Oaxaca City and Santa Maria del Tule, Oaxaca (Day 14 - 11/1/14)

Mitla; the Zapotec 'city of the dead'

I feel so tired. As nice as Oaxaca's Hotel Mision de Los Angeles is, I had a hard time sleeping due to the noise. Part of this is due to some kind of celebration down the road with a big Mexican brass band and more fireworks. Maybe this celebration is something that happens every night in Oaxaca. I don't know. It's not really anyone's fault, it's just part of the local colour, but damn, I wish I'd slept more. I'm less forgiving of the screaming kids who were running around the hotel circa 1 AM, and the loudly gossiping woman who seemed to be right next to my head all night.

Yes, I am officially old. No longer the rager, now the enraged.

Today I am really feeling the frustration of not knowing enough Spanish. I can say a few things that get me by; hola, gracias, cuanto, muy bueno, etc. When I order a continental breakfast, however, it becomes really confusing because I'm not sure what it entails - IE. Will the staff bring it out to me? Or should I use the buffet they had? Is the bill meant to be cash, or is it was added to our hotel tab? And so on. What we had for breakfast doesn't really matter that much, but feeling so isolated amongst all the espanol-speaking staff and fellow patrons doesn't feel like a very positive start to the day.

The Duck and I have been trying to add new Spanish words to our vocabulary every day and today's words are 'bano' (toilet), 'sanitarios' (bathroom) and 'donde' (where). We have another day tour today, this time on a little bus filled with tourists from other parts of Mexico. The guide speaks English but seems put out that we can't understand the local language as it means she has to say everything twice. Sorry lady, we paid knowing that you spoke English! She'll say stuff in Spanish and the others will laugh, and then she gives us a flat two-word explanation (sans joke). It's sans awesome.

Here's what we saw today:

The widest tree in the world (apparently)

El Arbol del Tule

This 2000 year old Montezuma Cypress is the thickest-trunked tree in the world. It's circumference is a whopping 42 metres - 14 metres in diameter - and it stands in a fenced-off garden outside a brightly-painted church in the town of Santa Maria el Tule (which, from what I can gather, translates as 'The St. Maria Swamp'. Great name). 

This tree is yet another perspective moment. It dwarfs everything around it, and it would be a peaceful experience listening to the church bells clanging overhead while we observe it but - goddammit - the people of Oaxaca really love their firecrackers. First you hear the keening wail descending from above in an extremely high pitch like a bomb dropped from a plane, and then the explosion rocks the pit of your stomach, cracking loudly like a shotgun blast in the immediate vicinity. Kids are crying, people are jumping out of their skins everywhere... apparently they like this. It sure isn't the church as I know it. And if that isn't enough punk rock Catholicism for you, a guy playing a tuba comes marching out of the church like he owns the place. Outstanding.

I have a tuba. Tubas are cool now.

Mexican churches are the most beautiful churches I've ever seen

Oaxacan Traditional Weaving

Our first tourist trap of the day is a weaving operation out in the cactus-sticks. We listen to the business owner explain the dying processes used to get all the bright colours used in Oaxacan rugs. The Duck enjoys it but I'm a bit bored by it especially when we then get assigned 20 minutes to look around and buy something.

Mezcal Factory

Mezcal is apparently what most of us really mean when we talk about tequila-with-the-worm-in. Like tequila, mezcal is made from the cactus called agave, but it undergoes a different process before its distillation. I guess it's a bit like the difference between whiskey and bourbon. They both taste a bit wrong to me (mezcal and tequila), though mezcal less so than tequila.

The guide takes us through the creation of mezcal stage-by-stage, and we watch a donkey drag a millstone around a small circle with some encouragement from one of the workers in the distillery. Duck is a bit sad watching the beast of burden but she brightens up a bit when she witnesses it eating from the agave it crushes. She wonders if all these people know that the burro has had its slobbery face in their mezcal before they drink it?

We try about 8 varieties of mezcal. This array of local alcohol excites the Mexican tourists a lot, but for me it's 8 varieties too many.

