Robert-Goldwater-Library

Brewery Was Burned After Ancient Peru Drinking Ritual

Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News, November 16, 2005

A thousand years ago, the residents of Cerro Baúl evacuated the frontier town in southern Peru. But first they drank themselves silly on spicy corn beer, then set the brewery, palace, and temple on fire.

This was no impromptu blowout, however. The event marked the ceremonial destruction of a sacred mountain enclave of the Wari people, a new archaeological study suggests.

The Wari empire built the settlement on top of a mesa—a flat-topped mountain—in the Andes mountains around A.D. 600.

Populated by the Wari elite, Cerro Baúl served as an embassy outpost to the neighboring Tiwanaku state for 400 years. As the two nations started to decline, the town was abandoned.

"Before torching the buildings as part of a systematic evacuation ritual, they brewed one last batch [of beer] and drank it all," said Michael Moseley, an anthropologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

"That was the end of the party—time to get out of Dodge," said Moseley, who led the study, which appears today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... [read on ...]

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A 1,200-Year-Old Murder Mystery in Guatemala

From the New York Times:

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, November 17, 2005

Archaeologists and forensic experts in Guatemala have made a grisly discovery among the ruins of an ancient Maya city, Cancuén.

In explorations during the summer, they found as many as 50 skeletons in a sacred pool and other places, victims of murder and dismemberment in a war that destroyed the city and, it seems, served as a beginning of the collapse of the classic period of the Maya civilization ... [read on ...]

The remains of a Maya king, Kan Maax, who was killed about A.D. 800 in Cancuén with dozens of his royal associates and courtiers. Despite the puzzling slaughter, the bodies were treated with respect ...

Arthur A. Demarest, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University who directed the excavations, described the discovery yesterday in an announcement by the National Geographic Society and in an interview by telephone from Guatemala City. [click here for the NGS web press release]

"This is probably the most important thing I've ever discovered," said Dr. Demarest, who has explored Maya ruins since the 1980's ...

By murdering the elite and placing their broken bodies in the ceremonial waters, Dr. Demarest speculated, the conquerors were "killing the city ritually" ...

The king, Kan Maax, was buried in full regalia and a necklace bearing his name and title. He was the son of Cancuén's greatest ruler, Taj Chan Ahk, who had died in 795.

"What we have here is a shift in studies of the Maya collapse," Dr. Demarest said. "Broad theories are being replaced by specifics turned up by archaeology."

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Recent Maya 'Discovery' Qualified

The recent announcement of the discovery of a link between a Maya archaeological site and previously unsourced Mayan antiquities is now being cast more in the light of a confirmation of an earlier-held hypothesis -- this from an Oct. 4 follow-up article in the New York Times. Objects from the Guatemalan site of La Corona were previously ascribed to a "Site Q", whose Spanish-language name is a play on the interrogative "¿Qué?" or "What?" The 'discoverers' now acknowledge that others, including Ian Graham, had previously speculated on a correspondence between the looted artifacts and sites in the Petén region of Guatemala:

Dr. Graham, who was not involved in the new research, called it an exciting discovery and "gratifying confirmation" of their earlier findings, though he conceded that at the time he had some reservations because of the site's modest size ...

Dr. [David] Stuart, now an archaeology professor at the University of Texas, noted that at an international conference in 2001 he presented evidence that he said already established the Site Q-La Corona connection. [read more]

Tobias Schneebaum, Writer, Artist, Explorer and Friend

Tobias Schneebaum, in 2002.


via NYTimes, September 25, 2005:
Tobias Schneebaum, Chronicler and Dining Partner of Cannibals, Dies [excerpts]
By MARGALIT FOX
Tobias Schneebaum, a New York writer, artist and explorer who in the 1950's lived among cannibals in the remote Amazon jungle and, by his own account, sampled their traditional cuisine, died on Tuesday in Great Neck, N.Y. He was in his mid-80's and a longtime resident of Greenwich Village.

The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, his nephew Jeff Schneebaum said. The elder Mr. Schneebaum, who had several nieces and nephews, leaves no immediate survivors.

In 2000, Mr. Schneebaum was the subject of a well-received documentary film, "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale," which follows his return to the Amazon, and to Indonesian New Guinea, where he also lived.

Mr. Schneebaum came to prominence in 1969 with the publication of his memoir, also titled "Keep the River on Your Right" (Grove Press). The book, which became a cult classic, described how a mild-mannered gay New York artist wound up living, and ardently loving, for several months among the Arakmbut, an indigenous cannibalistic people in the rainforest of Peru.
[...]

