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ADVOCATE T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M
Danny Heitman AT RANDOM
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W e d n e s d ay, d e c e m b e r 25, 2024
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AN LSU PROFESSOR’S STUDY OF WATERLOGGED POSTS CAUSES WORLDWIDE STIR IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CIRCLES
A Christmas tree reminds me that life finds a way
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
LSU archaeology instructor Cher Foster holds pottery shards that were excavated from the Yay Yi Na site in Belize. Foster was part of the LSU team researching and excavating Maya saltworks sites in Belize.
Heather McKillop’s team excavated this late classic Maya wooden canoe paddle at a Belize site called Kaak Naab. The discovery was the first-ever of its kind in the world.
Who would think that a waterlogged piece of rosewood could have enough glitz and glamor for a Hollywood telling of an archaeological adventure? In the summer of 2023, Heather McKillop and her LSU crew were never looking for something flashy while traipsing through the waters of a Belize lagoon. They were seeking out a story. The section of rosewood post stored in the water-filled, plastic container in LSU’s Coastal Archaeology of Latin American Laboratory opened the door to a forgotten story in Maya culture. (For the record, the correct adjective in the case, according to McKillop, is “Maya,” not the oft-used “Mayan.) Pottery shards The word “forgotten” are traced and is also important. The documented after story of Maya salt workexcavation. ers was well-known at the time they were extracting salt from brine during the culture’s classical era between 250 and 900 AD. It just faded with the culture’s collapse over time. But in 2023, the LSU archaeologist and her crew not only resurrected the story of a Maya saltworks site, but what is thought to be the culture’s oldest known saltworks operation. “This post is 1,200 years old,” McKillop said.
The search begins
Maya sharpened the ends of these ancient rosewood posts and pounded them into the ground as support for their saltworks structures.
Water drips from the smooth, rounded rosewood in her hands. If this were Hollywood, the drips of water would segue into a flashback to the beginning of her own story. McKillop is a professor in LSU’s Department of Archaeology & Geoscience. Her work focuses on
ä See DISCOVERY, page 2G
PROVIDED PHOTOS BY HEATHER McKILLOP
A couple of years ago, as the spread of COVID-19 subsided, my co-workers and I planted a memorial tree just outside our workplace. We wanted to remember those we’d lost during the pandemic, and it seemed that the best way to honor their memory was to look toward the future. On a bright March day, we stood in a circle at the edge of our parking lot, sharing a few words before we took shovels in hand and tucked a small pond cypress into the ground. It was bare and spindly, more like a kindling than a proper tree. But pond cypress trees thrive in Louisiana, thanks to their resilience and steady resolve in high wind. Our plucky little tree struck me as just the sort of mascot we needed to answer our grief. Soon, the cypress yielded tiny whispers of green, the color so subtle that it could only be seen up close. My daily inspections of the branches became a small respite before I started each morning’s work shift. The green gradually deepened, becoming more vivid at a casual glance. I stopped fussing over our cypress, and it quietly took up its work of angling toward the sky. Tough seasons of storms and drought brought some close calls. After one long dry spell, I noticed the tree’s brown limbs and figured it was a goner. But the cypress rebounded, announcing its return with velvety green patches. The new growth was so fine that I’d gently run my fingers across the lower branches, reading it like Braille. I couldn’t believe that a thing so ravaged was reclaiming its place in the world. By last December, the cypress had grown strong enough to hold decorations. We looped a few white bulbs around its canopy, then gathered everyone in a circle again to offer season’s greetings and light the tree. The holidays passed, and in the hurry of a new year, we somehow forgot to remove the lights. They were still in place when we opened this year’s holiday season by forming our circle and lighting the tree. Cypress trees can grow quickly, and ours had added a couple of feet this year. Those strands of lights, left for months, offered an outline of the tree as it used to be, now shadowed by the tree it has become. Thanks to that happy accident, my office mates and I got a bright reminder that our
