FACULTY NEWS

   There were mosquitoes. A poisonous wood called chichem. Snakes. Rain and mud. Sultry heat. And oppressive humidity. But there were also opportunities to explore a different culture; to make new friends; to swim in the turquoise waters of a serenely secluded lagoon - and to unearth the artifacts that would reveal how an ancient Central American people lived, worked, and died. 
    Those were among the exciting discoveries UAlbany Department of Anthropology Professor Marilyn Masson; her husband, research collaborator, and project co-director, Robert Rosenswig of Yale University; and a group of students from Albany, SUNY Buffalo, Texas A&M, and the universities of South Florida and British Columbia made last summer during a six-week excavation in northern Belize. 
    Masson, a faculty member at Albany since 1996, began working in Belize in 1983 and has returned nearly every year since. The work of the Belize Postclassic Project, which she initiated in 1996, focuses on “the fundamental social transformations” of the Postclassic and Colonial Maya periods.
    At the Caye Coco and “Last Resort” excavation sites, the researchers analyzed stone tools, ceramics, animal bones, marine shells, and human skeletal remains “that provided clues to village leadership, ritual, economic specialization, and local and long-distance exchange.” They also attempted to locate additional sites that would enable them to “reconstruct population levels during the Postclassic period and earlier,” says Masson, and “tracked Maya patterns of adaptation and cultural change into the Colonial period.”
    Students adapted to the experience.
    “The mosquitoes were horrible, and the heat,” says junior Lisa Burkoski, a double major in anthropology and Greek and Roman civilization. “I had to overcome fears, such as heights and riding in the back of a pickup truck.” Still, “I really didn't go on the trip with fears. I was ready for an adventure.”
    Burkoski and her fellow researchers found adventure aplenty. “The entire trip - being in a different culture, seeing how other people live, and traveling the country to see all of the ruins - was mad cool!” she said.
    Bradley Russell, a 1995 University of Illinois graduate studying for his Ph.D. in anthropology at Albany, supervised excavation of a subgroup of field sites - and lunch preparation back in camp. An Earthwatch project volunteer in Guatemala in 1996 and in Belize two years ago, he was one of the veterans among the student participants.
    Russell agrees with Burkoski that mosquitoes were one of the toughest parts of the trip; he adds that it was even more difficult to contend with “time away from my wife, Megan.” Despite the hardships of separation from loved ones and the buzz of flying pests, he found the experience “great”: “The Maya are fascinating to study. I feel lucky just to be able to view and hold the artifacts they made, including a beautiful incense burner I reconstructed. I was the first person to see it after hundreds of years. And I get a lot of energy from Prof. Masson.”
    Russell credits the field school with “teaching me how to plan and conduct archaeological research, and giving me experience writing up and presenting that research. The data we are collecting are modifying a significant number of incorrect assumptions about the Maya in the years just prior to and immediately after the Spanish conquest of the New World.”
    Senior Brian O'Hare cites “the mosquitoes and the nightmares from Larium, the anti-malarial pill I was taking,” as the biggest hurdles he had to clear during his first few weeks in Belize. Looking back on the experience, though, “makes me want to go on another dig.”
    Asked what he and the others had unearthed, O'Hare mentions such “cool things” as “a ceremonial turtle, a conch shell carved like a bird, and a couple of burials.”
    He feels it is important to study and understand ancient cultures because “it is so easy to forget that we aren't as immortal as we all would love to believe.”
    A self-described “military brat” educated in Germany and Belgium, Masson found herself drawn to anthropology by an affinity for “nonwestern cultures” and her childhood experiences with “the celebration of culture-based diversity in meaning, perception, custom, and values.” She received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Texas A&M and Florida State, respectively, and, in 1993, earned her doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin. Although her particular focus is the Maya area, she has also conducted research and published in Oaxaca, Mexico; and in Colorado, Texas, and Florida during the past 21 years.
    Masson admits to being “a hands-on principal investigator who hates to miss even a single day in the field.” To assist her, she recruits - on a “first-come, first-serve basis” - anthropology graduate students, anthropology undergrads who have completed the field school in previous years, and graduate students at other institutions. Masson interviews candidates on such issues as “living in the Third World,” extending them an invitation to participate only after “I come to believe that they fully understand the experience they are signing up for.”
    The project briefing Masson distributes to potential field school participants is a lengthy document that provides detailed descriptions of the excavation sites, Belize, the climate, project goals and objectives; and clarifies what students should expect in terms of living conditions, food, and drink. A listing of senior staff; advice about physical conditioning and medical needs (sunscreen and insect repellent are musts); a daily schedule; and a reading list are also included. 
    Students and staff are housed in San Estevan village’s public buildings, which are equipped with electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing - “major bonuses for a field camp,” notes Masson. Drinking water is treated town water, another “unheard-of luxury for an archaeological project.” Each participant is expected to take turns helping to prepare and serve breakfast and lunch. Dinners, catered by a local inn, feature both Caribbean-style Belizean cuisine and Yucatec Maya dishes; rice and beans, fried plantains, and arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) are among the hearty favorites on the menu. Lessons in making homemade tortillas and salsa are also offered.
    For those with less exotic tastes, the ubiquitous pizza and Chinese food - sweet and sour lobster a specialty - are available. It is also possible to make calls from a pay phone; cash traveler’s checks; and visit the local G-Mart, which Masson describes as “a convenience store of unrivaled magnitude in all of Belize.”
   By the middle of the first week, “people seem to have adjusted,” observes Masson. “They are traumatized for the first three days; I call this my ‘fourth day rule.’ It is hard to get used to no air conditioning and no privacy, but the body is remarkable this way. The adversities are ‘bonding,’ bringing people together.” 
    From the objects located, the researchers found “few differences in the possessions of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots,’ suggesting that elite power was necessary primarily for interactions with political neighbors, trade, and market events benefiting everyone,” remarks Masson. “There is evidence for a certain form of ‘assembly rule’ entailing rotating offices and checks and balances on individuals in power.” The research team was also able to reaffirm that “family (kin-based) organization is a very important political and economic institution in this period; it always was for the Maya.”
    Burial patterns from the Postclassic period revealed that “the general health of this population was exceptional. Life expectancy appears to have increased by five to ten years above those skeletons we examined from the Classic period, though these patterns vary highly at the local level. There are a few pathologies - mainly systemic infections from such things as abcessed teeth - but our sample is small. To talk about population patterns from skeletal remains usually requires reference to at least 60 individual cases. We have only encountered around 20 skeletons in the course of our work,” explains Masson, adding that “closely and carefully arranged discrete cemetery areas probably represent individual lineage groups that occupied the site.”
    As we approach the new millennium, the study of past civilizations' family structures, politics, and trade is particularly relevant to us, according to the professor, who plans to return to Belize to continue her research next summer. “I hope that studying the process of the conquest - and the Maya communities' proud 200-year resistance to it - will raise my students’ social consciousness about Colonialism, conquest, dominance, and exploitation. Those issues are alive and well on the frontiers of the Third World today. 
    “The history of the world is not just that of western society,” concludes Masson. “Researching the nonwestern past can help to give us a more balanced view of the formation of the modern world - and all of its glorious diversity.” 

