Great Excavations
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 10, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin
By Carolina Reyes
Daily Bruin Contributor
Recently, UCLA Professor Christopher Donnan made one of the
great findings of the century, a feat that garnered him a
reputation similar to Hollywood’s rendition of an
archeological idol.
“I always used to say that archaeologists were just like
Indiana Jones, except they didn’t have shoot-outs with
Nazis,” said Julia Sanchez, associate director of the Cotsen
Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.”But Chris Donnan has had a
couple of shoot-outs with bandits in the field.”
Donnan, a professor in the department of anthropology, and his
team began unearthing Dos Cabezas, a Moche pyramid in Peru in
1997.
Within each structure lay the bodies of noblemen of northern
Peru’s Moche culture, which flourished between 100 to 800
A.D., wrapped in cloth and adorned with gold-plated shields and
clubs, according to the February 2001 issue of USA Today.
“He always does the most exciting things. He’s the
kind of person people picture when they think of an
archaeologist,” Sanchez said.
But the field of archaeology more often includes sweat and hard
work than discovering sites worthy of glowing accolades.
 Cotsen Archaeology Institute Quecha villagers stand
proudly in their newly created library in Peru. Under the scorching
sun and extreme weather conditions, Sanchez and researchers like
her look to fit together the puzzle pieces of the past.
For example, graduate students who work with Willeke Wendrich,
assistant professor of Egyptian archaeology in the Near Eastern
languages and cultures department, have the opportunity to travel
to Berenike, a harbor town along the shore of the Red Sea that
thrived during the Roman Empire.
Because of Berenike’s remote location, archaeologists have
to import food and water from afar and depend on equipment that
runs on solar power.
Despite living in the 21st century, the expedition teams face
challenges comparable to those tackled by original inhabitants,
according to the institute’s Web site.
“Being an archaeologist is being dedicated; you really
have to want this with every fiber in your body,” Wendrich
said.
Researchers at the Cotsen Institute have been central in
uncovering and preserving the world’s heritage.
Originally started in the 1970s as a volunteer group, the
institute was formally established in 1983 when the Fowler Museum
was completed.
The institute houses 15 laboratories with people working
everywhere from California to China and South America, Sanchez
said.
Donnan, who was director at the time, proved to be instrumental
in securing funds to build the structure.
He worked with the archaeologists on campus to create not only
the museum upstairs but to house the archaeology institute as
well.
A core group of 30 people, made up of the institute’s
volunteer group and a part of the general public, has also
contributed to the institute’s success.
“Some of them are here 20 to 30 hours a week, even though
they’re volunteers, they’ve been here so long,
they’ll help on the field projects, laboratories and help
train the students,” Sanchez said.
In addition to displaying the ancient world’s artifacts,
these archaeologists also practice the art of preservation.
According to Wendrich, the tourist industry poses the biggest
threat to this goal.
“Tourism does a lot of damage to sites because many people
are not informed,” she said. “They don’t know
that if you walk on a wall and the wall tumbles down then
that’s it, the wall is gone.”
Tracking down and recovering stolen artifacts has also created
problems in the archaeological society, according to Sanchez.
Recently, she said, British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected
demands by Greece for the return of ancient sculptures removed from
the Parthenon two centuries ago.
In 1812, British aristocrat Lord Elgin took the sculptures that
decorated the Parthenon and housed them in a British museum.
They have never been returned to Greece.
Stolen artifacts will often end up in the antiquities market or
for sale on the Internet.
“It happens that things end up in antiquities markets and
some of those things have been in circulation for a long
time,¨ Wendrich said.
But now and again things do turn out that have been excavated
recently and have been stolen out of storage rooms of the
antiquities organization, she said.
During the 19th century, some archaeologists in Europe felt they
could take better care of artifacts than native people in the
immediate area, according to Wendrich.
But others opposed this view, and in recent years, modern
researchers have tried to make amends for the past.
“Archaeologists today work in cooperation with governments
and are not allowed to take artifacts out of the country unless
they have permission to take them,” Wendrich said.
One archaeologist at the institute is not only dedicated to
finding out about the past but has, along with his team of graduate
students, contributed to the future of a group of people.
Charles S. Stanish, associate professor of the anthropology
department, began a project in 1988 in the Lake Titicaca, Peru.
There, his team not only excavated at Lake Titicaca but also
created a library for the Quecha inhabitants in a nearby
village.
At the Quechas’ request, the group gathered books on
topics such as biology, chemistry and Shakespeare in Spanish to
give their children access to books outside of class.
“Their children are in class only half the day and they
can only use the books in school,” Stanish said.
“Although they also have a municipal library, they
can’t take those books out.”
Archaeological work carried out by the UCLA team has located
ancient agricultural fields and canals, extensive cemetery areas,
early temples, first settled villages and many other archaeological
features in Peru, according to the team’s Web site.
To Stanish, archaeologists search for sites that represent the
heritage of a culture in the same way a biologist would go in and
discover an endangered animal species.
“The anthropological ideal of trying to understand who we
are as biological and cultural beings ““ that’s what
archaeology does, that’s what we’re good at,” he
said.
Although some may think ancient civilizations have little in
common with modern societies, Wendrich said this is not the
case.
“If you start studying ancient societies, there’s no
way you think that societies are getting better all the time, that
we are living a better, more luxurious or honest way of
life,” she said. “We just see that ancient societies
were very complete like ours.”