ä See AT RANDOM, page 2G
MO R E THAN A H E ISMAN WINN E R
Billy Cannon memorabilia on display at Capitol Park Museum BY JOY HOLDEN Staff writer
Bunnie Cannon shared a major common interest with her father, Billy — their love for LSU. Although she is the youngest of five kids in the Cannon family, Bunnie Cannon is the only one who has consistently worked at LSU, and she is dedicated to maintaining her father’s legacy at the university, in Baton Rouge
and in Louisiana. She has three goals she wants to achieve to secure Billy Cannon’s legendary status: 1. An exhibition 2. A national award 3. A feature film This month, the first goal is coming to fruition at the Capitol Park Museum as the family’s massive memorabilia collection will be on
ä See CANNON, page 2G
Billy Cannon’s 1959 Heisman Trophy PROVIDED PHOTO
Whose face inspired N.O. ‘Molly Marine’ statue? BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
Molly has been standing in her place of honor in New Orleans’ Elks Place since 1943, so it’s probably accurate to say that most passersby are too busy to take notice of her. That’s Molly, as in New Orleans-based artist Enrique Alférez’s sculpture, “Molly Marine,” the first monument to honor women in the military. It’s easy to find in its cater-corner location across Canal Street
from the Saenger Theater. Patrons of the Joy Theatre only need to step across Basin Street to get a full view of the statue. And though most theatergoers are too busy trying to get to their shows to stop and look at Molly, Mark Jeffers did. The Baton Rouge resident’s familiarity with the statue and its story made him stop and take notice before attending a function at the Joy Theatre. A closer look at Molly’s face piqued his curiosity.
ä See CURIOUS, page 2G
2G ■ Wednesday, December 25, 2024 ■ theadvocate.com ■ The Advocate
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DISCOVERY
AT RANDOM
archaeological field research on ancient Maya saltworks flooded by the ocean. She also uses 3D technology to preserve records of the salt-waterlogged pottery and wood excavated from these sites. Her first archaeological project actually took her to the Northern Highlands of Peru. She was an undergraduate at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, at the time — and she decided to stay there for graduate school. That’s when her adviser set her on a different path, telling her the commissioner of archaeology of Belize asked for an archaeological excavation on an island outside of Belize City. “He asked if I would like to excavate this site for my thesis,” she said. “I was working in water, and this project fit my background of canoeing, boating and all of those things. I had a great time.” Fast forward to 1990, when McKillop was offered a job as an assistant professor at LSU, which, she said, had a great reputation for coastal research. She also liked its proximity to Peru.
pond cypress is continuing to thrive. It’s been a tough year for the country and the world, and the times can often make us feel stuck. But at the doorstep of Christmas, a small, green tree at the edge of a parking lot is carrying the news that even in gray seasons, life remains insistent — pointing upward and outward, enlarging its possibilities. Standing in a circle with people I cherish, I was moved to think that maybe we’ve grown a little, too.
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Continued from page 1G
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
Archaeologist and LSU professor Heather McKillop shows a 3D printed reproduction of the wooden Maya paddle her team discovered at a Maya saltworks excavation in Belize.
