits looking for her. I feel somewhat offended that I don't have a fan club in Sweden, but maybe they're just not ready for my rugged good looks.

El trabajo realizado por multiples entidades en las comunidades rurales de Guatemala, están empezando a dar sus frutos, muchas son las comunidades en el área norteña de Alta Verapaz y sur del Petén, han desarrollado programas túristicos, que aparte de proporcionar a las comunidades de trabajo, enseñan y promueven la protección tanto de la naturaleza, como de los bienes culturales.

Este es un paso demasiado importante, ya que las personas que viven en estas comunidades han encontrado una nueva fuente de trabajo. Una de las comunidades que mejor ejemplifican este trabajo es Muqb'ilha', en donde tienen un impresionante campamento para recibir turistas, con muchas comodidades, ofreciendo servicios de hospedaje, alimentación y recorridos a diferentes cuevas, todo esto en un pequeño valle rodeado de cerros.

The new, community-run Candelaria ecotouristic lodge. For more information, see Mirza's blog entry.

My new puppy.