When we returned to camp, more visitors had arrived. Tom Lutz, a writer, literary critic, and founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books, was covering the expedition as a freelancer for the New York Times. Bill Benenson, the expedition coleader and financial backer, arrived with him.

The rain started again—a massive downpour—and I huddled under my hammock, writing in my journal, before rejoining the group under the kitchen tarp. The atmosphere was one of focused work: Dave Yoder was downloading massive numbers of photographs onto hard drives, while Lucian Read and the film crew fussed with their equipment, cleaning it and working to keep it dry—a never-ending job—and charging batteries with the newly arrived generators. The ex-SAS crew was busy cutting bamboo to lay down paths over the deepening mud. The entire camp area was flooding, and as the mud rose it came oozing in under the tarps.

The rain continued all afternoon. That evening, after the usual freeze-dried dinner, we remained under the tarps, the day’s work finally done. Woody tried to light a fire by digging a hole in the ground, soaking a roll of paper towels in gasoline, piling wet wood on top, and lighting it. But the accumulating water soon reached the hole and flooded it, putting out the wretched fire.

A disagreement had flared up that morning about what to do about the cache of artifacts. Steve called a general meeting that evening. We gathered in a semicircle of chairs by the light of the lanterns, stinking of DEET and mildew, drinking tea or coffee and slapping insects, while the steady thrum of rain sounded on the sheltering tarps.

Steve opened the discussion by explaining that the site was in grave danger of being looted. Even if we hadn’t found it, he pointed out, deforestation was less than ten miles from the valley’s entrance and rapidly approaching. In that sense we had saved it from destruction, but only temporarily. Virgilio had estimated the illegal logging would reach the valley in eight years or less, which would result in the immediate looting of the cache, worth possibly millions of dollars. Even more ominous, the Honduran soldiers had reported a narcotrafficking airstrip being carved out of the jungle beyond the entrance to the valley. Enough people now knew the location of T1, Steve said, that the cat was out of the bag; the narcos had the money and planes; they would loot the site as soon as we left. He felt the team should remove one artifact—to prove what we had found and to use it to raise money for a swift excavation of the site. “We’ve opened Pandora’s box,” he said, and now we had a responsibility to protect the artifacts.

Bill Benenson agreed, arguing that the removal of a few objects would not harm the context, that it was a kind of salvage archaeology, and that bringing out a gorgeous item would be an effective fund-raising tool to interest donors in preserving the valley and ruins. And if the site were looted, which seemed possible, at least one artifact would be saved.

After this, Chris Fisher spoke. He was uncompromising. “The whole world will be watching what we do here,” he said, his voice raised. He was adamantly opposed to a hasty excavation of even one object. First, he pointed out, we had no excavation permit. Second, and most important, the value of the objects was in their context, not in the individual pieces. There were pieces like this already in museum collections, but no cache had ever been excavated in situ. A careful, legal excavation by qualified archaeologists might reveal a tremendous amount about this culture. Chemical analyses could show, for example, if the vessels held offerings of food, like chocolate or maize. There might be royal burials underneath, and those had to be treated with care and dignity. He said that if anyone dug up anything right now, he would immediately resign from the project, as it went against all his professional ethics.

And what if, three weeks from now, the cache was looted? asked Benenson.

“So be it,” said Chris. He said we could not engage in unethical behavior in anticipation of the illegal behavior of others. We must not do anything that would be viewed as unprofessional by the archaeological community. And besides, he said, it wasn’t our decision; this wasn’t our country; this was the national patrimony of Honduras. It was their site and their decision whether or not to excavate. But he hoped to God the Hondurans wouldn’t make the wrong decision, because to excavate hastily, right now, would not only turn the archaeological community against the project but would destroy the primary value of this discovery.

Chris turned to Oscar Neil and asked him in Spanish: “What do you think?”

So far, Oscar had been listening silently. As Honduras’s chief of archaeology, the decision to excavate would be his, in consultation with Virgilio Paredes. Replying in Spanish, he strongly agreed with Chris. He pointed out that the same narcotraffickers Steve had mentioned as a threat would actually keep looters at bay—because they didn’t want looters on their turf. “The narcos are the owners of the outlying territory here,” he said. The impenetrable forest itself was protection; the artifacts had been there for perhaps eight hundred years, and as long as the forest remained intact they would be naturally safeguarded. The saqueadores (looters) were interested in more accessible sites—and there were sites far easier to get to than this one. The narcos wouldn’t bother looting it; they had their own much more profitable business. Finally, he said, the Honduran military was already discussing plans to come in, patrol the valley, and establish Honduran government power in what was essentially an area beyond sovereign control.*

Oscar’s and Chris’s arguments prevailed, and it was decided to leave everything in situ, untouched for now, to await careful and proper excavation.