    Some people write in the hope of becoming commercially successful. Others wish only to put their thoughts down on paper. Leonard A. Slade, Jr. has a noble purpose: “I like to think my poetry is helping to make the world a better place.”
    For Slade, a Department of Africana Studies professor for eleven years and an English department adjunct, writing is “therapeutic, a tonic for the soul. I love it.” 
    Clearly, Slade's audience enjoys reading his work as much as he loves producing it.  One of his admirers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gwendolyn Brooks, describes him as “a traditionalist,” adding: “You will find in his work the twists and wry music and risks of the contemporary. The mixture is appealing.” Another of Slade's famous readers, Maya Angelou, says, “I have read his poetry; and I am the better for it, the wiser for it, and the happier for it.”
    One senses that accolades of that caliber make Slade feel “unworthy” - an adjective he frequently applies to himself. He is a soft-spoken, self-deprecating man who draws strength and literary inspiration from a heritage of family, religion, and hard work - themes that recur frequently in his writing.
    In his latest book, Elisabeth and Other Poems (McGraw-Hill, 1999), which is dedicated to his mother, Elizabeth Langford Slade, and his daughter, Minitria Elisabeth, Slade presents a collection of works that focus on those themes. The slender, seven-section volume is a compilation of short works - none is longer than two pages - that celebrate life and love, lament oppression and prejudice, ponder the mysteries of God and death, and contemplate the powers of nature and the human spirit. Often, a single poem embraces two or more of these themes. 
    Part I, “Elisabeth,” contains poems dedicated to women of that name, including the author's mother and daughter; St. Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth I; and Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave who was a seamstress for Abraham Lincoln. In language as simple as it is eloquent, Slade conjures vivid pictures of his muses. “Black Madonna,” written for his mother, begins with wording simple and evocative, yet ironic:

