Surface Archaeology in the Chilapa-Zitlala Area of Guerrero, México, Season I

Fieldwork - Methodology

Rough terrain and the great number of communities where one must talk to authorities before survey make it extremely difficult to carry out either a well-controlled sample survey or full coverage, which would take much too long in such terrain. Therefore I opted for visiting community by community, explaining the project, and contracting a guide or guides to visit sites known to the local people. Sometimes a community would be preparing a fiesta, or they could not help us out at the moment; those we skipped and will come back to next year. Most of the survey was done along the immediate Atempa river drainage. Localization and internal rudimentary mapping of sites was done with a 12-satellite Garmin GPS and the use of air photos. Color print photographs, slides, and digital photographs were taken. Surface materials were placed in material (manta) bags and moved to transparent plastic bags once washed and marked, a daily chore at camp. We had two networked computers in the lab in which daily updates of the overall map and bag, photo, and object databases were kept.

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