Magpies, Hand axe, and Highway

In China the colourful and beautiful sounds of the Eurasian Magpies (Figure 1) historically have been described in many poems and throughout literature, as being an auspicious bird that brings you happiness and fortune if you find them flying in front of your window chattering.  Many of the houses in the Luonan County, both old and new, are decorated with small sculptures of magpies that often embellish scores of roof ridges (Figure 2).  Luonan County is located southeast of Shaanxi and is a remote mountainous town where our ROM-China Luonan project has been active since 1997. 

Figure 1. Eurasian Magpie in flight commonly seen in North China.

Figure 2: A house with magpie decoration in Luonan, where our Luonan project took place.

Two days ago, during a survey trip in the field, we encountered a group of magpies flying around and resting on trees under which we were carefully searching for Pleistocene hominid stone tools. Strangely enough, they had no interest in leaving and were chattering loudly.  I stopped to take out my camera and captured a few amazing photos (Figures 3-4).  When the magpies finally flew away, my colleague, Dr. Shejiang Wang, the Director of the Luonan project, muttered: “You know, for the last while every time we hear magpies chattering, our team discovers the best artefacts during our excavations”. I laughed, thinking that I know what the omens of the chattering magpies meant, but didn’t believe we would find anything during this magpie encounter. 

Figure 3: One of  the magpies we encountered during our survey that was under the tree where we were searching for Acheulian Tradition tools.

Figure 4: A magpie flying away after chattering, and bringing a fortunate message to us.

But, sure enough around ten minutes later, and about 50 meters away, we located a stunning piece! It was exactly what we were hoping to find.  The artefact was embedded within a layer of palaeosol sediments, which probably dates to as early as 400,000 years (Figures 5).  The piece uncovered is a hand axe, a well-made bifacial symmetric tool (Figure 6). Over the last decade, our team has uncovered more than 200 hand axes from open-air sites in the Luonan Basin. It is clear to us that this area was occupied by hunter-gatherers who produced similar tools such as hand axes and cleavers, which was commonly known as Acheulian tradition in the western side of the Old World. This stone tool technology first appeared during the Stone Age period in Europe and Africa where it roughly dates to around 1.7 million and 0.2 million years ago.  The discovery of hand axes in the Luonan Basin is significant because it raises questions around how East Asian hominids were able to adapt to this mountainous environment differently from, or similar to, their European and African counterparts. For example, our hand axe does not seem to have as much of a sophisticated manufacturing process as the European and African stone tools assemblages.  But both Dr. Wang and I have observed, through a decade of field investigations in the region, that these tools were “good enough” to perform the necessary functions.  A breakthrough came around two years ago, when we discovered hand axes in association with other typical Acheulian traditional tool types such as cleavers and picks from excavated sites. The reason we made such significant discoveries is because the team was able to excavate an area of more than 800 square meters (compared to previously where the team was only able to excavate 4 to 10 square meters each year). The salvaging archaeology project was done during construction of a new highway that reached all the way up to our field home-base (Figures 7 - 8). 

Figure 5: Found it! A hand axe 50 meters away from the tree where magpies rested.

Figure 6: Dr. Chen Shen picking up the hand axe from a site that runs through the newly built highway.

The new G40 highway – the Shanghai-Xi’an Expressway, which is 1,490 km (930 mi) in length - connects the cities between Xi’an and Shanghai, and was completed last July. In 1997 it usually would take us around 6 to 8 hours to travel to our sites, which are hidden inside hills of the Qinling Mountains at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level.  The Qinling Mountains extend to about 1,500 kilometres across central China from the Gansu-Qinghai border in the west to central Henan in the east.  Now for the first time, I am able to travel from the airport in Xi’an (where the terracotta warriors are located) to our excavation sites in about 1 ½ hours.  

Figure 7: This highway runs through the archaeological site, which would allow us to travel 1½ hours from Xian International Airport to the Luonan archaeological field base that is hidden in the mountainous area. Before the new highway travel time used to take up to 6-8 hours. 

Figure 8: Dr. Wang, the Director of the Luonan project, examining a tool exposed from a highway construction profile. A bit further down, a previous excavation pit can be seen.

also see Royal Ontario Museum website: http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/magpies-hand-axe-and-highway-dr-chen-shen-and-the-rom-china-luonan-project
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ROM’s archaeologists at the Maya ruins of Ka’Kabish and Lamanai in Belize

On June 9, 2012, I arrived in Belize City, the largest city in the Central American nation of Belize. I was met at the Belize City airport by my colleague and friend Dr. Helen Haines, an archaeologist from Trent University, and a ROM Research Associate. Dr. Haines began her research in Northern Belize around 23 years ago. We drove three hours to Indian Church village, a small remote village in the Orange Walk District of Belize, which is located on the west bank of New River, neighbouring the town of San Carlos to its south, and the famous Maya ruins of Lamanai to its north.
My friends and colleagues back in Toronto asked me why a Chinese archaeologist was going to Belize to work on an ancient Mayan site. Was I traveling all the way to Central America to find a connection between the ancient Chinese and Maya of the first millennium BC? Well, I wish I could say that was what I was doing! In fact, I was invited to participate on the Ka’Kabish Archaeological Research Project in northern Belize by Dr. Helen Haines, as a lithic analysis specialist. After so many years of working in over-populated “small” towns in China, Helen was able to show me what it was like to work in a small village in Belize with a population of around 200 people (about 70 households).

