Return to UNH Magazine Fall 1998 features

E-mail Favorite More

It's Saturday, my first day in country, and Dr. Jaime Awe, my expected host in Belize, is nowhere to be found. I half expected a snafu. Dr. Awe, a pioneering Mayan archaeologist with an Amazonian-sized adventure streak, is notoriously hard to track down. After inquiring among a half dozen students milling around his project's ecolodge headquarters in San Ignacio, I know the following: Dr. Awe is either (A) the guy we just saw bouncing in the back of Ford pickup truck and en route to the team's jungle camp; (B) on his way out of the jungle; or (C) four kilometers deep (and half submerged) in a long lost Mayan cave.

In his absence, I get a rousing student report of what I'm in for over the next few days. One student tells me about the larval botfly and that he thinks one is growing robustly in the surface skin of his forearm. I hear about deadly camp fer de lances (there are 54 species of snake, nine of them poisonous), recent cholera alerts, and the virtually unidentifiable poison wood plant for which the best rash salve is to plaster yourself upon a sun-baked car hood and singe your bare flesh. I learn about a favorite cave of Dr. Awe's where you swim in to see shiny, mineral-speckled skeletons; another that teems with fist-sized tarantulas; and another where the mojo is so creepy that students swear they hear ancient voices.

"You're going into the caves?" asks the Belizean ticket taker at Cahal Pech, a nearby Mayan ruin unearthed by Dr. Awe and others a decade ago. I tell him I plan to. Antonio looks seriously distraught. "I'm sure it is amazing," he says, "but didn't anybody tell you about Chac?"

DAY TWO. BREAKFAST AT THE BASE CAMP begins at 6:50. I am in western Belize, a hub of Maya research, just a few miles from the Guatemalan border. I arrive at 6:45 asking about Chac.

Chac is a venerable Mayan underworld god, says Holly Moyes, one of 12 highly-energetic, graduate-level supervisors for the Western Belize Regional Cave Project. A rain deity, Chac's chief role, as described in the Mayan codices, seems to have been the sacrifice of gods and men by decapitation. It is he the Mayans may have been attempting to please when they ventured into the caves to perform their sacred, and sometimes deadly, rituals. "As you may have gathered," she says ominously, "you'll be hearing a lot about Chac over the next few days."

In fact, most on the project team are holding their collective breath so as not to roust Chac. It's June but the rainy season hasn't hit yet. The result is that the scientists, including their 30 mostly UNH student workforce, have been making faster-than-expected progress this summer.

In the second of a three-season research grant, the Western Belize Regional Cave Project (WBRCP) is the first archaeological team to systematically document what's in these caves and to train future cave archaeologists, a specialty which heretofore has been limited to a field of about one. Dr. Awe.

At present, WBRCP is seven days deep into a 10-day, no-day-off work period. With five separate caves to map and survey this summer —Tunichil Muknal, Handprint Cave, Yaxteel Ahau, Che Chem Ha, and Baking Pot —the project is spread thin. As field study programs go, this is one of the more ambitious. It's UNH's debut field study program outside New England. There are 30 students, 12 staff, several local workmen, three trucks, and an arsenal of ropes, ascenders and other technical rock climbing gear. There's also a modest supply of 1997 T-shirts that read: "Hardcore Archaeology Isn't For Everyone."

The most gung-ho students and staff are at the jungle camp near Tunichil, Handprint and Yaxteel, about 35 miles east of San Ignacio. Those with various maladies —coughs, colds, ankle sprains —stay in San Ignacio and daytrip to the nearer by sites like Che Chem Ha and Baking Pot. Those who are totally non ambulatory remain at the hotel where they wash, inspect, and record the tons of pottery fragments emerging daily.

Today I'm assigned to work Che Chem Ha with Holly, Jen and four students. The highly aerobic hike in is a mile up a steep, mostly sun-exposed slope. By the time we get to the squat cave entrance I'm grunting louder than the buzzing cicadas. Jen repeats the project rules. Nobody goes in or out of the cave alone. Helmets must be worn. Watch your step. The footing is treacherously slick, your visual perspective reduced to the throw of light from a bobbing headlamp. There are no tarantulas at Che Chem Ha, but there are fruit bats, talus spiders, Godzillian cockroaches, and a frenetic colony of dive-bombing swallows. On the plus side, Che Chem Ha is a dry cave.

