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An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Bianca
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An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
«
on:
June 23, 2008, 04:14:14 pm »
"Research and Education for Conservation."
http://www.kiuic.org/news/01.html
An e-mail interview with George Bey
By Dan Vergano,
USA TODAY
June 23, 2008
George Bey, archaeologist at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., writes Dan Vergano about the complex story of the Maya collapse, how the movie Apocalypto missed essential historical points, and the surprising work that is archaeology:
1. Archaeologists have known for years that there were substantial settlements in the northern lowlands during the Classic period (e.g., Chichen Itza). What do you see as the most compelling evidence from your work that there was substantial or complex Maya society in the northern lowlands in the pre-classic era?
The most compelling evidence from my work and the recent work of my colleagues is that we are finding Middle Preclassic sites throughout the entire northern Maya lowlands, including the Puuc region.
It is both the number of sites we are finding as well as that some of them produced large-scale monumental architecture (pyramids and acropolis), while others have ball courts.
In the case of Kiuic, what is important is that the Middle Preclassic occupation serves as the basis upon which the Classic period site developed.
So, not only do we have many Middle Preclassic sites of various sizes and complexity, but we also know now that Classic Maya civilization in the north evolves directly from this Middle Preclassic complexity.
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Last Edit: June 23, 2008, 04:35:15 pm by Bianca
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Bianca
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Re: An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Reply #1
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June 23, 2008, 04:16:43 pm »
2. The public mostly knows of the Maya from the 'Classic' collapse in the southern lowlands. How do you think your work changes the general picture of their society? Was the southern collapse less of a catastrophe than the Apocalypto portrait of things, and more of a local event?
The public needs to understand that the so-called Maya collapse was not an overnight affair that resulted in the total disappearance of the Maya people. The collapse took place over a period of more than 200 years. Although the collapse was eventually widespread with cities from present-day Honduras through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico all being abandoned, the causes were clearly different from region to region and took place at different times in each region. In some cases warfare or and changing economic conditions played a role, in others it was overpopulation and exploitation of the environment, in others it may have been drought, The result was the breakdown of elite culture and the abandonment of their cities, however, millions of Maya continued to live in Mesoamerica, especially in the northern Maya lowland, as they do so today. Perhaps the important question we need to ask about the collapse was not the variables that caused it, but why the Maya were unable to answer the challenges they were faced with. What made them unable to solve the problems they faced as a culture so that the great cities were abandoned and much of the high culture they had created was lost? Or, maybe that was the way the Maya solved the problem, by this I mean, maybe the Maya people did survive by abandoning these massive cities and their elite culture which must have been a major drain on the resources of the overall Maya culture.
My work in the Puuc region is changing our understanding of the rise and fall of civilization in this part of the Maya world. The rise of the great cities of the Puuc were thought to be a result of migration from the south as it collapsed. Our work indicates that instead the Puuc region was occupied for almost 2000 years before the collapse in the south and that to understand the rise of the Maya in this region you must look at the Preclassic and Early classic centers of the Puuc not the southern collapse. As we re-write the history of the rise of Maya civilization in the north, it also means we will have to re-write the history of its collapse. Our understanding of the northern collapse, which postdates that of the south, is still poorly understood from an archaeological perspective. One of the projects we are doing, directed by a graduate student from Tulane University, named Rebecca Hill, is to examine what we believe is a "post-monumental complex of structures at Kiuic's neighboring site — Huntichmul. By looking at the simple constructions that were the last to be built by the Maya in the Puuc, we hope to learn about the processes that led to the abandonment of this region.
Today there are very few Maya living in the Puuc, whereas in the Late Classic there were hundreds of thousands of Maya densely inhabiting the region. Why they left and never returned is an question my project is trying to address. We find houses where the mutates used for grinding corn were turned on their sides. The Maya today do that to keep the metate clean if they are going away from the homes for a while but intend to return. They don't want their metate, the tool they use to make ground maize filling up with water and dirt while they are away. Since the houses we are finding, dating to AD 1000, have their mutates turned on their side, it appears that at least some of the Maya left thinking they were going to return, but they never did.
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Bianca
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Re: An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Reply #2
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June 23, 2008, 04:21:10 pm »
3. How surprised were you to see evidence of pre-Classic Maya (900 B.C. for Middle pre-Classic) at Kiuic?
Hah! I was very surprised. One of the reasons I came to work at Kiuic was because we thought it only had a single late occupation, and so we would not have to worry about the mixing of materials from different time periods. When we began digging in the main plaza of the Yaxche Palace we anticipated there would be only one or at most two construction phases. However, as we kept digging we found more and more plaster floors indicating earlier and earlier time periods. By the end of our first summer at Kiuic we realized the site wasn't founded in A.D. 700 but over 1000 years earlier. We were equally surprised when our continued excavations produced a new ceramic complex that had not yet been defined for the northern Maya lowlands. It is this time period that is dated to 900-800 B.C. Think about it. Kiuic was in all likelihood continually occupied for almost 2000 years until its abandonment sometime in the 10th century A.D.
4. Can you say anything about what you are finding this summer at the Kiuic hilltop ceremonial complex and elite residences? What were these structures exactly?
