May 2009: My work has begun to accelerate quite a bit since I last emailed you. About a month ago my permit to enter the park was extended, so I began more surveying. I was working in the lab for a few months before that. In addition to my field work, I received a great collection of Guarani pottery from the city museum to perform a use-wear analysis on; determining how they were used, what was cooked in them, etc. So my hands are pretty full at the moment, juggling simultaneous lab and intensive field work. Just in this last week I more than doubled the number of sites that I've located at Itapúa Park, finding three on Tuesday, and three more again yesterday. I'm very excited about one of them, a rare Umbu hunter-gatherer site. Once more paperwork goes through, I should be able to actually excavate, although just registering the sites is enough for the Guarani's application for land repatriation.
I also spent a week in Montevideo, Uruguay, for Fulbright's Regional Enhancement Seminar in April. About 30 Fulbright recipients working in Southern South America were summoned there for a week of presentations and cultural activities. I gave a well-received 20-minute presentation, and was able to make connections with a lot of the other Fulbrighters working down here.
February 2009: I have a month off work in Brazil for the summer break and Carnival. So far I have just done a lot of survey work, which involves a lot of hiking and plotting GPS coordinates. I can't remember if I told you of the change in plans to the start of my project. A group of Guarani Indians filed a claim for some land in the park that I was going to work in, and part of their application requires that they show previous habitation. So it became my job to locate archaeological evidence for them. I succeeded and am now awaiting the start of my work with Dr. Dias in her laboratory at the university.
November 2008: I'm in Brazil now, and had my first day of work on the project last week. I collected some information from local Indians about possible site locations in Itapua Park. I spent the day with two anthropologists who were collecting information of their own; we visited the settlements of three family groups. I head back to the reserve on Thursday with another student and a GPS unit. We're going to mark the locations of a few areas where ceramics are exposed on the surface and check out a cave with some archaeological materials, if our informants can remember where it's located.