Unlike surface site digs, where the cultural remains are buried and roughed up over time, a cave site like Che Chem Ha features little if any disturbance. The water-carved karstic limestone walls have preserved things just as the Mayans left them —an invaluable asset to archaeologists trying to figure out what the native people were doing in here. At the visceral level, says Jen, it's a rush to explore. "I really hate heights," she says, clambering up a homemade jungle ladder, "but I find I'll do anything to see a polychrome Mayan pot."

In cave archaeology the Cracker Jack prize is uniquely at the top. At Che Chem Ha, we see about 50 pottery vessels, some more than 2,000 years old. Most are gourd-shaped, used as containers for liquids and foods used during rituals. All are smashed to one degree or another, an exercise that released the spirits the Maya believe were harbored in their meticulously crafted ceramics. The pottery is every place imaginable, lining the high cave balconies, tucked into corridor alcoves, stowed in a deep, secret chamber. In the most remote chamber of all stands a small limestone stelae or monument, a rare find in caves and one that archaeologists believe may have played a part in the worship rituals of the Mayan elite.

Of course, none of this stuff is easy to get at. This is where the high physical demands of cave archaeology come into play. You scramble up crud-filmed rock, belly crawl under a swollen, pinched ceiling, rappel by slimy rope into a sacred, bat-filled stelae chamber. At day's end you feel like you've been under a rock all day.

Deprived of light, students say they often feel prematurely fatigued and a little out of it. Mapping and cataloguing is tedious. In the stupefying mental and physical isolation, fears sometimes get amplified. Wires cross. Justin Miller, a UNH student from Gorham, Maine, mishears someone and as consequence lives in mortal dread of what he believes are "fertile ants." On the long walks in and out to Che Chem Ha Justin hurries noticeably, scanning all the while. After several days somebody finally clues him in. It's fer de lance, not fertile ants. Justin confesses great relief. A big deadly snake he can handle. Hordes of murderous ants he cannot.

Well before sunset, we're out of the caves and on our way back to San Ignacio. We've discovered nothing new, but have polished off a good chunk of mapping, a numbingly awkward and complicated task in maze-like caves. On the road back we spot the towering pyramid of Xunantunich as it crests above distant jungle. More than a millennium after it was built, Xunantunich, along with a nearby Mayan pyramid at Caracol, are still the two tallest structures in Belize. Vast numbers of other structures remain entombed in deep jungle. Thousands of caves, too. Says Holly, "On one level it's thrilling and on another it's really frustrating to know we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's here."

IT'S MONDAY, DAY THREE. WORD TRAVELS QUICK. Dr. Awe is here. As it turns out, he was the guy in the back of the truck. More 'Let's Go' than professorial in a T-shirt, soccer togs, and sport sandals, the 43-year-old Dr. Awe is in a buoyant mood. Over breakfast he gleefully describes a new development at Handprint Cave. Jade jewelry? somebody asks. Obsidian blades? Stelae? No, announces Dr. Awe, but they have just landed a moonshot onto a slim, yet-to-be explored ledge. (Translation: Using ropes and technical climbing gear, two students have ascended to a new and precarious perch.)

"They're up there?" shrieks Chris Helmke, the project illustrator and a graduate student from McGill University. It's only mock horror — I think. Dr. Awe plays along; with a dismissive wave of the hand, he says, "Ah, they signed their waiver releases." He glances my way. "Field school humor."

Dr. Awe says he's returning to the bush camp later this morning. I'm invited. But first he's got a dozen errands to run. There's nothing remotely easy about running a project of this size and type in the jungle. Logistics are mind boggling. An inordinate amount of time is spent patching weary trucks. Or purchasing supplies to re-stock camps. Or ferrying students to the Guatemalan border to get visas updated. This morning Dr. Awe drives his pick-up to the neighboring town of Succotz to get his workmen, then speeds back to San Ignacio for gas, groceries, a machete, a two-way radio battery, potatoes.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks. If a truck flats or a river floods, hours, sometimes days sneak by. Time is important. With logging and development (both of which are increasing rapidly) the jungle cover disappears and the caves get easier to access. If looters arrive first, the opportunity for science is lost. So, there's urgency. Fortunately Dr. Awe, a native of San Ignacio, can get things done faster than most.