This is where mezcal comes from.

 

This was the most exciting part of the day for all of the other tourists on the bus.

Mitla

It's hard coming to these ruins after seeing Teotihuacan in all it's godlike glory, but they're still fairly impressive nonetheless. Mitla is known as 'the land of the dead' but our guide doesn't really explain it to us very much so I'm unsure why. It was built by the Zapotec civilisation around 900 AD and its most fun feature is an underground crypt that we have to virtually crawl into. Getting to the ruins is a story in itself. 

All day the driver of our van has been hooning about, and when he gets to the village of San Pablo Villa de Mitla, with all its tiny paved laneways, he seems to show little regard for pedestrians, dogs, or oncoming traffic. His journey slows right down, though, when we suddenly get stuck behind a church procession with a full brass band and, you guessed it, more crazy firecrackers. It's a little bit funny as the van creeps slowly behind the hundreds of people marching up the street to the church.

Need a knife? Just grab some from the markets.

Maya crafts at the markets

A lot of Mexican toilets require payment for entry. This helps ensure that the toilet is clean, case in point - see the picture above. Mexican public toilets are on the whole far cleaner than Australian public toilets.

San Pablo Villa de Mitla

 

The church is a rather beautiful-looking piece of architecture and, much like the Basilica in Mexico City, it has been built directly on top of pre-Hispanic ruins. The ruins are very much visible around the base of this large church, the story being that the Spanish decided to do this so they could keep the 'devil' trapped within the Zapotec tombs (they saw the indigenous civilisations as Satanic... or so they say. It's also helpful to build your church on top of indigenous ruins if you're wanting to subjugate several million natives).

Mitla is unique amongst Mexican ruins for its intricate fresco work.

The Zapotec civilisation flourished between 700 and 1500 AD. It's estimated that approximately 1 million of Mexican's indigenous people are Zapotec.

 

Hierve al Agua

You'll recall that I mentioned Mexican road rules (or lack thereof) when we first got to Mexico City. Well, imagine this cavalier attitude on a narrow clifftop road in a bus averaging 60-70 kms an hour. I was overjoyed. The bus dodges donkeys loaded up with sticks, rogue bulls, local farms that have been built out onto the road, and more oncoming traffic that didn't have the sense to stay at home rather than risk the road-hog that is our bus driver. I'm not really overjoyed at all, I actually find it a particularly hairy ride. After about an hour of this I'm practically wedged under my own seat and, thankfully, we finally reach Hierve al Agua - the petrified waterfalls.

These are clifftop springs that contain so much calcium that the water and resulting pools are a milky white, and there are also rock formations that bubbles over the cliff edge like cascades frozen in time. It's a similar phenomenon to the limestone formations found in caves. It's a strange sight but I find it a bit nerve-wracking watching all kinds of people teetering on the edge while ankle-deep in water. Call it culture shock but there seems to be no commonsense in this country. I'm all for freedom and if you're only going to jeopardise your own personal safety then I guess that's your choice - but c'mon, there has to be a happy medium. I laugh at the sign in the carpark, "20 pesos to maintain your protection". What protection? I see a whole family literally climbing a cliff wall so they can take some photos and no one gives a shit. While trying not to freak out too much at the Duck's own willingness to get pretty close to the edge, I see two Black Vultures gracefully swinging across the valley in lazy arcs. That's gotta be a sign, right? I think the vultures know something the Mexican tourists don't.

Hierve al Agua is an interesting ecological feature but the day really takes it out of me, and the hair-raising drive back down the mountain has me ready to crawl back into my hotel room.

See that edge where the pool is? That's a cliff.

 

History and Archaeology at Pompeii and Herculaneum

Dr Joanne Berry's book on Pompeii

The discovery of historical artefacts isn't something that happens in a vacuum. That's the main thing I took away from a fantastic set of lectures on Pompeii and Herculaneum by Doctor Joanne Berry and Professor Nigel Pollard, who visited Australia from Swansea University in the UK thanks to the HTA. Said lectures were held at Glenmore Park High School, which was very nice for those of us based in Western Sydney and/or the Blue Mountains.

