To date, we have found 12 burials this season.

So how do we know where to dig?

One way is by digging “shovel test pits” (STPs), and that’s just what we did on Day 2 in the field.

The week before, the BASC logistics crew and several of our crew had gone on Friday to set up the two Weatherports (tents) that we use. The large white one is a combination storage/lunch area, and the smaller tan one is used as a bathroom facility.

When we arrived, lo and behold, the tan tent was collapsed and some distance from where it had been left. The door, the cover, and pieces of the metal frame were strewn everywhere.

Putting the tent back up.

It had been windy over the weekend, so at first we thought it had just blown down. Some of the crew secured the white tent with more tie-downs & gravel, and the rest of the crew dragged the pieces of the tent back and started to put it back up.

After that, we all took pinflags and started to walk the surface of the site, marking anything that had worked its way to the surface of the gravel over the winter. Since there were a lot of newbies, Laura & I, along with some of the more experienced grad students, had to check the flags, and wound up pulling some that were marking things we don’t collect.

Getting pin flags.

Lining up for the survey.

And off they go!

The end result—lots of pin flags.

In the end, we had a whole lot of pin flags showing things to be mapped in and collected.

The more we thought about the tent, the more we didn’t think it blew down. It had been tied to the surrounding logs with multiple ropes, and it was hard to imagine that all that had come untied just due to wind. Most folks here are really good at tying things down. The best guess is that maybe someone was having a bonfire somewhere on the point and was getting cold in the wind, and got the idea to borrow the tent. It looks like maybe they tried to move it as a whole and the frame collapsed. Anyway, we have it back up now.

However, this does present a few training challenges. Archaeology isn’t something that is taught in North Slope Borough schools (or most other schools for that matter.) College-level or graduate-level field school students usually arrive with at least a theoretical idea of what archaeology is and how it is done. High school students don’t. That means we have to teach them enough so they can be effective in the field, but not bore them into quitting in the process.

We do short lectures about archaeological basics and how to fill out a bag, we practice filling out the various recording forms we use at the site, and introduce the theodolite (an instrument we use to measure horizontal and vertical angles.) We also spend parts of a couple days in the lab processing artifacts so students can get familiar with the sorts of things they will (or should) be finding, and get some hands-on experience on what will happen to the artifacts they will be collecting in the field.

We also try to do more active things. One is an exercise in mapping, ethnographic observation, and site interpretation. The more experienced students get to be the actors. Each pair of them gets a bunch of assorted candy and can do whatever they want for about 15 minutes. The newbies divide into groups, and each group watches one set of actors, recording what they do.

Paddy Colligan and Brittany Osland watch Tony Krus & Krysta Terry interacting with candy.

Tony Krus & Krysta Terry ‘trade’ while Tiana Elkins records their actions.

Next they rotate, and each group gets to map in what is left behind– the “material culture” if you will. This is pretty much equivalent to what archaeologists have to work with. Laura and I walk around asking leading questions like “So, do you notice any patterns? What could that be a result of?”

Dave Grant maps a candy scatter.

Then we get together, and the mappers (the archaeologists) get to describe what they saw, and what they think happened at the “site” based on what they saw. Then the people who watched the action (the ethnographers) say what they saw, and what they think it meant. After that, the actors get to say what they were really doing. And there is candy for everyone, lots of it.

It’s pretty interesting, can help students understand the limitations of both archaeology and ethnography, and also gets them thinking about what the things they see on a site might mean about past activity.

For a change of pace, we also go outside and practice excavating in the parking lot at my office. The newbies get to actually use trowels for the first time.

Paddy Colligan shows Brittany Osland how to use a trowel.

The whole crew excavating my parking lot.

Tiana Elkins excavating her first test.