Today we continued mapping the Brick Site in Cahuita’s National Park. The weather was perfect, the visibility was great, and the water temperature was better than anyone could have asked for. The baseline is 54 meters in length, so we split up the site into 5 meter units. In total there are 22 units and … Read more
If a picture is worth a thousand words than a map is worth a million. The finished product will be invaluable to presenting the site to the public, stakeholders, and other professionals. Mapping a site is one of the most rewarding aspects of a project. Now that recording is complete at the cannon site, the … Read more
Richard Wilson is a local fisherman and tour guide residing in Cahuita, Costa Rica. Originally born in Nicaragua, he moved to Costa Rica to be with family members and to embrace the local culture. He uses his boat, Jamaica Town, to support himself financially through fishing and snorkeling tours. Eighteen years ago, he found the … Read more
On day six of the Costa Rica summer field school, participants continued to conduct an ethnographic survey of the town of Cahuita. To complement the boat recording, conversations with the captains are being held and documented. My team, which consisted of myself, Jeremy Borrelli, Wale Oyediran, Allyson Ropp, and Devin Urban, was fortunate enough to … Read more
Today, two groups basically finished working on the cannon and anchor site. My group was in charge of taking the compass bearings for each of the cannon and taking the distances between certain features on the site, including; three cannon, the two anchors, and the shore. To do this, we used a data scope which … Read more
Today, we saw first-hand the dangers of the ocean that we might encounter any given day on a job site. While on the boat, monitoring divers and recording data sets, a distressed snorkeler came crying out of the water on the Brick Site. Luis, one of the local boat captains, brought the woman and her … Read more
Today we started mapping the brick site using the baseline we set two days ago. Each of us was assigned a “unit” to map to scale, and we attached a tape measurer to the baseline to take offsets within our section. We decided to use a 5 centimeters to 1 meter scale and prepped our … Read more
Instead of diving today, we took the opportunity to accomplish other tasks assigned to us. We were split into three groups – some students remained behind to do data processing, some walked around Cahuita to work on an artwork inventory, and the final group interviewed a fisherman about his personal history and connection with the … Read more
Over the last two days, Sydney, Kelsey, Bettie, and I worked on recording the small boat Jamaica Town. Our process ranged from making basic observations, such as how many rows of seat the boat had and its color, to taking detailed measurements of the watercraft. After we collected the data our group worked on another … Read more
After a successful day of diving and rectifying the spatial distances between each cannon yesterday, my team was confident that finishing the last of these measurements would go smoothly. While we were working on the first measurement, an un-numbered cannon was discovered. It seemed as if the cannon had been previously found on the free … Read more