team pulled on rubber boots and scaled it side-by-side while looking for more salt-making evidence. The lagoon was labeled Site 15. These were shallow lagoons filled with red mangrove peat absent of such Louisiana swamp creatures as alligators, snakes and snapping turtles. The water was relatively Back to Belize clear, allowing full view of the laBut it was Belize — not Peru — to goon’s floor. That is, until the explorers’ footwhich she ventured back in 2004 on a project funded by an LSU fac- steps stirred silt in the mangrove peat. ulty grant. “I hired someone with a fast boat that could take me from the near- Discovery of wooden posts est town, which is about 30 miles The mangrove trees were the true away, to this coastal lagoon, where survivors of the saltworks site, havI’d worked for many years,” McK- ing grown taller through the years illop said. “I published a book called to keep their leaves above water as ‘Salt White Gold of the Ancient the ocean moved in. Still, there were Maya’ about the artifacts that we some wooden protrusions among had found at three sites. They were them that didn’t add up. “My goal was to collect 15 of the jars and bowls with pot legs that were used to boil brine salty water bowls and 15 pot legs and see how standardized they were in their in pots over fires to make salt.” Salt was harvested when the form,” McKillop said. “Then my boat concentrated salt brine solution driver, Jackie, who was also part of was heated in the open pots until the team, pointed out the posts.” A back-and-forth ensued. Were it reached a boiling point, causing the water to evaporate and leaving they roots or posts? Surely they couldn’t be posts unless they were behind salt crystals. “The classic Maya with the tem- sharpened on the bottom. One of the wooden pieces was ples and palaces and huge populations in the inland area of Belize eventually dislodged, to reveal and Guatemala, Mexico and Hon- that it was, indeed, a post with a duras needed salt and really didn’t sharpened bottom meant to suphave it,” McKillop said. “So, this is port a building — a salt kitchen where they got their salt.” used to extract salt from brine. Still, just finding the saltworks “I thought, ‘I wrote this book in sites wasn’t enough. McKillop had 2004, and we didn’t find wood,’ ” to find something more about them, McKillop said. “But in Louisiana, something that told their stories. our wood isn’t preserved by the So, she used a 2004 research rainforest, so we weren’t looking grant to map a once land-bound site for wood in 2004.” submerged in sea water, also called The team began mapping the an ocean lagoon, where she and her site, finding the posts which had
been stationed to support rectangular buildings with floors filled with brine boiling pottery. “That was in Site 15. So, we decided to excavate another site, Site 14, to see if we could find wooden posts there,” McKillop said.
The first of its kind Site 14 was where the true prize was discovered — a full-sized Maya paddle. “No ancient canoe or paddle had ever been found before this,” McKillop said. “The Maya were all around the Yucatan Peninsula, so, of course, they had boats. But we had an old paddle. We photographed it. Then, we put it back, because as soon as we took the wood out of the peat and water, it started to deteriorate.” McKillop’s crew eventually returned to retrieve the paddle and was granted permission by the Belize government to bring it to Texas for radiocarbon testing and professional conservation. The piece now is part of the Museum of Belize’s collection, but McKillop was allowed to make 3D copies of it, which are stored among the other artifacts in the Coastal Archaeology Lab with one on display in the foyer LSU’s Howe-Russell Kniffen Geoscience Complex. The paddle caused a worldwide stir in archaeology circles. McKillop reported news of the paddle at the Belize Government Conference, which eventually won her another grant for exploration.
Finding the oldest saltworks
of Texas at Tyler geography assistant professor E. Cory Sills to excavate a site called Jay-yi Nah, which curiously lacked the broken pots so common at other saltworks. The documented 4,040 wooden posts in 70 other watery sites previously uncovered by McKillop were filled with pottery. The floors between the Jay-yi Nah posts were scattered with a few pottery shards. “These were the residences,” McKillop said. “It took us a while to realize this. And the shards resembled the shards from the nearby island site of Wild Cane Cay, which I had previously excavated. So, I suggested to Cory that we survey Jay-yi Nah again for posts and sea floor artifacts.” A planned second trip to further explore Jay-yi Na was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic — which brings this story back to 2023 when they were able to go back. McKillop, Sills and their teams, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, finally returned to Belize to discover shards they found contrasted with those from other nearby underwater sites, which had imported pottery, obsidian and high-quality flint. “At first, this was perplexing,” McKillop said. “But a radiocarbon date on a post we’d found at Jay-yi Na provided an Early Classic date, 250-600 AD.” Proof that Jay-yi Nah operated as a private venture in the Maya world and is the oldest of the underwater saltworks sites — its age brought to light by a waterlogged post discovered by a team from LSU.
In 2019, she returned to Belize in Email Robin Miller at romiller@ a joint project with the University theadvocate.com.
CURIOUS
Continued from page 1G
Who was Molly’s model?
