Week 2: Walking in a Straight Line and “Playing” with Dirt

This week has been a long and rewarding one. The excitement that I had going into this experience has yet to die down and my interest in archaeology has only grown through just this one week of learning. The field school began Wednesday with participants being divided into groups of three that we will be in for the summer developing and working on a research project. Archaeology is very much a team oriented field. No project is done without the help of many people, whether they be donors, researchers from other universities who may have insight in the research question, or from faculty in our own university. Archaeologists around the country in my experience have been very helpful in responding to requests for help even if they may not agree with the hypothesis or theory being proposed. My team is responsible for answering our research question dealing with the use of ceramics while helping other groups gather data for their research while they do the same for us.

Day two of field school was devoted to building some skills that we may need out in the field. These include using a compass, laying out units, and identifying artifacts. Other skills which I had never really thought about needing to know as an archaeologist were walking in a straight line and identifying types of sediment/soil. Thursday we spent a solid part of the morning practicing walking in a straight line which is harder than you would think. We recorded how many steps we took in 10 m and how much we veered to one side on average when we walk those 10 m (for me it was 14 steps and 1 foot to the right). This is important to know because during surface surveys, where we walk in a line to find artifacts that may be deposited on the surface of the ground, we have to make sure that we do not miss any thing and account for any veering that we may have while walking. Furthermore we learned how to identify dirt by its color and feel which is important because the type of sediment affects the movement of artifacts under the ground and the preservation of these artifacts. During this learning exercise we made quite a mess. Dirt was everywhere.

My highlight of the week happened on Friday which was our first day in the field. A 9 hour day in the 90 degree sun sounds like a sweaty bad time for most people but I felt right at home. Using the survey skills that I learned the day before we walked the site searching for surface finds. Among the 250 or so artifacts that we found that day, the favorite two that I found were a utilized flake tool that could possibly be an unfinished projectile point arrow head, which is so cool, and a palm sized pottery fragment that still has a detailed piece of the rim still intact, which will allow for a more diagnostic study of how pottery was made and what styles they used in this region. I can’t wait to get out into the field again to see what else we can learn from these items!