Grave lots...again

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Besides being away from the lab last week the work that I've been doing isn't very interesting to read about. Regardless, I'll attempt to update.

My primary focus of this project has been the grave lots and their context. The main problem that we've run into, and a circular one at that, is that the best clothing for our male and female models are in a room called B26. They're being stored at the bottom of drawers, wrapped in archival paper and are therefore incredibly hard to access. Recently the collection was awarded an IMLS grant so these textiles can be unwrapped, unfolded, photographed, mounted and housed. However, this grant is not yet in effect. That is why we've been slow on giving the modelers photographs of the artifacts that we would like to see the models wear. In order to speed up the process of photographing these artifacts Carly and I have gone through the room and notated wherever we could find a textile belonging to a grave lot, and if possible we took some rough photos of the object. Sadly, this part of the project is a long way from finished, but it will all be well worth it when we can dress a model completely in clothing found from a grave lot.

In order to keep everyone busy in the meantime I photographed miniature ponchos and gave them to Dio so he can begin to clothe our male. After sorting through the thousands of photographs that have already been taken Carly and I also put together a folder on the DropBox of weaving tools. Combined with the schematic of a backstrap loom and the video from the Royal Ontario Museum we're hoping that Vijay can begin to model, assemble, and maybe one day animate the backstrap loom weaving process.

During the meeting on Tuesday Dr. Badler charged me with creating a spreadsheet of what people would have done at Pachacamac. This involves a lot of reading concerning pilgrimage, interment of the dead, re-interment of the dead, Andean festivals and ceremonies, and oracles. I have already read through a great article by Shimada concerning the actions of people at Pachacamac, but it was focused on the Pilgrimage Plaza and lacked any solid interpretation. While I realize that any interpretation is just that, I hope that after this research we can create semantics for the site and then begin populating it with conjectured actions.

- Jeanette