Abstract
I visited southern Belize for the first time in 1976. As an archaeology graduate student, I was assigned the task of digging test trenches in a newly discovered ancient city, right at the beginning of the rainy season. As my excavations flooded, I spent time sitting in nearby houses chatting with Q’eqchi’ Mayan people in the adjacent village. They convinced me to switch my career to cultural anthropology. Three years later, I returned to carry out research for my dissertation; I spent a year living in three different villages, helping people clear and plant their cornfields, tagging along on hunting and fishing expeditions, and engaging in many hours of chatting and interviewing people in their homes, often over a meal.
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