Monday through Friday our day our day begins early.  We leave the project house in Huanchaco by 7:00 AM after a light breakfast.  We have a typical Peruvian breakfast: juice, coffee, tea (regular and herb teas), fruit, yogurt, fresh baked bread, jams, and butter.

    View of Huanchaco from the North

 By 7:00 we load ourselves and our equipment into a bus for the commute to the middle valley.  The site of Cerro Leon is about 25 miles (40 km) away.  The morning drive is usually one of the more peaceful times of the day (the overly talkative, bright-eyed, and cheerful may be banished to the roof rack).  The first leg of the drive swings wide of Trujillo, following the ocean for several miles.  Trujillo is the main city in the valley and the third largest in Peru with a population of over 1,000,000.  Mornings are usual cool and overcast in the summer, averaging 60 to 65 degrees.

 Once past the city, we turn inland, crossing many miles of flat sugarcane fields toward the foothills of the Andes where the site is located.  The last few miles of the drive we enter the foothills, and the valley narrows to about a mile across.  Hills rise to several thousand feet on either side.  On a clear day, the edge of the Carabamba plateau is visible some 3400 m (over 10,000 ft) above the valley floor.

   Middle Moche Valley on the way to Ciudad de Dios and Cerro Leon

 After about 40 minutes of driving, we arrive at Quebrada Leon, a dry desert stream.  Beyond the irrigated fields, the valley is barren and eroded, devoid of vegetation, except for a few cacti.  From the bus stop, we hike 1/2 mile to the base of Cerro Leon and then up the hill to the site, carrying daypacks, field supplies, and excavation equipment.  Cerro Leon is located on about half way up the hill, 400 feet in elevation above the base of the hill.  

         Crossing the quebrada in the morning.  Cerro Leon in the background

           The long hard hike up to the excavations. 
        The white dot near the top is Jesus Briceno

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            Halfway to the excavations on a cold, foggy morning on Cerro Leon.        

The first day of fieldwork, we will tour the site and collect artifacts from a sample of the surface of the site.  By the second or third day, you will be excavating at the site.  The students are divided into crews of four students and are assigned a household compound to excavated. 

  Student crew working on Compound 3, a household compound at Cerro Leon

    Student crew working on Compound 1, an elite compound at Cerro Leon

 For the course, each dig crew is assigned a set of rooms in a prehistoric household to excavate.  The team is responsible for completely excavating and documenting their assigned rooms, which involves completing excavation forms, profile drawings, cross-sections, maps, and photography for each room.  In the field, you will receive instruction in how to take notes, fill out the forms, and draw profiles, cross-sections, and room maps.  You will also keep a daily journal of your experience.



                   All dirt from our excavations are haul to screens by bucket
                                 and then passed through 1/8-inch screen

 Students at the sorting board at Cerro Leon.  All the material that doesn't pass
  through the screen is dumped on a board and all artifacts & ecofacts collected.

 The teams excavate and screen all of the fill in the room, which generally consists of collapsed stone walls.  Because we know so little about pre-Moche and Moche domestic architecture, we are excavating 100 percent of several household units.  Rooms and patios are excavated by halves or quarters, rather than by 1-by-1-m units. 
The work can be physically demanding and tedious.

                    Mapping a kitchen and living room at Cerro Leon
 

                        Hiking down the hill at the end of a day of work.

 At noon we take a 1/2-hour lunch break.  Lunches consist of sandwiches (meats or cheese), hard-boiled eggs, fruit, and cookies.  By noon, the low clouds and fog generally burn off and temperatures climb to the 70s or low 80s.  Sunscreen and hats are essential.  Most people usually work in shorts, T-shirt, hat, and bandanna with a long sleeve shirt for the morning.  Some may find the mornings too cold for shorts.  Mornings and evenings are colder than you would expect; bring some warm clothing!  After lunch, we continue work until around 3:00.  At the end of the day we carry the equipment and copious quantities of artifacts (large sacks filled with hundreds of sherds) back to the bus.

 
                                        The bus ride back to the hotel

Returning to Huanchaco by 3:30, students check in all artifacts and paperwork at the lab house.  In the lab, each dig team washes the artifacts from their excavations.  After a one or two-hour afternoon lab session, the rest of the day and evening are free time.   Dinner is served between 6:00 and 7:00 at the hotel.  Dinners are typical Peruvian cooking and usually consist of three courses and fruit juice.  The first course is either soup or salad.  Some common main courses are lomo saltado (stir fried beef and vegetables), aji de gallina (chicken in a cheese and chile sauce), fried fish, fish in various sauces such as ajo de mojo (a garlic sauce) or chorrillana (a tomato, chile, and onion sauce), bistec encebollado (minute steak smothered in fried onions and tomatoes), and stewed duck (a north coast specialty).  The main course is served with white rice or potatoes or both.  Peruvian food is not even remotely like Mexican food, so banish all thoughts of tacos, burritos, and enchiladas.  It is similar to Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Spanish cooking.  Vegetarian meals are available for those who wish to fight 3 million years of evolution.  Dessert is served with dinner a few times a week.  The project has a staff of cooks who prepares all the food and washes the dishes.  You won’t have housekeeping chores.