Ka’Kabish is a moderate-sized Maya city located 10 kilometres to the east of the more famous site of Lamanai; both were first discovered by a former curator Dr. David Pendergast in the 1970s. At the time Dr. Pendergast was working on a ROM funded expedition at Lamanai. He took a trip to Ka’Kabish, which at that time took over 2 hours on a narrow, muddy logging road, today it takes only 20 minutes from Lamanai to Ka’Kabish.  Ka’Kabish came to Dr. Pendergast’s attention due to reports of looting at the site and, when he visited the area, evidence of plundering could be found in the form of massive trenches throughout many of the buildings.  Dr. Pendergast recognised the value of the work at Ka’Kabish, however, he also realised that further archaeological investigations would have to be left for the future — access to the site made such work impossible at that time. Dr. Pendergast’s vision was realised in 2009 when SSHRC (Social Science and Humanity Research of Canada) supported Dr. Helen Haines’ Ka’Kabish project.

Ka’kabish was initially believed to be a small subsidiary centre supporting the larger city of Lamanai. It was hypothesized that Ka’Kabish was settled in the later part of the Late Formative period (ca. AD 100-300), and reached it apogee during the Late Classic period (AD 600-900). It was surmised that the site served as a secondary centre administering to the outlying, periphery population of the Lamanai polity. However, recent work at Ka’Kabish by Dr. Haines’ team has documented the existence of multiple elite tombs, a ball court with marker stone, over a thousand pieces of ritually deposited obsidian, and other evidence of a thriving and prosperous ritual elite occupation during the Early Classic period. Ka’Kabish also has a ritually preserved corbel-vaulted structure, now partially looted, that is the only one of its kind in the northern Belize. Over a few days, I have classified more than 2,000 stone tool artifacts recovered from six-weeks of excavation this year.
Dr. Haines has told me that: “our recent work, in fact, has shown that what we thought about the Ka’kabish as being a secondary center to Lamanai is incorrect. In fact, over the first 1,000 years Ka’Kabish and Lamanai had similar developmental paths, with Ka’Kabish currently showing evidence of having greater ritual activity than Lamanai.” Dr. Haines revealed that ceramics at Ka’Kabish suggest that the inception of the site was 200 years earlier than that of Lamanai.

The highlight of my visit to the sites of Ka’Kabish and Lanamai was meeting Professor Elizabeth (Liz) Graham who, like her husband David Pendergast, is a legendary figure in Belizean archaeological circles. Before his retirement, Dave was the ROM`s Deputy Director of Collections and Research, he served as the chair of a search committee, who interviewed and offered me the post of Curator back in the middle of the 1990s. When I first met Liz she was still a professor at York University. I also knew that both Liz and Dave were responsible for the exciting work at the Lamanai site, and had been excavating the sites and training generations of students for more then three decades. It was amazing to finally be with Liz Graham at their sites in Belize. Some of the Lamanai excavated materials are now part of the ROM’s collection, and some of them were showcased in the ROM’s recent blockbuster exhibition Maya: the Secret of Ancient World. Their contributions to the discovery and study of Lamanai, one of largest Maya complexes in Belize, and one of the longest lasting ancient settlements in the Maya world, has ensured that the ROM has left a permanent and enduring mark on Belize and Belizean archaeology. This was clearly demonstrated when Dr. Haines proudly introduced me to her Belize co-workers and friends as the Vice President and archaeologist from the Royal Ontario Museum. It was immediately apparent that everyone here in this remote location, young and old, had heard of the Royal Ontario Museum. Many people at Lamanai still fondly remember working with Dave and Liz, and Helen tells me that they constantly ask when David and Liz and the ROM will be back, even if only to visit.
Today, the Ka’Kabish project continues the ROM legacy of Maya archaeology in Belize, and I am so glad that I took some time off to visit the “ROM sites” 3,000 kilometers away from Toronto, to be inspired by the ROM’s renowned past research. At the Museum of Belize, a staff asked me to pose for a photo to be posted on their website blog because of my connection with the ROM.

During one of my many conversations with Liz, she raised her concerns about the ROM’s legacy at Lamanai and the collection material associated with this excavation site. She stressed feelings of adisconnect back at the ROM. Today the collection is languishing with much needed financial assistance and human resources. I shared her concerns, and I feel that greater attention is needed to make this invaluable ROM collection relevant and accessible to students and the public (both foreign and the local inhabitants of Belize whose ancestral culture pieces these belong to). I believe it is extremely important to ensure that these archaeological materials are well-preserved for the future generation of archaeologists and Maya scholars. When I ended my tour and flew back to Toronto, I felt that I have some very important items to attend to on my agenda.

To read more about Ka’Kabish you can look at their web page at www.kakabish.org and follow their blogs from the field.

for the same post with pictures at Royal Ontario Museum website http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/rom%E2%80%99s-archaeologists-maya-ruins-ka%E2%80%99kabish-and-lamanai-belize
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