...Mr. Schneebaum's work raises tantalizing questions about the role of the anthropologist, the responsibilities of the memoirist, and cultural attitudes toward sexuality and taboo. It also offers a look at the persistence of an 18th-century idea - the Western fantasy of the noble savage - well into the 20th century.

In 1955, Mr. Schneebaum, then a painter, won a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Peru. There, he vanished into the jungle and was presumed dead. Seven months later, he emerged, naked and covered in body paint. The experience had transformed him, he would later say, but in a way he could scarcely have imagined.

Theodore Schneebaum was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, most likely on March 25, 1922 (some sources say 1921), and reared in Brooklyn. Visiting Coney Island as a boy, he was captivated by the Wild Man of Borneo, a sideshow attraction famed for its brute exoticism.

Mr. Schneebaum, who disliked the name Theodore and eventually changed it to Tobias, attended the City College of New York. In 1977, he received a master's in cultural anthropology from Goddard College in Vermont.
[...]

"Keep the River on Your Right" caused a sensation when it was published. Anthropologists were aghast: ethnographers were not supposed to sleep with their subjects, much less eat them. Interviewers were titillated. ("How did it taste?" a fellow guest asked Mr. Schneebaum on "The Mike Douglas Show." "A little bit like pork," he replied.)
[...]

Mr. Schneebaum's other memoirs include "Wild Man" (Viking, 1979) and "Where the Spirits Dwell" (Grove, 1988). His most recent, "Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea" (University of Wisconsin, 2000) moves between the communities he loved: Asmat, now ravaged by globalization, and his friends in Greenwich Village, ravaged by AIDS.

An authority on Asmat art and culture, Mr. Schneebaum was formerly assistant to the curator of the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress in Agats, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. He was also the author of "Embodied Spirits: Ritual Carvings of the Asmat."
[Read on...]

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For RGL holdings go to WATSONLINE:
AUTHORS (last name first) (1-10 of 10)
Schneebaum Tobias
1 Asmat Images From The Collection Of The Asmat Museum Of Culture And Progress = Gambaran Asmat, Dari / text, Photographs, And Drawings By Tobias Schneebaum,1985
2 Asmat : Leben Mit Den Ahnen : Steinzeitliche Holzschnitzer Unserer Zeit = Asmat : Life With The Ancestors / von Gunter Konrad, Ursula Konrad, Tobias Schneebaum,1981
3 Au Pays Des Hommes Nus / Tobias Schneebaum ; Traduit De L'américain Par Jean-Bernard Blandenier,1971
4 Embodied Spirits : Ritual Carvings Of The Asmat / Tobias Schneebaum      1990
5 Keep The River On Your Right / by Tobias Schneebaum      
6 [Miscellaneous Articles]      
7 A Museum As A Focal Point In Acculturation : The Asmat Museum Of Culture And Progress / by Tobias Schneebaum,1976
8 Secret Places : My Life In New York And New Guinea / Tobias Schneebaum,c2000
9 Wild Man / by Tobias Schneebaum ; With Ill. By The Author,1979
10 Wild Man / by Tobias Schneebaum, With Illustrations By The Author ; New Forward By David Bergman,c2003

more info, links, articles, reviews, interviews, etc.:

Official film website: Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
Movie Stills; Watch clips and trailer

Tobias Schneebaum: Film Debuting Nationally This Spring Documents Artist's Life Among Cannibals, Yaddo 2001
Review: Call of the Wild, By Robin Cembalest, ARTnews, March 2001
Review: 'River' treats Tobias Schneebaum as if he were the Wild Man of Borneo, By Richard von Busack, May 10-16, 2001, Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper
Tobias Schneebaum Interviewed by Allan Gurganus, BOMB Magazine, March 2001

Lake Titicaca Reed Boat Project

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The summer 2005 issue of Expedition features an article on the 2002 experimental journey across Lake Titicaca in a recreation of a Peruvian 'totora' reed boat:

"Reed Boats and Experimental Archaeology on Lake Titicaca" by Alexei Vranich, Paul Harmon, and Chris Knutson -- freely available as a PDF file. An earlier article by Paul Harmon appears on the Archaeology magazine web site.

The experiment was designed to answer the question posed by the monolithic stone architecture of the Incan city of Tiwanaku: How might the stones have been transported from the quarries situated across Lake Titicaca? A nine-ton andesite stone was located, transported to shore and loaded onto the recreation of a reed boat, built purposely for transporting the stone.

