The Masks of the Moche

August 21, 2010

Only a few weeks after hearing about the exciting excavations in Mexico, another archaeologist  has been in town to talk about equally exciting work that has been happening in Peru. 

Steve Bourget is a leading expert on the Moche, the ancient Peruvian civilisation who perhaps left the most splendid artefacts behind  – fabulous masks of turquoise and gilded copper, and ceramics of extraordinary variety, depicting pre-Columbian life in all its forms including, most famously, the erotic:  many of their pots are still kept in drawers marked for-the-over -18 only. 

He was describing his recent work at a site called Huaca el Pueblo, where they uncovered a tomb dating from around 300 to 500 AD.  Inside were the remains of four individuals, two men and two women, all in their twenties at the time of death.  Working at frantic speed over the space of five weeks to beat the threat from both the humidity and local looters, his team of archaeologists injected alcohol under the mask of ‘the highest status individual’ – who Bourget has called ‘the Lord of Ucupe’ – to loosen it up for removal from his face in the normal way.  They then used thin slivers of bamboo to lift it, only to discover another mask underneath, like a Russian doll. 

And what masks!  Made from large sheets of gilded copper and fashioned with elaborate Moche iconography:  octopus tentacles, owl-heads and, around one woman’s headdress, a ring of minute dancers. 

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What the snow brings

August 31, 2010

Now we’re getting so much more snow in Britain, perhaps it’s time to stop complaining about the disruption to travel and work,  and start appreciating what it brings. 

A woodpecker came by this morning picking at the grains of food I’d left out for the birds in my small copse.  Against the white of the snow, I have never seen its colours looking so brilliant – or appreciated quite how many different colours go into a green woodpecker’s coat: the green shading into yellow across its back, the red head with its ruffled blue and black.  And tiny birds like wrens which can get lost in the undergrowth suddenly stood out as well:  is there anything that draws the attention as much as the attentive way a wren cocks its head?   Even the rabbits, which normally I view as either dull or pests, have an exaggeration to their movements, an extra kick to their hind legs, in their delineation against the snow.

The lower woods and copses of the Chilterns are scattered across the valley I look out on, and the snow exaggerates the distance between them, giving the landscape an open, Scandinavian feel that was liberating.

Along the river meadows by the Thames, a flock of no less than 75 Canadian geese, surprised to see a walker,  took off all at once making a noise like snow from a distant avalanche.   The tracks they had left on the frozen water meadows were very beautiful – a tapestry of fine webbed footprints.  And elsewhere the tracking reminds me of my passion as a child for those shoes Clarks made which left animal footprints behind.

Travelling down from Scotland along the East Coast line recently, I was struck by the hard beauty of the Northumbrian coastline under snow: the breakers lashing towards the high-plateaued farmhouses with their caravans to one side for the overflow of families or labourers; deer crossing a snow-furrowed field;  a scarecrow wearing a Superman costume, so bright that the red of his cape stood out like Kryptonite.  And later, in the distance, the  Cleveland Hills which I had walked in the summer, looking far finer and more impressive now.

Even down into the soft contours of Gloucestershire, the mistletoe bunched up in the blackly inked trees and the low, late sun coming over the Malvern Hills carved long shadows – more Japanese than traditional English pastoral.  

What a country!  It makes me want to go out and explore it all over again – prompted by John Steinbeck, whose Travels with Charlie I’ve just finished:  written almost exactly 50 years ago towards the end of his life, and a fine meditation on the way America had changed in some ways, but not in others.

At least it will taste smoke-grilled…

February 13, 2010

In the aftermath of Copenhagen, it’s salutary to look back at past civilisations destroyed by bad ecological decisions.

There is the obvious example of Easter Island where all the trees were cut down for religious reasons, with disastrous effect:  the topsoil was subsequently eroded, fishing boats could not be made and famine followed.  There are the Maya, who likewise decimated the rainforests of the Yucatán over a millennium and are thought to have suffered drought as a result, which brought the classic period of their civilisation to an end.

But the example that is closest to home for me are the Nasca culture of Peru, about whom I’ve written in Cochineal Red. Famous for the lines they created on the desert plateau, the Nasca were wiped out by a series of ecological catastrophes in around 780 A.D. Recent research done by David Beresford Jones, an archaeologist from Cambridge, and his colleagues suggests this was because they did not value the huarango, the local extremely slow growing tree with unusually deep root systems that gives protection from harsh desert winds. By cutting them down, the Nasca exposed themselves to the elements with fatal results.

It’s not a lesson that modern Peruvians have gained much from: last time I was in Nasca, the huarango trees were still being cut down – not least because the local pizzerias valued the particular flavour they gave to the food when used under the grill. Sometimes one wonders if mankind’s criminally short term memory is matched only by the facile way we misuse our remaining resources.

But it’s a reminder that 21st century Western civilisation is not unique in the way that it has become so out of touch with nature – previous civilisations were often just as bad. Which is why they are no longer around.

A Touch of Zen at Xmas

January 27, 2011

I  recently had the good fortune to be able to attend a Buddhist Centre retreat in the idyllic setting of the Somerset Hills.  Like many people, I have long been interested in Zen Buddhism without knowing that much about its practice – but I did know that meditation (or za-zen, from which it derives its name) is absolutely central to it. 