We are being surprised again this summer with our work at the hilltop group Tomas named Stairway to Heaven (he's a big Led Zepplin fan)! On top of the hills surrounding the city are these complexes of ceremonial and elite residential architecture. We are assuming these complexes were occupied by elites who owned and maintained large tracts of farmland surrounds the bases of the hills. The sites were on great real estate. Great views, a nice breeze. But imagine the difficulty in building such civic-ceremonial and residences on top of a small mountain! So, we thought these hilltops would only be occupied when population pressure reached a level where farmland was so valuable it made sense to build on top of these hills. In other words, we didn't expect to find occupation before the Late Classic. So, imagine our surprise to find out three weeks ago from Chris Gunn, our project ceramicist, that these hilltops were already being used during the Middle Preclassic as well. Long before there could have been any real population pressure or competition for land. We have not found any Middle Preclassic structures yet, but the evidence indicates the hilltop were utilized for a far are longer period of time than we imagined.
We have also found that during the Late Classic the quality of life on these hilltop centers equaled that of the main court at Kiuic. The buildings are of very high quality, with finely cut stone covered in stucco. One has produced a series of carved heads that graced the walls of the structure In addition we have already found lovely types of pottery including a beautiful piece of an imported ceramic vessel that came from Veracruz as well as obsidian from Guatemala. Also, and this is interesting, we are finding a large number (relatively speaking) of spear points in the main plaza of the civic-ceremonial complex. What this means remains to be seen.
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Bianca
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Re: An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Reply #3
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June 23, 2008, 04:22:52 pm »
5. Can we ask you to say anything about the nature of your work? Some folks still have the Indiana Jones view of archaeologists excavating sites — what does your team really do?
Indiana Jones is a myth about archaeology and archaeologists. And like most great myths, it does at some level reflect a truth about what we do and our identity. Maya archaeology has a great history of adventure and most Maya archaeologists can tell you at least one hair raising tale that might find its way into an Indiana Jones film. And I don't think we would be living and working in the jungle if we didn't at some level enjoy the whole idea of exploration and adventure. Yesterday morning as I was leaving Stairway to Heaven, I put my hand on a tree only to find it occupied by a very long tree living snake looking me in the eye. Its skin perfectly mimicked the color and texture of tree it occupied. However, although the moment was Indiana Jones-esque, my reaction was not to yell or curse the beast and kill it, but pull out my dvd recorder and record the snake's movement from tree to tree. I am a scientist and the moment was thrilling both because snakes are a little bit scary, but also because it was very cool to see this type of snake close up and have a chance to record what I was seeing.
I think this is one of the main things that distinguish the myth from the reality, the thrill is based on a combination of discovery and exploration from a scientific perspective. The moment of discovery, whether of an ancient tomb, or building or cache of pottery is one of the things that drive us to do what we do. It is a rush, no doubt about it. But the rush comes from unearthing a piece of the past that will aid us in understanding the questions of the past, not about cosmic powers or aliens, but about things like, how did the economic system operate, or what evidence is there for changing patterns of elite political organization. So, unlike Indy, we don't grab things and run, we spend weeks and months and years, carefully unearthing things, most of which are very mundane. My team is out in the field excavating houses, and garbage dumps and plaza floors, systematically recording the data with cameras, and drawings. Carefully bagging and tagging each set of artifacts from a particular context. Others are collecting soil samples to try and extract information on plant and animal remains that might tell what an object was used for or what the Maya diet consisted of. These field archaeologists then send the work back to our field lab for analysis, so we can find out the dates for our buildings, or plazas and what they might have been used for. From there select material is sent to professional laboratories for chemical analysis or C14 dating. The end result are papers and presentations and books that interpret all the data in an effort to answer both the small and large questions that drive our discipline. It is from this data that our project is rewriting the history of Maya civilization in the Puuc region.
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Bianca
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Re: An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Reply #4
on:
June 23, 2008, 04:24:23 pm »
http://www.kiuic.org/news/01.html
6. Any other points you think worth making about your work? We have heard a few other Maya experts call this very intriguing, what sort of evidence would you like to see to be even more confident of your findings of early complexity in the northern lowlands?
There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to understand the rise of social complexity in the northern Lowlands. We only have a small amount of evidence at Kiuic for the earliest occupation in the early Middle Preclassic. We need to find more stuff from that time period. We need more carbon 14 dates from secure contexts and we still need to find if there are any buildings from this earliest time period. We also need to find burials from this time period in order to get a better understanding of the evolution of elite culture during the Preclassic period. No major burials from the Middle Preclassic have yet to be found either in the Puuc or the northern Maya lowlands. Also, evidence of iconography or art that might help us better understand the ideology of these early Maya is something we need to recover.
Finally, I believe there is even an earlier occupation than what we have defined thus far. I think eventually we will recover material from the Early Preclassic dating to 10,00 B.C. or earlier. I may be optimistic, but I think now that we are looking for it, it is only a matter of time.
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Re: An E-Mail Interview With George Bey
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Reply #5
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June 23, 2008, 04:29:21 pm »
http://www.kiuic.org/news/01.html
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