“Who was the model for Molly?” Jeffers asked. “And if there was a specific model, did she live in New Orleans?” The answer to both of those questions is yes. Well, partly. According to Katie Bowler Young’s 2021 book, “Enrique Alférez: Sculptor,” the artist asked his neighbor’s friend, Judy Musgrove, to stand as a model for the sculpture. Young says Alférez also incorporated characteristics of four female Marines. Musgrove reunited with Alférez at the Women Marines Association’s 1966 national conference in New Orleans. The conference lasted 10 days with some of the time dedicated to cleaning and rededicating the sculpture, which had been standing only 23 years at that time. Both Alférez and Musgrove were invited to the event. “It was quite a reunion,” wrote Times-Picayune reporter Betsy Petersen in her June 26, 1966, article. “Together for the first time since those days were Enrique Alférez, the sculptor who devoted his talent, without charge, to the creation of Molly Marine; Mrs. Judy Musgrove, who is, you might say, the REAL Molly Marine — she posed for the statue; and Charles Gresham, now a noted industrial designer, whose public relations efforts on behalf of the Marine Corps gave Molly her start in life.”
The idea for Molly Gresham, a technical sergeant and Marine recruiter in New Orleans, commissioned “Molly Marine” in hope of increasing the enlistment of women into the military during World War II. “The minute they announced that women could be in the service, I dreamed up this thing,” Gresham told Petersen. “The statue was to be dedicated to women in all branches of the service, and Alférez was asked to design it. The Architectural Stone Co. donated the materials to cast the statue from Alférez.”
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
FILE PHOTO
A former professional model, Judy Musgrove, of New Orleans, was PROVIDED PHOTO BY KANDACE POWER GRAVES sculptor Enrique Alférez’s model for ‘Molly Marine.’ Enrique Alférez’s statue stands near Canal Street and Elks Place. Gresham, himself, approached Alférez with his idea. As pointed out by Petersen, the sculptor donated his time and talent to make the statue of a female Marine reservist. Musgrove, meanwhile, was a former professional model. She told Petersen that Alférez discovered her by accident. “I was visiting a friend’s new apartment, and Enrique came over to light the water heater for her,” Musgrove said. “Alférez invited us to his studio. And when we got there, he said, ‘Will you please step up on that stand there?’ He picked up the clay and started to model.” Musgrove also recalled that her husband was angry when he found out that she was modeling after she promised she would quit the profession. “But who could resist the charm of Enrique Alférez or the honor of modeling for him?” she said.
The story of Enrique Alférez Alférez was a Mexican artist who settled in New Orleans in 1929. Along with “Molly Marine,” his public artworks include the New Orleans Lakefront Airport façade reliefs; the “Fountain of the Four Winds,” also at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport; the bronze relief “Louisiana At Work and Play” above the entrance of Charity Hospital; the lagoon
bridges at City Park; and the Botanical Gardens’ fountains and figures in City Park. Some of these pieces were commissioned by the Federal Artists Project through the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. Long after his 1999 death, the sculptor’s name again made Times-Picayune headlines in reporter Doug McCash’s November article about a newly discovered wooden sculpture possibly being Alférez’s work. As for “Molly Marine,” the statue was erected and dedicated on Nov. 10, 1943, the year the Marines activated the women’s reserve, as well as the 168th Marine Corps’ birthday. She stands 12½ feet above her pedestal. According to the U.S. Marine Corps website, marines.mil, two reproductions of “Molly Marine” have since been raised. The first was in 2000 in Quantico, Virginia, where women are trained to be Marine officers. The second was in 1999, in Parris Island, where enlisted female Marines are trained. “At the end of every female platoon’s training cycle, the recruits are asked to vote for which fellow recruit they feel best embodies the qualities and values of a Marine throughout recruit training,” marines.mil states. “This is a practice unique to the 4th Recruit Training Battalion. This Marine is to be given the Molly Marine
Award, given from the Women Marines Association.”