The actual meditation proved very difficult. The idea of ‘mindfulness’, where you not so much empty your thoughts as become very focused on the here and now, is not one that comes easily to me.  

I found myself being continually distracted by the soft smoky runs of the boiler igniting  its regular puffs of disbelief in the background, and by the distant catcalls of children playing in the garden, while we sat inside, in postures of graduated discomfort and in complete silence.   Hard to avoid the ticking clock in one’s head that counts down the days, the hours and the minutes, both in the past and the future, but never quite reaches the present tense.

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When the Aztec tomb of the Emperor is finally opened

February 27, 2010

I go to the British Museum to hear Leonardo López Luján talk about his work on the Aztec pyramids of the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City.  There is an almost palpable  air of expectation about the event — after several years of excavation, his team have reached the entrance to what may well be a royal tomb.  The glyphs on the doorway correspond to those for the reign of Ahuizotl, Moctezuma’s predecessor as Emperor of the Aztecs (or Mexica, as the British Museum keeps pedantically reminding us to call them).

Even the natural — and proper — caution of an archaeologist cannot prevent Leonardo from getting excited at the prospect.  And he’s had three years to do so — the monolithic lid to the tomb was first uncovered in October 2006 (by workmen clearing the wrong site by accident).  The reason it’s taken so long to excavate is that the water table is very high in what was once, after all, a  city built on a lake, like Venice. 

The tomb lid showed a representation of the nocturnal earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli carved into the pink andesite, with claws extended to receive the dead.  Ground-penetrating radar shows there are three chambers below the tomb lid.  Funerary offerings placed at the entrance to these chambers include gold offerings, the bones of an eagle and a dog, and the pelt of a spider monkey.

 The moment when the tomb is  finally opened may well be the first really momentous archaeological find of the 21st century: no tomb of an Aztec emperor has ever been found before.  And it will happen soon.

see Mexico City Dreams    The Traveller Magazine

More Afghan thoughts

August 31, 2010

If there is one story that is currently under-reported, it is the proxy war that is being fought in Afghanistan : not the one between America and Al-Qaeda, but the one between India and Pakistan. While Pakistan feels that the Pushtuns are ‘their guys’ against the Indian-backed Tajiks, Uzbeks and other tribes, there will never be a chance of settling the conflict.

One Labour minister I met several years ago at Kabul airport after his tour of inspection was openly wondering how it was that while large packets of aid still went to India, it could still afford to send equally large packets of aid to ‘its men’ in Afghanistan. One can’t help thinking that some judicious diplomacy might restore a sense of perspective. Sending 30,000 more American troops – and 500 more British ones – is only part of the answer.

Afghan thoughts

August 21, 2010

[An expanded version of recent article for the Times]

Three years ago I was preparing to go to Afghanistan to make a Despatches Special for C4 with the intrepid Pakistani journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy about what conditions for ordinary Afghans were like. We wanted to make it in the winter of 2006-07 because there was talk of a Spring offensive from the Taleban – which indeed came – and came – and has kept coming ever since.

The difference in the country between then and now is striking. 

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Reflections on Festivals

January 27, 2011

We are coming to the end of another bumper season of literary festivals.  From Hay to Edinburgh to Saffron Walden, it sometimes seems that every town and city in the land is getting out the French regional white wine to welcome writers.

At Cheltenham recently, where I was giving a session on travel writing, they told me that overall this year they had sold more than 100, 000 tickets before the festival had even begun – a staggering amount, and far more than they have in the past.

When VS Naipaul gave a talk there a few years ago, just after winning the Nobel Prize, he suggested that the growing success of such events is not accidental;  it is because the appetite for such highbrow literary debate is no longer being fed by the BBC.   And the Beeb could do well to pay more attention to the phenomenon.  There is talk of cutting Newsnight Review on BBC2, the last remnant of The Late Show enterprise that once lit up the channel.  Given that it only runs once a week, and after 11.00 at that, this hardly seems a sacrifice that is necessary to make.  And nor is the egregious Culture Show any substitute  – a much more lightweight magazine format, without the same sort of sustained debate that could make Newsnight Review – or indeed a literary festival – such fun.

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Mexico show at the British Museum

August 31, 2010

a fine exhibition, but raises some issues about how indulgently we view the Aztecs and in particular their practice of widespread human sacrifice. as I pointed out in the Times in a piece on Moctezuma, the Aztec dictator.

Also raises the question of how while this is the third big Mexico London show in 15 years, the British Museum – or any other gallery in London – has had no show on the Incas or any of the Peruvian civilisations in living memory.  The British Museum does not even have a gallery devoted to South America – the only two in the ‘Americas’ section are devoted to North America and Mexico respectively.  Which is something that Director Neil MacGregor needs to address.

do it on Google Map without using a mule or machete

May 28, 2011

The news that someone in the University of Florida community has recently found two large pre-Columbian hilltop sites on Google Map just shows that explorers should spend more time at their computers or in the library, and less in the field.  The sites are apparently located at over 13,000 feet in the Callejon north of Ancash and a bit south of Yungay – coordinates: 916’48.45″S 7744’3.49″W, entered in Google Earth or Google Map, and they are ‘very visible’.

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