(April 28, 2016)—Our 2016 Preservation Archaeology Field School is only a month away! For me, late April brings a list of quirky archaeological tasks, such as ordering thousands of very specific plastic bags for artifact curation and researching portable toilet companies. Jeff Clark and I recently took a brief break from these preparations for the upcoming field season to look back on the work our project team completed last year at the Dinwiddie site.
Our 2014–2015 work at Dinwiddie benefited from a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant (award 1560465) similar to the one that will be supporting our undergraduate students at the upcoming field school. We recently submitted project reports to the NSF on the results of that award. Unlike typical archaeological project reports that are focused on the details of excavations, these summaries are focused largely on our students; where they came from, what they learned, and what they worked together to discover as members of the field school team.
We enjoyed this opportunity to reflect on some of the teaching and research highlights of our last two field seasons, and thought our readers might also enjoy a brief summary. We’re happy to share our six-page NSF project outcomes report with you here (opens as a PDF).
This year’s students arrive on May 25. We will spend a few days in southern Arizona, orienting them to the Southwest with visits to the Valencia site (an archaeological preserve in Tucson), the Arizona State Museum, San Xavier Mission, and the Tohono O’odham Cultural Center.
I’ll be writing again soon as we prepare for and kick off the field season. As in previous years, students will be sharing their experiences with you here on this blog.
 |
 |