A full account of the project appears on the project's Qala Yampu web site, including biographies of the participants, a "Captain's Diary" of the voyage, and links. At this writing a documentary film on the project is near completion, but no air dates have been set.

The Lost City of Z

via Slate:
Searching for the City of Z
Retracing the steps of Col. Percy Fawcett.
By Torie Bosch
Sept. 12, 2005

The New Yorker, Sept. 19

[...] journalist David Grann follows the steps of Col. Percy Fawcett, an English explorer who disappeared during a 1925 trip to find the "City of Z," a rumored ancient civilization in the Brazilian Amazon. The article concludes that Fawcett and his companions were killed by natives during their quest. Though archaeologists dismissed the City of Z as a myth and Fawcett as an amateur, an archaeologist takes Grann to see ruins of bridges, moats, and roads, grown over with vegetation, that suggest a complex civilization did exist near the scene of Fawcett's disappearance.

via The New Yorker, 9/11/05 (thanks Ross!):

this week in the magazine:

In "The Lost City of Z" (p. 56), David Grann follows the trail of adventurers and scientists seeking to uncover a lost civilization hidden deep in the Brazilian Amazon. Grann sets out to retrace the secret route of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British explorer who, in 1925, disappeared along with his son and a companion while searching for the ruins of an ancient empire, which Fawcett had named the City of Z. "In the next seven decades, scores of explorers had tried and failed to retrace Fawcett’s path. Some nearly died of starvation, while others retreated in the face of tribes that attacked with poisoned arrows. Then there were those adventurers who had gone to find Fawcett and, instead, disappeared along with him," Grann writes.

Grann researches Fawcett's letters at the Royal Geographical Society, in London, and visits Fawcett’s granddaughter, in Cardiff, where he examines Fawcett’s diaries and logbooks, discovering that Fawcett had provided false coördinates in order to throw off would-be seekers of the City of Z. In Brazil, Grann and his guide, Paolo Pinage, follow in Fawcett's footsteps through the Amazon basin, a region nearly the size of the continental United States. Describing just one portion of his travels, Grann writes, "[T]he road was worse than any that Pinage and I had travelled: pools of water reached as high as the floorboards, and at times the truck, with all its weight, tipped perilously to one side. We drove no faster than fifteen miles an hour, sometimes coming to a halt, reversing, then pressing forward again. The forests had been denuded here as well. Some areas had been burned recently, and I could see the remnants of trees scattered for miles, their blackened limbs reaching into the open sky." Along the way, Grann meets the chief of the Kalapalo tribe, who some believe might have killed Fawcett, and who takes Grann into Xingu National Park, where Fawcett's bones had allegedly been discovered. "Up that way is where the bones were dug up. But they were not Fawcett’s bones—they were my grandfather's," he tells Grann. Later he says, "I would like to get the bones back and bury them where they belong."

Determined to find Z, Grann presses on to the village of Kuikaro, where he meets archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who tells Grann the area was once part of a vast ancient settlement, with roads, bridges, and causeways. Heckenberger has uncovered twenty pre-Colombian settlements in the Xingu. "All these settlements were laid out with a complicated plan, with a sense of engineering and mathematics that rivalled anything that was happening in much of Europe at the time," he says, estimating that each cluster of settlements contained anywhere from two thousand to five thousand people, which means that the larger community was the size of many medieval European cities. Heckenberger tells Grann that it was understandable why Fawcett wouldn't have been able to find the ruins. "Fawcett was probably the last person who came in here looking for lost cities," he says. "There isn't a lot of stone in the jungle, and most of the settlement was built with organic materials—wood and palms and earth mounds—which decompose. But once you begin to map out the area and excavate it you are blown away by what you see." Grann writes, "Heckenberger has helped to upend the view of the Amazon as a counterfeit paradise that could never sustain what Fawcett had envisioned: a prosperous, glorious civilization."

more info:

Exploration Fawcett (Amazon.com)
by Percy Harrison Fawcett, P. H. Fawcett, Brian Fawcett
(Reprinted in 2001 by Phoenix Press, ISBN 1842124684)

via Wikipedia page on Fawcett:

The Great Web of Percy Harrison Fawcett

Virtual Exploration Society - Colonel Percy Fawcett

also:
Veil lifts on jungle mystery of the colonel who vanished
Did an erotic siren lure Percy Fawcett to his death as he searched for a lost city in the Amazon?
Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday March 21, 2004, The Observer (UK)