“picking cotton on 
a cold day blisters
decorated her black fingers. . .”

    On the next page, in “Little Black Girl,” he lovingly writes of Minitria and his hopes for her - and injects a bit of humor:

“How happy she makes me
when I am unable to see
the future in front of me.
She's like her pretty mommy
except, of course, for her 
little tummy.”

    In addition, Slade pays tribute to more famous subjects. “Lilacs in Spring,” an homage to Abraham Lincoln, paints a portrait of the future president as a child, when “young boys teased his height and demeaned his clothes” and “he studied by candlelight, savoring words and defining dreams for America.” “We Must Remember” focuses on the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the poem expresses a longing for a return of the minister's spirit to the world “to cleanse, coercing racists to vomit their evil from the past and present.” and concludes: “we must remember we must remember we must remember The Dream.” In “How Great You Are,” Slade muses on the Almighty, who “shared the entire universe” and is “clothed with honor. . .wrapped with majesty and rich in love.”
    Slade's work also elevates the everyday, imbuing both inanimate objects and animals with human thoughts, emotions, and actions. Rain “kisses a cold tin roof”; “birds . . .fly away happy” after dining on the crumbs left over from the writer's lunch; his pet Samoyed, Robert Lewis, dares “the rolling thunder to beat him home.” 
    In a softly cadenced voice that evinces his North Carolina roots, Slade cites his family; mentors, including Edythe Scott Bagley, the sister of Coretta Scott King and “one of the best teachers I ever had”;  his boyhood minister, Rev. Sherley Edwards; and George Hendrick, his University of Illinois graduate school adviser, among others, as his inspirations. Their influence was important to a young man who was the eldest of nine children and began working on the family farm at age five, “plowing behind my mule, Molly.” 
    While earning his bachelor's degree at Elizabeth City (N.C.) State University, Slade continued his family's “rich heritage” of hard work. He cleaned bathrooms in his dorm, worked as an assistant to an English professor, and washed dishes at a restaurant during the summer. 
    His diligence bore fruit: After completing his undergraduate studies, Slade went on to earn graduate degrees at Virginia State and the University of Illinois. He taught for 22 years at Kentucky State University, where he was also dean of the college of arts and sciences, prior to his arrival at Albany.
    Slade says the University's “nurturing environment” was “one of the reasons I came here.” The “appreciation, love, and respect” of his colleagues and his students “mean a great deal and inspire me,” he notes. 
    In October, Slade returned to his alma mater, the University of Illinois, for a  celebration of his life, career, and poetry. The observance, which commemorated the donation of his personal papers, photographs, and memorabilia to the university's Rare Book Library, featured a reading by Slade, whose wife, Roberta Hall-Slade, is also an Illinois graduate. “Touched and humbled” by the campus community's response to his homecoming, “I returned to Albany very, very happy, and I have been fired up ever since!” 
    His next literary effort will be a first for Slade: a novel. While he enjoys his writing, however, his students are “my life, my second family. I would never put my writing first. Teaching brings me the joy of preparing my students for the real world and of seeing them excel.”
     Slade is so committed to teaching that he usually writes during holidays, vacations, and weekends. “Writing,” he explains, “allows me to explore the human condition. It is a way of making sense of the world, and who I am, and what I am to be.”