It helps that everyone knows him. Rushing through town in the pick-up he waves or exchanges Spanish pleasantries with half the city. He grew up playing in the same lush "hills" he'd later help uncover as a major Mayan ruin — Cahal Pech. A former striker on the local semi-pro soccer squad, he remains the only Ph.D. in archaeology from Belize. His work has helped put his hometown on the map, both for science and tourism. One consequence is that if Dr. Awe needs something — a tire, a visa, a cold Coke — it's taken care of.

By the time we get to the lime tree, the obscure landmark where the jeep spur road ends and the Tunachil jungle begins, it's not even noon. "We're doing better than I thought," says Dr. Awe, who just the same begins hiking at his customary breakneck pace. Next I see him he's got his shoes off, poised to swan dive into a trailside, lushly canopied swimming hole. He plunges in, paddles around, then re-boots. "I stop every time," he explains. "The Mayans had their rituals. I have mine."

THE BUSH CAMP ENTRANCE APPEARS in a cleared patch of forest close by the Tunichil cave. Life here is part Outward Bound, part Victorian jungle fantasy. Those who want the genuine experience bed in a row of tarped and mosquito netted hammocks. Others take their pick of 20 or so tents under broad-leaf canopy. Its remoteness notwithstanding, there is a homeyness about the place. Near the stream is a budding garden of cayenne pepper plants and pineapple. The cook tent, called Jose's Cafe, is a thatched roofed hut with provisions and a giant wood stove. A generator provides communal light for a few hours each night.

Of course, in other ways it's not like home at all. There are big vipers on the move at night. Occasionally giant coahune trees simply uproot for no good reason, toppling down with an air-sucking, branch-crashing hummphf. You hear the high hot whine of cicadas in the daytime, the guttural woofing of howler monkey troops at night. Variety is in short supply. You have one permanently damp and rotting pair of caving clothes and another that are slightly less damp for camp. Breakfast, lunch and dinner is some variation of the rice, black beans, and hot-pepper sauce theme. Your beverage is water. From a cave.

Life is in no way easy, but there's a unity that comes with living and working this way. This is clearly the heart and soul of the project and the place where a would-be archaeologist will know whether the calling is theirs. Mentally, you either embrace the jungle or reject it. You can't go halfway. My own reaction is not unlike many of the students. I'm smitten. Partly it's the venue, partly the mission.

Our first stop is Handprint Cave. No other known lowland Maya cave has its variety. There are pottery remains from rituals, but also carvings on the flowstone, and primitive paintings on the steep entrance walls. "I used to just look for pottery at caves," says Dr. Awe. "Now I look for everything." Two student teams are on high ledges above the entrance, burrowing into guano-lined crawl spaces. A half dozen others are excavating a two-meter square ditch and filtering its contents through a large, framed screen. At ground level a tape deck rings out Bob Marley's anthem, "Lively up yourself." Comically, it looks like one of those Richard Scarry "Busytown" illustrations.

"Can we get a volunteer who is really small?" shouts down Cameron Griffith, the project's pony-tailed assistant director. In the 'it's-not-pretty-but-might-just-work' department, Cameron plans to direct a human probe into a bread basket-sized hole. The idea is to rope the person, then in Poo-like fashion, heave ho from behind. This is not an exercise in terror; there are artifacts even up there. Who can resist?

Observing from down below, Dr. Awe smiles appreciatively. The buzz here is exactly what he loves, and why he can see himself spending the additional 10 years he estimates it will take to complete his research. The ultimate objective is to write the definitive book on cave archaeology in Belize. The hope is his and his students' sweat will lead to a more sophisticated understanding of what these "underworld entrances" meant to different strata of Maya society; when they were used most intensively and why; and how closely the cave ceremonies mimicked one another. Ulimately cave archaeology may help answer the biggest riddle of all: Why did the once flourishing Maya civilization, home to some two million people in Belize alone, suddenly and irrevocably collapse?

Unique as Handprint is, the four-kilometer-long Tunichil Muknal (stone sepulchre) is the project jewel. Dr. Awe was the first archaeologist to investigate the river cave, and his preliminary research was featured in the 1993 National Geographic Explorer documentary, "Journey Through the Underworld." Dr. Awe and his student assistants returned in 1995, and for the last three field seasons, they have combed over the site, turning up a series of important finds, including hundreds of pottery vessels, obsidian blades, stone tools, a carved slate tablet and two slate monuments or stelae.

