Learning by Doing: My First Field School Experience, Part II

Continuing on our “learning by doing” theme, find out how the first field school experience can change your perspectives on archaeology.

Dr. Lynne Goldstein

I had two field school experiences as a student. The first was when I was in high school. I was a member of an NSF-funded program in Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago. We met at the Museum every day for 8 weeks, and had an amazing range of professional anthropologists come and talk to us and work with us. The last week was an archaeological field school at one of the Chicago-area Forest Preserves, and was directed by Stuart Struever. It was a great experience (especially traveling on the commuter train during rush hour while filthy from the field), and my “pit partner” was a young woman who had recently been named “Junior Miss Illinois.” She was quite attractive, but she was also very nice and a hard worker. What drove be crazy, however, was the fact that she never got dirty! I would look like Schultz’s
“Pig Pen” and she would have a bit of dust on her shorts – she even wore white shorts!

My other field school experience was the other extreme. I was an undergrad at Beloit College, and we excavated at the Cahokia site, near St. Louis. In this case, the field school was 15 weeks long! We lived in 2 huge tents (women in one, men in the other) left over from the 1930s Beloit expeditions to Egypt. The conditions were pretty primitive. But, it was also a great experience because we spent so much time in the field and in the lab. We really got to know each other and the Cahokia data. Even after 15 weeks, I stayed on after the field school was over and spent several days alone in a pit in the middle of a field, mapping a complex profile. Both of these field school experiences were key to my subsequent career, and were some of the best experiences I have had. From that point on, I have either supervised and/or directed around 30 archaeological field schools. The best thing about field schools now is that it is MUCH easier to be a woman on a field school than it was at that time. The Field Museum experience was pretty egalitarian, but the Beloit experience was less so – I was told that I probably could never be a field archaeologist because women cannot lead field crews.

Katy Meyers

My first archaeological dig was in Chillicothe, Ohio at the site of Brown’s Bottom, hosted by SUNY Geneseo and led by Dr. Paul Pacheco. There are many things from this experience I will never forget, but I have one moment in particular that I think has helped me in later digs the most. Dr. Pacheco loved one thing more than anything else – totally flat and level walls and units. I remember vividly that there was one guy who could create a perfectly flat unit with the most readable and perfect profiles and levels, and because of that he was a rockstar. Having to make perfectly level units has served me very well – not only is this important for taking photos and creating maps, but you can see more and take better notes when you’re careful like this. It also taught me the importance of having a variety of trowel sizes to work around different features and do different types of tasks – always have a square trowel, 1 inch pointing trowel, and 3 inch pointing trowel! I prefer WHS over Marshalltown, but that’s probably because that’s what I learned with. Creating ‘pretty’ units when excavating is something you can only learn by doing – there is an art of troweling and digging, and it needs to be learned through experience.

Erica Dziedzic

I admit to slightly cheating for this blog post because the “learning by doing” field school experience did not actually happen during the field school. However, I have never excavated in the same place twice, so I argue that this story is admissible because every field experience for me is like a new field school.

It is 2005 and I am participating in an excavation just outside of a small, remote village in the highlands of Bolivia. My job on this project was to excavate burials, but one morning, I diverged from my duties due to the promise of an exciting opportunity. Victor, a Bolivian archaeologist who was part of our excavation team, uncovered a well-constructed hole that he believed to be part of an ancient water canal. Like any thorough and curious archaeologist, Victor wanted to explore this canal – crawl inside, take measurements, find out how deep and how far it went. But, when he asked other team members if they wanted to crawl inside this tiny, dark tunnel with him, everyone politely declined. That is, until Victor talked to me. When I was faced with the questions of “Hey, would you like to climb underground into this tiny, dusty space that hasn’t been opened in over 1500 years and find out just how small it is and how deep it goes?” Like a crazy person, I said, “Let me get my flashlight!”

The tunnel was between five and six feet underground and constructed out of mud bricks. We crawled on our stomachs for at least 60 feet into the tunnel, measuring and taking video of our absurd little adventure. The dust filled the air like a curtain and smelled musty; the darkness was unlike anything I have ever experienced – truly black. The deeper we crawled, the narrower the tunnel became, until we could barely squeeze our bodies in between the ancient bricks. It was at this point that certain questions began to enter my mind: how are we going to get out of here? How stable are these walls? What if the tunnel caves in? Yes, these are important questions that should have been thought of before I climbed into that tunnel, but, like I said, I’m crazy.  I decided I had had enough of tunnel life and now my question to Victor was, “Seriously, how do we get out of here?” To get out, first we had to remain on our stomachs and crawl backwards out of the narrow part of the tunnel until we had enough space to do a twist and a somersault in order to continue crawling and emerge head-first out of the tunnel. I had never been so happy to see the sunlight. The next day, Victor asked me if I would go back down into the tunnel, as he wanted to take more measurements. I politely declined and said I was “busy”. What did I learn from this experience? Try anything once, but always make sure you have an escape plan.

Kate Frederick

I have had the opportunity to work on some amazing field projects (from Aztalan in Wisconsin down to Caranqui in Ecuador), and each has taught me a little more about archaeology. But, even after having experienced several seasons of fieldwork, the season that solidified my passion for archaeology was my original field school in Northern Michigan.

My field school was led by Dr. Meghan Howey (now at University of New Hampshire), and was at the University of Michigan Biological Station. I could easily ramble on about all the “learning by doing” experiences I had while at field school from identifying ceramic types to troweling laser straight walls, but the most influential aspect of my field school was the process of creating the grid for shovel testing.

In order to shovel test we first had to layout hundreds of meters of  transects through the dense woods of northern Michigan. This entailed one person trekking into the woods, while the second person stood with a compass making sure the first person stayed in a line. The first person would go as far as they could, then wave frantically so the compass person could spot them in the woods (this was difficult even at 20m sometimes). Then a third person would scramble through the woods with a meter tape, while the compass wielder shouted to go left or right of the giant tree…all in an effort to make the straightest possible grid. This “learning by doing” taught me to master a compass, to bob and weave through thick foliage, and to have extreme patience in the field.