Uncovering, Rebuilding and Maintaining

Any of you who have driven by my house in the last few weeks may notice that the yard’s getting kind of shaggy, the flowers haven’t been deadheaded, and any branches downed by a summer thunderstorm are still scattered around. Take that image, then imagine what would happen if I left the place unoccupied for 1000 years—and if I lived in a jungle where the things that grow “like weeds” literally can grow a foot or more in just a few days.

 

Sometimes, when I pictured the Spanish explorers, or the 20^th century archaeologists who followed in their footsteps, coming upon a magnificent Mayan city in the wilderness, I kind of thought it would be like coming upon a resort up north that has been closed up for the winter. Clearly, no one lives there, but you can easily imagine what it might be like on a hot summer day.



Is there something here?

But, I’m quickly realizing that finding these cities must have been much more like recognizing a Native American ceremonial mound when you are plowing your cornfield—unless someone had told you it was there, you could drive right over it a thousand times without noticing.



At Uxmal, for example, we saw the side of this building :

  . . . looking like this:

The Maya moved out of these cities sometime around 800 A.D. Over hundreds of years, as the buildings were covered with soil and the seedlings grew into trees, the roots and the rain damaged the buildings, washing away some of the calcium in the limestone and separating the decorative facades from their more work-a-day underpinnings.

So what happens when the archaeologists figure out that they’ve found something? Well, they have to start to piece it all back together. 

Restoring the buildings is a painstaking process, which is often slowed by uncertainty about what exactly they are rebuilding. The Maya themselves often remodeled and rebuilt, so many of the pyramids and other buildings we see actually contain remnants of others inside, or were originally constructed with mismatched materials and architectural styles.

Even when the archaeologists can agree, they are disrupted by inconsistent funding from the government for these projects. Here at Kabah, you can see that they took the rubble and tried to organize it, but they have not yet reattached these pieces to the building.

As they set about restoring these sites, they clean up the original stones and carefully mark their position, often taking the walls down and rebuilding them with new mortar.

In many places, the structures are still open for tourists and others to climb on, but some sections have not yet been reinforced. Earlier this week, workers at Uxmal were chopping away old plaster, getting ready to put on a new coat to protect the stones.

Where original carvings and statues have been left in place (not carted off to museums) they are often shielded from the elements by roofs—which also make nice patches of shade for grateful visitors.

Visitors also appreciate that the native tall grasses have been replanted with grasses more suitable for short lawns, and less suitable for snakes, although even this tourist-friendly turf needs to be mowed--in this case, usually with machetes! --Kris