Our Tunichil exploration begins after dinner. The first step is the most daunting. We must plunge off a midstream, flat-topped rock and swim upriver toward the gaping gourd-shaped entrance. There are eight of us tonight. I'm feeling a bit sluggish after a day's worth of exploring, but I snap to the moment I hit the cold water. Just to make sure I kick extra hard. There's something a little desperate feeling about swimming in long pants, hiking boots and a headlamp. "Everybody watch their heads," says Dr. Awe. "If you feel dizzy, like you might black out, tell someone."

It's high 50s inside the cavern, a welcome relief to the thick, 90-something steaminess above ground. Like a good action flick the suspense builds. First we are wiggling through the "breakdown," a tight maze of boulders, then we're sloshing through armpit-high water. We're up on sandbars, then descending into the stream again, careful not to bash knees against coral-sharp, partially submerged rocks. Stringing along single file, our eyes are half on the obstacles and half on the springy Dr. Awe. He detours from the main channel onto a massive flat-topped boulder with good handholds. The boulder bridges to a broad ledge with two upright slate stelae, one of which resembles a stingray spine. "My guess is that there was a blood-letting ceremony here," says Dr. Awe. "They'd prick the finger, the lip, the penis, and drip the blood on paper or to anoint the idols."

As per Dr. Awe's instructions we now have our shoes off. Bones and shattered pottery lie everywhere at our feet. He has recorded all of this, but removed nothing. "I'm not just an archaeologist," he says, "that's not why I come here. I come because it's special. Period. I want others to find it as I did." Over three hours he shows us it all. Having spent the better part of three seasons investigating Muknal, he knows it like the proverbial back of his hand. Most scientists don't get a kick out of showing others what they've already seen, but not Dr. Awe. He doesn't skimp a bit.

In stocking feet, we traverse wispy ledges and great cathedral-like halls where bulbous, Tolkienesque patches of stalactites grow out of ceilings and floors. We scale medium-grade rock pitches to glimpse a sacrificial victim (her bones eerily veneered in glittery calcium carbonate); we tiptoe across pearly flowstone, sculpted with deep, water-hollowed runnels. And lastly, and with Dr. Awe's encouragement, we wriggle into an opening no bigger than a basketball. It requires a new level of dirt-wallowing commitment. The tunnel doglegs after 20 feet. At its most pinched end, illuminated by virtue of its exquisite isolation, is a simple inverted pot. It's queerly powerful to see such a thing. At once I'm struck by amazement for the Mayans' resolve. And, of course, Dr. Awe's.

The tour is over. We can put our shoes on. We retrace our watery steps and swim confusedly from the darkness of the cave to the darkness of the outside. It's nearly 10 o'clock. Amid the glow of the camp's generator lights, Dr. Awe inspects my soggy, mud-smeared, happy-as-a-clam state. "Welcome to the project," he says. "You're now a troglodyte."

WE WALK OUT IN THE MORNING. There's talk of squeezing in a visit to the largely unexplored Tarantula cave, but it doesn't happen. There are only a few days left in the June session. Projects need to be wrapped up, laundry done. Everybody hopes to make it to the cayes, the nearby islands, for some much-deserved r&r. Beyond Tarantula there are hundreds more leads to follow. Each week the project is alerted to some new Mayan cave discovered by a farmer or kid. Not all the tips pan out, of course, but as Dr. Awe says, no research team has the combination of gear, expertise, and enthusiasm to respond as quickly and thoroughly as they can.

Yet as seductive as it is to run off and "recon" every new cave, the project keeps a reasonably firm grip on the task at hand. Dr. Awe says they're right on schedule to complete research on Tunichil, Handprint, Yaxteel, Baking Pot, and Che Chem Ha. Equally important, the field school seems a success. The jungle dangers notwithstanding, everybody goes home in one piece. Many students say they want to return next season. Others aren't so sure, but say a month in Dr. Awe's company has made them see the world much differently than when they came.

"Our archaeological goals are important," he says, "but at least as important to me are that students leave here having a new appreciation for the way others live. Not just ancient Mayans either. I also mean the people of Belize and San Ignacio."

When we say goodbye Dr. Awe asks me for an evaluation. I tell him I'm impressed: by him, the students, the ingenuity of all, and of course by the enduring and palpable presence of the ancient Mayans. Dr. Awe smiles. Come on back next year, he offers. "Once a troglodyte," he says, "always a troglodyte."

Return to UNH Magazine Fall '98 features