Molly overcame obstacles As for the original “Molly,” she faced her own set of obstacles before her permanent installment at Elks Place. Gresham told Petersen that dignitaries from Washington traveled to New Orleans to see the sculpture while it was still a clay model. The model tipped over during the viewing. “I remember it was over there on the third floor of what is now Preservation Hall, and the floor was very bad,” Alférez told Petersen. “You brought a bunch of rookie Marines to bring it downstairs.” “It was a freestanding, fulllength model in clay,” said Musgrove, picking up the story where Alférez left off. “And when it fell down, it sort of squished. Anyway, Enrique picked up the pieces and started over again.” Today, Molly peers out at New Orleans from her oak-shaded pedestal while honoring military women. Maybe more passersby will now stop to honor her. Do you have a question about something in Louisiana that’s got you curious? Email your question to curiouslouisiana@ theadvocate.com. Include your name, phone number and the city where you live.
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Billy Cannon’s high school letter jacket from Istrouma High in Baton Rouge
CANNON
Continued from page 1G display in the “Billy Cannon: They Called Him Legend” exhibit, starting 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 660 N. Fourth St., Baton Rouge. “This is the first opportunity I’ve had to get most of his significant items in one place so that people can view them,” Bunnie Cannon said. “I’ve got to figure out what to do with everything because it’s in a trust for 100 years. My dad’s only wish was that it not be sold in pieces, and that it stay together and people see it.” This exhibit will give the public a chance to see many artifacts from the Cannon family’s extensive collection of trophies, photographs, uniforms and more. Highlights include Cannon’s Heisman Trophy, Houston Oiler jersey, Istrouma High School letterman jacket and the lab coat he wore while working at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. “The Louisiana State Museum is extremely grateful that the Cannon Family and the Billy Cannon Sports Memorabilia Trust agreed to loan us almost 200 images and artifacts for our exhibition,” said Joyce Miller, Louisiana State Museum historian. Miller added that the memorabilia will help the museum tell the extraordinary story of Billy Cannon — on and off the gridiron — to existing fans and a new generation. The exhibition moves beyond football achievements, exploring his 1983 arrest for producing counterfeit money and, after his release from prison, his 23 years of service as a dentist at Angola where he earned the admiration and affection of many inmates. Bunnie Cannon wants Louisiana to know that Billy Cannon helped put Baton Rouge on the map as a destination city after winning LSU’s first Heisman Trophy. He was also instrumental in winning the national championship in 1959. She sees this exhibit as her way of showing her father’s contribution to Baton Rouge and Louisiana. “Don’t forget about the people who built it,” she reminded. Bunnie and the Cannon family chose the Capitol Park Museum to display Billy Cannon’s items because they “owe something back to the state that was so good to him.” The exhibit will run until Jan. 10, 2026. For tickets to the opening night, visit eventbrite.com/e/ billy-cannon-they-called-himlegend-exhibition-openingtickets-1092574673259. For more information on the exhibit, visit louisianastatemuseum. org/exhibit/billy-cannon-theycalled-him-legend.
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Knights of Columbus The St. George Mother of Mercy Council 4030 was awarded recognition for outstanding work during the last year on Nov. 5. Shown are District Deputy Jim Stell, left, and past Grand Knight David Goldsmith.
Baton Rouge area Submarine Veterans The Baton Rouge area Submarine Veterans recently held a bimonthly meeting at Drusilla Seafood Restaurant. Shown are, from left, seated, John ‘Tiny’ Ruisch, WWII combat veteran James Bunch, Commander Bill Pedneau, Donald David, Kevin Vizinat and Gary Surber; standing, Brian Watson, Robert Chenier, Paul Barker, Thomas Lacy, Jeff Pedneau, Charles Paradelas, Carl Walker, Jimmy Campbell and James Powell. Present but not in the photo is William Powell.
Fais Do Do The Fais Do Do Christmas Cocktail Buffet was held on Dec. 5 at the Baton Rouge Country Club. Shown are, from left, committee members Julie Hubbell and Catherine Harrell, President Carol Anne Blitzer, and chairmen Patty Newton and Ann Conway.
Baton Rouge Bridge Center The Baton Rouge Bridge Center honored club member Craig Cordes with a gumbo luncheon on Dec. 2 for his achievement of earning 10,000 master points.
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