I can't say that I'm very knowledgeable about Pompeii as I'm more of a Modern History enthusiast than an Ancient History one, but from an Extension History standpoint both Berry and Pollard provided more than enough grist for the historiographical mill for anyone with even a passing interest in the past. Dr Berry, an archaeologist who has been working at Pompeii and Herculaneum for over 25 years, stressed the importance of context in relation to archaeological material, whilst Professor Pollard honed in on the status of Pompeii during WWII as a fascinating case study that would be very useful for Extension History. I'll write on Professor Pollard's talk in a future post as today I want to concentrate on what Berry spoke about.

In exploration of context, Berry described the initial conditions in which Pompeii emerged as an archaeological site in the mid-18th Century. King Charles VII, the Spanish monarch who controlled Naples at this time, was consolidating a new kingdom alongside already established royalty in neighbouring states. For a rube like me,  who has never taught the mandatory Pompeii study, it was fascinating to hear about the context of Charles VII, the Spanish monarch who controlled Naples in mid-18th century - a new kingdom desperate to gain acceptance from surrounding royal families. Charles VII brought in poets, composers, artists, etc. in an effort to turn Naples into a cultural centre in Europe. He bought up the area where the Pompeii excavations took place, and the above portrait shows the artefacts around him - signifying the importance of these antiquities as conferring status onto the monarch.

Two years later, Horace Walpole arrived and recorded the discoveries made at Herculaneum. This was the birth of archaeology - seeing the arrival of military engineers, soldiers, and forced labour overseen by a military engineer. Walpole criticised the overseer for excavating artefacts at the expense of the ancient Roman city that was being uncovered, raising issues regarding the need to preserve the past. The things found at Herculaneum were selected, recorded and preserved only on the basis of what the engineers thought the King would be interested in - everything else was discarded, or destroyed. It was more like mining than discovery. It was only through recognition from foreigners like Walpole that people began to realise that an opportunity for learning was being lost.

This Peter Fabris painting from the time shows the excavation of the Temple of Isis - here the excavators were starting to become aware of impressing their financiers/benefactors, so that when they realised they had found something significant they would stop and then wait until a prestigious visitor arrived and then 'stage' the excavation. This led to important visitors (such as Maria Carolina) coming along and 'instructing' the excavators on what to do, believing that they themselves were directing the excavation. The benefit for the real excavators was that these important visitors would then also give money to them. Thus, the birth of archaeology as a practice supported by patronage.

The visiting of the Pope made it necessary to remove stepping stones in the Pompeii streets so that his cart could travel through, and often these stones were not put back. Our record of this now (and its delivery in Joanne Berry's lecture) shows the way history interacts with itself to create its own narrative - the early modern age interacting with the ancient world, as reflected through our contemporary perspective. In other words, the ancient streets of Pompeii were disturbed and restructured by the arrival of visitors such as the Pope in the 18th/19th Century, and now - in the modern day - we must contend with these restructurings of the site if we are to reach a better understanding of what it really looked like.

The Unification of Italy in 1860 politically required examples of Italy's past greatness as justification for nationalism, so Pompeii became emblematic of the new Italy, and this drew increased funding. Suddenly, anyone could visit the excavation (not just the rich and powerful), and an archaeological school was set up to train future excavators so that more glory could be uncovered. Fast forward to the 1930s-1940s, and the Italian fascists also poured incredible funds into Pompeii (in particular the excavations overseen by Amedeo Maiuri) with the expectation that he will find important things and will publish them under the aegis of the fascists. 

Berry says that what we know about Pompeii/Herculaneum depends on when it was excavated and who was doing the excavating, and that these things are affected by political context. There's also the influence of romanticism and the desire to impress, things that have affected the archaeological approach to Pompeii in all periods. Berry describes this a 'circular' process, the coming and goings of various regimes keen to use Pompeii for their own political and cultural advantage.