By Jeffrey R. Parsons
Charlie and I first met in June 1962 when we worked together as field assistants on Bill Sanders Teotihuacan Valley Project. Over the next three summer field seasons we continued to work with Sanders on archaeological excavations and surveys in that still largely rural region —a formative and exciting experience for both of us. Together with our comrades, we worked hard in the field, and after hours drank plenty of good Mexican beer, sampled the culinary delights of the many outstanding restaurants in nearby Mexico City, and admired the many pretty women that crossed out paths. We immersed ourselves in a physical and cultural landscape that we came to admire with growing respect and affection (although we occasionally struggled with some nasty microorganisms that came our way – we both contracted hepatitis during the 1963 season). Those early years in Mexico helped forge a friendship that has endured for nearly 60 years, so far.
I could say something about Charlie’s role as an inspiring teacher. I could also comment on his importance as a very effective Program Director at NEH. And I could mention something about his amazing familiarity with the published literature relevant to anthropological archaeology. Although Bill Sanders was our principal faculty mentor, I might also reflect on how much we were both indebted to Penn State Anthropology Professor Fred Matson, who had been trained as a ceramic technologist and who had a big impact on Charlie’s life-long interest in archaeological ceramics. However, I will leave these aspects of Charlie’s long career for others to consider. For my own part, since few others can still do so, I will recall some of the highlights of our early years working together in Mexico, an experience that was critical in shaping and directing our careers in archaeology.
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Mary and Charlie taken at Villas Arqueologicas 2018 (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey R. Parsons) |
Our “survey” around Cuicuilco
In 1961, Eric Wolf, one of my graduate professors at the University of Michigan, told me about an archaeological survey he and Angel Palerm had undertaken a few years before around Cuicuilco, a major ancient center in the far southwestern Valley of Mexico. One of their findings was an indication that ancient irrigation canals extended beneath the lava that had covered and destroyed most of that archaeological site ca. 200 B.C. The potential significance of these sub-lava canals intrigued me, and by 1962 I thought I might undertake a regional survey in the still largely rural countryside around Cuicuilco to expand upon what Wolf and Palerm had found.
Charlie agreed to join me, and for several weekends that summer, equipped with great youthful enthusiasm and a few air photos, we travelled from Teotihuacan to our distant “survey area.” During our short working days (we spent roughly 6 hours per day commuting back and forth on public transport) we found some promising exposures of ancient surface pottery in gaps in the lava. But, even at age 22, we simply couldn’t keep up the pace. After a few weeks we simply gave up. A few years later the entire Cuicuilco region was covered by dense urban sprawl. We all came to regret this absence of regional data from the Cuicuilco region. At least Charlie and I gave it a shot.
Our annual hikes across the Patlachique Range to Tepetlaoxtoc and Texcoco
During both the 1962 and 1963 field seasons, Charlie and I used to spend a weekend hiking from Teotihuacan southward over to Tepetlaoxtoc and Texcoco some 20 kilometers away. We walked eastward from the Hacienda Metepec along the tezontle-gravel road as far as Belem village, and from there cut southward across the eastern Patlachique Range and down onto the broad piedmont plain at Tepetlaoxtoc and then on to Texcoco. After some unpleasant encounters in Belem with local dogs who disputed our rights of trespass, we usually paused at a small tienda for a refreshing refresco before we began our climb through the hills. We got a good look at this sparsely occupied landscape, an area that was subsequently utterly transformed as massive “land reclamation” projects got underway a few years later and bulldozers and re-forestation radically reconfigured the countryside.
The long road trip from State College to Teotihuacan in 1963
Our usual means of getting from Pennsylvania to Mexico was a five-day drive in one of the project vehicles. In 1963, four of us – Charlie Kolb, John McCullough, Skip Smith, and Jeff Parsons – found ourselves making the long road trip in a 1956 GMC delivery van. Bill Sanders had acquired this vehicle very cheaply -- and he got what he paid for. The van lacked rear seats, and the absence of rear windows meant that the interior was stifling hot (no air-conditioning), especially on those scorching days through the Deep South at the height of the Civil Rights movement when cars with northern license plates were often regarded with suspicion by some locals.
We acquired a rear bench seat that could seat two of us, but it tended to shift around unpredictably because it was not fixed to the floor. We travelled light but carried some heavy project gear plus Charlie Fletcher’s large hydraulic car jack that we stopped to pick up at his parents’ home in Altoona. To make matters worse, the vehicle consumed a lot of oil, so we had to stop every couple of hours to add another quart from the large supply we carried with us. As we got into Alabama and beyond we drove only at night, stopping at air-conditioned motels during the day. It was such a relief when we finally began climbing into higher, cooler altitudes at Tamazunchale well south of the U.S. border.
Charlie on survey
During the 1963 field season several of us worked on “intensive” surface survey. In 1961 and 1962 Joe Marino had walked over extensive tracts noting the general locations of the numerous remains of ancient occupation he encountered (surface pottery, lithic fragments, mounds and rock concentrations, terraces, etc. Sanders’ strategy in 1963 and 1964 was to “intensify” Joe’s “general” survey, and he divided this task on the basis of Joe’s chronological assessments: Mike West worked on Formative sites; Charlie was assigned to the Classic period occupation; John McCullough dealt with the Early and Late Toltec sites (Epiclassic and Early Postclassic); and I handled the Aztec period (Middle and Late Postclassic). Each survey team usually consisted of the guy in charge, plus one or two student assistants, and a hired Mexican laborer to help carry the surface collections we made for later study in our field lab. We oriented ourselves using 1:5000 airphoto enlargements on which we plotted the archaeological features and the locations of our surface collections. Our usual practice was for two or three teams to go out to work in the same vehicle, getting dropped off along the way until the driver (usually John or me) reached his own stopping place. In the late afternoon, this route would be reversed, the driver stopping to pick up each team at a designated spot along the way home.
Transporting surface collections was a real problem because by the end of the day we were typically lugging around many heavy bags of potsherds. This was especially difficult on those occasional days when a worker was missing. I especially remember one day when, for some reason, Charlie was out along on survey –no assistant, no worker. Late in the afternoon I stopped to pick him up near Acolman. I can still see Charlie staggering towards the truck burdened by an array of a dozen or more heavy bags that he had ingeniously draped around his body. I still wonder how he managed it. I guess we were just tough enough in those days.
I could go on, but this may give some indication of how it all began for Charlie and me, and all the others, back when our world was young.
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