The Jungle Book

Why Xultun?

This is a memoir about one man’s experience of daily life on a Mayan archeological dig. Understand, this book is not just about the dig site itself. That is certainly interesting on its own but daily life in and around camp was just as fascinating. In this case, the camp was San Bartolo, the base today for the archeological study of the ancient Maya city of Xultun (“shoolTOON”) in Guatemala’s Petén jungle. Originally, the base was created as a result of the discovery of the famous San Bartolo murals (a fascinating story told at the end of the book by its discoverer, William Saturno). If you survive the book, you will come away with a detailed picture of archeological life—what a campsite looks like, how it’s set up, the staff fed and the work organized. If, as a result, you are expecting a how-to manual, you’ll be disappointed. It’s about the experience. A bit of gonzo journalism without the drugs.
This book is also about the jungle. Actually, now that I think about it, you’ll get the same run-down on the jungle as you will on the camp— what makes a jungle, how it’s organized, the rhythms of daily life with and without man. A jungle is—there is no lesser word for it—remarkable! For me, archeology and the jungle are the stuff of adventure.
So, let’s add that this book is also about adventure. In my time, adventure for a boy began with Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. Later, as I grew older, adventure morphed into the curse of Egyptian tombs and travels to Mecca in disguise. Indiana Jones was not born of whole cloth but spun from the imagination and dreams of boys everywhere. In time, archeology became adventure’s light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel for me.
This book is also about archeology itself, the economics of a dig and the economics of looting, too. When I was organizing for this expedition, I had no intention of writing a book…or writing anything at all about the trip. But in preparation, I discovered there was very little written that I could find about what to expect from an archeological dig. There is, remarkably, Agatha Christie’s 1946 memoir, Come Tell Me How You Live, of her husband’s dig in Syria. Interesting, but thin on details and woefully out of date. There is no Insight Guide to Life on a Dig. Nada.
This book is also about travel, a lifetime of often reckless travel that ultimately finds you and me on the great plaza at Xultun. When I was a kid, my nose was always in a book. My dad bitched about it, telling me I was missing everything around us as our family drove from South Carolina west to Tacoma, That was ironic because my eight-year old nose was buried in Ferdinand Magellan, Master Mariner. Of course, he was right.
…And wrong. I continued to suffer as a youngster what I imagined to be a closeted life until the day I graduated college. Then I bolted for a year in Europe on far less than $10/day, a summer’s worth of earnings as a sous chef in my pocket. I returned to the U.S. of A. cutting it stunningly close with just over $7.00 in my pocket. Got a job in New York and over the course of a year, saved $1,000 for the next trip. That fall, I gave away everything I owned and started out again on the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to Kathmandu with this fortune carefully guarded in a money belt full of traveler’s cheques. Gone for another year.
I never identified myself as a hippie. I don’t know why, as if my long hair, trying every drug known to man and being obsessed with Procol Harum’s Simple Sister did not qualify. But for me my travels were, thoughtful, predominantly intellectual—a lifelong learning experience where drugs were simply part of the early curriculum. Even at that young age I was aware of the relentless march of capitalism and the cultures, traditions and rituals being destroyed in its wake. The assault continues without cease so every day that I am able to see the real thing rather than a National Geographic special is another red-letter day.
Finally, this book is about recovery. Not from alcohol; I’ll never recover from that. No, not from anything but of that sense of wonder I enjoyed as a young man on my first trips to Europe, India, China and Egypt. As I have aged, the travel has not slowed but the rough road has smoothed out. I’m more likely to wake up in a Kimpton in New York than in a yurt in Mongolia (well, did that recently, actually), more likely to start my day with scrambled eggs and bacon than fava beans and olive oil. Down and out in Paris has long since been forgotten. That early life of adventure and abandon has slipped away. I needed to get back to the unfamiliar, to recover what a lifetime of family and buisness puts in the rearview.
Over the years, I found myself in front of magnificent sites that today are either destroyed or a bit too dangerous for Americans to reach easily, such as Nineveh, Palmyra, Babylon, Carthage and Bamiyan. I had climbed the outside of Cheops and lain in the Pharaoh’s sarcophagus in its belly. I had…well, the list goes on, but all of those adventures seemed fixtures from the past until the opportunity came along to join the dig at Xultun.
Xultun. Wha-a? I’d been to many Maya ruins and Tikal twice but never once heard of Xultun just a few miles away. This was perfect, just what I wanted: a mysterious city in Central America, still covered in jungle, wanting considerably more excavation than has occurred. Funding for this year’s dig was coming slowly. My good friends from National Geographic, Boyd Matson and Betty Hudson, knew I would be interested. I couldn’t spring for the entire budget, but I could chip in in return for a camp pass. Perhaps I could recover that lost sense of wonder. Soon, I would be rumbling over ragged logging trails in order to find out.