By Andrew Califf
The sky is blotted out by ominous grey clouds as the removal of the human remains belonging to Individual #4 began. The outer edges of Hurricane Elsa make it a nice, comfortably cool day, but also threatens to unleash a deluge upon the operation.
Gear is laid out at Locus 3, El Rayo’s cemetery. We remove the muddy tarp covering the pedestalled individual, exposing the well preserved profile of the open jaw and skull, buried inside the shoe urn pot.
“I went back and forth between being like, super excited that we were finding a body and then I’d be like, oh, this is a human,” Carley Divish, an underwater archeology student excavating the individual, reflects. “I can’t be just excited and ready to go, I have to actually consider how this affects this person and these cultures that I’m digging up as an outsider.”
The south-facing cranium and mandible are removed exposing extremely well preserved and articulated leg bones. The individual is buried face-down, sloping down hill. The foot is near the skull and the associated fragmentary bowl on the upward slope.
Removing the cranium and mandible is the first major step in unraveling and understanding this truly complex burial.
Skull of Individual #4 before removal and exposure of long bones underneath.
Exposed long bones of Individual #4. The trowel approximately indicates North. The team originally thought this individual was upside down, pointing South. Ceremonial burials oriented in this manner may symbolize evil or cursed individuals, as it often does throughout western culture. Nicaraguan archeologist Ruth Martinez said it would likely have the same meaning in this case.
Pit extension after extension needs to be opened to define the boundaries of the burial, since the seemingly fully articulated legs of the individual continue into the side walls of the current pit. It becomes a race to bring the new extensions to the level of the original pit and to excavate and remove the legs before additional exposure and contamination occur.
“I love the mystery behind it,” exclaims Stephanie Fryer, another member of the team excavating the body. “The information [from the burial] is important for both the culture and for our own understanding of human beings, and I think that takes precedence over our own personal feelings on human bodies because also something to think about is that our perception of human burials and such has changed over time.”
We draw the profile of a new skull in the remaining corner as we excavate the other extensions down to the same level. In the lab, Geoff McCafferty’s daughter studies the lower mandible, which leads to the unconfirmed conclusion that the initial skull belongs to an aged individual (older than 23-25).
We are better able to determine the number of individuals buried in this area as the new extensions yield urns with multiple human bone fragments. One urn contains a femur and patella (kneecap) at the bottom. We discover a rock-shattered urn with teeth, cranium fragments, and part of a shoulder associated with it. These remains bring the maximum number of individuals up to five.
We continue excavating our extensions and in the most recently opened corner of one, we expose a massive lithic blade, likely for a tomahawk, near the left leg bones of an individual, approximately where a hand would have been. The lithic blade was pointing straight up with its tapered end.
“It really felt like a movie,” Divish exclaims. “It definitely solidified archaeology as the place I want to be, just because it’s so exciting in every way.”
We expose the pelvis the same day we find the lithic blade, and then after a full day of fieldwork, we remove the long bones of the legs. This is the last day of field work for the students. After the weekend, Geoff McCafferty and the staff members who have been directing students will spend one more day in the field, the last day to remove the pelvis and to define the rest of the burial.
At the lab, Jennifer Engler, a biologist about to begin her pre-med education, initially analyzed them before cleaning and it does not appear that the patella is fused. This suggests the remains belonged to a younger individual in their early teens. The bones will be further analyzed after they are fully organized to prove this.
Geoffrey McCafferty and staff members rapidly complete excavations on the last day. The team discovers that the articulated remains of the young individual extend beyond the pedestalled pelvis, but they had to conclude the excavations before investigating the largest and potentially most significant individual buried here.
Legs and skull, the outline of which is located in the wall profile. The new extension is located in the upper-right corner of the image. A new extension will also be opened above the left leg.
The large chert point associated with Individual #4 as it emerges in situ. The red chert blade is pointing directly upright (lower-right corner of image) and presumably belongs to a tomahawk laid alongside the individual.
We expose the pelvis the same day we find the lithic blade, and then after a full day of fieldwork, we remove the long bones of the legs. This is the last day of field work for the students. After the weekend, Geoff McCafferty and the staff members who have been directing students will spend one more day in the field, the last day to remove the pelvis and to define the rest of the burial.
At the lab, Jennifer Engler, a biologist about to begin her pre-med education, initially analyzed them before cleaning and it does not appear that the patella is fused. This suggests the remains belonged to a younger individual in their early teens. The bones will be further analyzed after they are fully organized to prove this.
Geoffrey McCafferty and staff members rapidly complete excavations on the last day. The team discovers that the articulated remains of the young individual extend beyond the pedestalled pelvis, but they had to conclude the excavations before investigating the largest and potentially most significant individual buried here.
McCafferty profiles a massive individual with a feet-to-pelvis length of 96 cm. This large individual is perpendicular to the lower half of the young individual, and both are lying on a bed of broken pottery sherds.
We label the large individual as Individual #9. Despite the novelty of this elaborate burial, the pit has to be closed the very same day due to the expiration of our permit and a lack of time.
A first find like this could redefine pre-Columbian Nicaraguan archaeology, and warrants money for further investigations. According to McCafferty and Ruth Martinez, a Nicaraguan archeologist working with the team, a grant proposal to an organization like National Geographic may be in the future for the cemetery in El Rayo.
“I did not expect to find anything this interesting and it was really exciting to be a part of that,” Fryer mulls over the impact of her excavations. “It really excites me and makes me really want to know more about that area and what that could be and go back.”
McCafferty will bring the teeth of the aged individual to a Harvard geneticist who will analyze them. If the samples are sufficient for lab work, the geneticist will analyze the rest of the bones collected from this burial at El Rayo at no cost. Such work is crucial for understanding this burial and would normally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hector Salablanca displays the chert blade after removing it beside Individual #4. Salablanca’s family owns El Rayo and he has been helping excavate the site since McCafferty’s first excavations. Until joining the burial excavation, Salablanca had been excavating a suspected lithic workshop in Locus 9.
“The discovery of ancient artifacts connects one to the universal human experience, that being the core emotions present throughout human history,” Lachlan Kyle-Robinson writes contemplating his excavations in El Rayo. “To hold an ancient human bone in your hand is one of the most intimate and beautiful moments an archaeologist can have. Allow your morality to serve as a reminder that you are experiencing a profound moment in your own life, and allow the bridge of universal human emotion to connect you to the moment, to connect you to the past, and most importantly, to yourself.”
On the last day the students were in the field, we remove the leg bones, wrap them in aluminum foil and place them in buckets. The excavators cart the buckets off along the winding trail to Salablanca’s house, but stop their laborious march where the trail dips out of the jungle and towards the lake on the edge of the plantation.
Hopefully dating methods will yield some information on how long ago the individual last visited the shores of the lake, but until then, it is impossible to know. One thing is for certain, Volcano Mombacho still dominated the landscape back when Individual #4 was free of the dirt.
Divish pauses while carrying the remains of Individual #4 away from the cemetery to view Volcano Mombacho and Lake Cocibolca on the last day in the field. Geological data suggests the volcano that created Lake Cocibolca occurred long before any human habitation of the area and Mombacho has also maintained its form, apart from small changes caused by localized eruptions, eruptions that destroyed a pre-Columbian settlement on its slopes.