The Chacabuco Valley

What was originally supposed to be a one and a half day drive to the digsite location in Chacabuco turned out to be almost three with a stop in Cerro Castillo for lunch and an extra night stay at Puerto Tranquilo, one of the smaller towns on our route. The second night was spent at the Conservacion Patagonica which is currently still under development.

Now the digsite is lcated in the no-mans-land area between the Chile-Argentina border and so the trip included a passage through the border police station where we had to leave our passports, and a stop at the military outpost located just several kilometers away from where we would be staying. I say military outpost but realistically it is more of a small livestock ranch with a few additional cabins. The inhabitants included Jose Bustamante, a soldier in the army of Chile and Alvaro, a gaucho. Just to clear things up, Alvaro is basically the iconic gaucho; chiseled, dark skinned, and with a weathered appearance. We had some local music playing on the radio one night and he actually came by on his horse, chatted for a bit and then rode off into the sunset like he had rehearsed it or something. He drives women crazy.

Anyway, setting up camp wasn't too difficult except some sheep shit and corpses had to be cleared in order to make room for the tents. I ca say that without much hesitation now because the first day also included digging through 13 inches of the same substance in order to get to the first ''historic'' layer. I wanted to complain so much at first but after seeing Pancho putting his effort into it, I realized it wasn't as bad as it seemed. A simple test for hoof-and-mouth disease is all I'll need when I get back.

The following days were far more exciting as we uncovered numerous artifacts by reaching both the historic and prehistoric layers. Some items from the historic layer included horseshoe nails, glass and thousands of rat, guanaco and sheep bones. Arrowheads, obsidian shards, and some bone tools turned out to be the majority of results from the prehistoric layer. Over the course of two weeks we managed to recover and catalogue some 300 separate artifacts.

Altogether, the dig was highly enjoyable and I was able to reassure myself that archaeology is something I have a passion for and will consider majoring in. The only downside is that I wish there had been enough funding to continue the dig for an extra couple of weeks. Pancho had mentioned that the site could easily continue to provide results for years.