Me posing...


Despite the fact that we, a team of Dutch, British and Cuban archaeologists, drive for an hour up a dirt track to a site bordering a village without electricity or water to sieve the earth of their goat pasture, the local people we work with and who regularly hang out onsite (including members of the Marina de Gurerra and the “secret police”) seem singularly unconcerned or unbemused by our activities. I think they think we are bonkers. We tell them the holes we are exposing in the bedrock are the old foundations of pre-Columbian houses and are very interesting. I think we think they are bonkers. They live in El Cabo and think that the rocks we find fall from the sky during thunder storms. It’s nice working with some of them for the 2nd year in a row, they are used to what we do and can excavate and pick artifacts out of the sieves better than we can! Manolo now eats peanut butter (very Dutch), after scorning it as animal shit last year and Belto made a posthole in the bedrock the other day in a bit of inadvertent experimental archaeology which was very useful for me to observe!

The drive to the site is as stunning as ever – sub-tropical forest with lush vegetation and silly ground pigeons (which are like mini wood pigeons and which don’t know how to fly out of the path of a car), the smooth-billed ani which looks like a dinosaur and best of all, the black vultures which circle round the tops of the cliffs early in the morning and late in the afternoon (waiting till the goats jump off the edge or die?) make this almost my favourite part of the day.

We are progressing fast onsite. We will begin to draw the first trench tomorrow. There are about 140 postholes in it. Can’t wait to see (?) how they all fit together….