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1989 with a troop of students, noting surface finds and likely locations for digs. There was a spot halfway up the old volcano called the Quill that we could check out, and another in the jungle near the top of the Quill where one of Gilmore’s students found a tool fashioned from a shell.
    EXPLORERS ’ DAY DAWNED with the call of a mad, strangled-sounding rooster. When Gilmore came at eight to pick us up, we spilled out from the bright-blue doors of the back gate into a misty rain and an already-packed truck. Field School Goes on a Field Trip! “Come on, everybody,” Gilmore said brightly. “This Land Cruiser holds thirteen Marines!” So ten of us, including a couple new volunteers and the Dutch Ph.D. students, squeezed into a cheerful jumble and bounced up the road to the Quill, backpacks full of insect spray and water bottles. Once again, I was swathed in lightweight nylon, long sleeves and pants, boots, thick socks, and a floppy hat with a cord under my chin, prepared for the tropics to attack at any minute. The Dutch were in sleeveless tops and shorts, cool and bubbly with anticipation; the others showed only slightly less enthusiasm and skin. Gilmore parked up the Quill where the road was rutted out, and one of the guys used the GPS to find the area the students from the eighties had marked.
    We walked up a lush, green lane. Hofman leaned down and picked up a piece of coral and turned it over. “Look at this,” she said. “Do you see this flat side? This was absolutely altered by hand.” The students marveled at Hofman’s laser-beam ability tofind the ancient tool in the landscape; I was impressed by her certainty. How do you discriminate between an edge shaped by humans and a break made by natural forces? That takes experience, and an eye for subtle differences and the patterns a human makes. Matt ran back to the Land Cruiser and returned with a sharpened machete, and began hacking away at the vines behind where the coral tool had been spotted. Hofman grinned. “It’s nice to point and say, ‘Do this’ and he just does it, yes?” The hacking disturbed nests of what the Dutch call “jacky” wasps, which hovered in the lane, looking vicious. “You don’t want them after you,” one of the Ph.D. students said, so we poked around on the ground gingerly, but, finding nothing else, abandoned the spot. We wandered farther down the path and emerged in a cow field, on a promontory high above the gorgeous Atlantic side of the island. The beauty of the surroundings was simply the most obvious reason to be a Caribbean archaeologist.
    We regrouped and hiked back to the road, leaving the coral tool guarded by hovering wasps, and headed up to a trailhead, mostly overgrown, to climb the Quill. Gilmore took the lead and we filed behind him, up an ascent that had me gasping; everyone else was flashing brown muscles and chattering as they climbed. When we reached the area where his student had reported finding a tool, Gilmore told us to look for fruit trees. No matter when they lived, in colonial, pre-Columbian, or ancient times, people gravitated to fruit trees. We fanned out, balancing and picking our way like goats around giant termite nests and spiderwebs. We located a mango tree by the rotting smell of its windfalls and concentrated our search there.
    We all felt the anticipation—ancient people walked here!—and the suspense was delicious, but my eagerness had a particular edge. After the second day digging at the plantation, Gilmore told me I could fill in our two test pits. I filled the holes carefully with dirt, but the nail markers at the corner looked messy, so I gatheredthem up, too, as if tidying up after children. Later I heard two of the Dutch guys surveying the area shout to Gilmore that they couldn’t find the markings for two test pits. “Was I not supposed to remove the nails?” I said. “Did I tell you to remove