A Day in the Life of a WMU Field School Student

Prepared for the field with trowel
 and fanny-pack.

Good evening,

My name is Andrea and I am participating in 2018 WMU field school. I am not a full-time student; I have been in the military for last nine years and just taking time off to complete this course. I have been out of the academic world for a bit and I decided it's high time I finished my degree. The archaeological field school goes towards my anthropology major, however, I'd like to think of it as living out a childhood dream. My dream was a bit more action packed; I was definitely a lot cooler than I currently am (I'm single handedly bringing back the fanny-pack) and I always envisioned being in some far away land, but this is a satisfying compromise. I am the oldest field school student at the grandiose age of 30 while my classmates are about 10 yrs younger (These little youths have endless supplies of energy and can stay up until 1:00am no problem. I'm out by 9:00pm). I'm pretty sure they are referring to me as the "old lady".

If you want to become an archaeologist, you'll need a field school. The Fort St. Joseph site is a great place to learn the Art of Le Archaeology. You don't have to be in some far away land to study archaeology, it's here in our own backyard, Michiganders. In this blog I will give you the inside scoop on a day in the life of a field school student/old lady.

Monday through Friday we live in Niles at a lovely farm house that the University rents for us (definitely not a bed and breakfast). The home was once a stable on the Morris estate but has since been converted and suits the field school needs perfectly. My day begins at 5:00am when I get up and make the coffee. I've been getting up at 5:00am for so long I just can't seem to break the habit. My classmates are up around 7:00am. We eat breakfast then usually have a meeting at 7:50am. After the meeting we head out to the field. 

At the site we unload our supplies and untarp our excavation units. At the beginning of the season everyone was assigned a pit-partner and a 1x2 meter unit to excavate. We split our units in half and go down 5cm at a time on one side then the other. As we collect soil we begin to wet screen. We place the soil on a screen and spray it down with a hose. The water washes away the dirt while screen catches our tiny artifacts. Once we have reached the bottom of our level we will map it and annotate any artifacts, structural stones and the soil composition and the zone. Currently at the FSJ site we have three soil zones; alluvium, plow, and occupation. As of right now none of our units are down to the occupation zone but in the next day or so we should hit it. When we collect artifacts from our units we put them in bags or viles and tag them with the level, zone, accession number, depth, site, provenience, and date. The artifacts found in the wet screen will be placed on a dry screen first. 

A collage of N11 W4. Top images: interesting finds (animal remains
and seed beads); middle left: N11 W4 before clearing;
 bottom left: sawing out root; bottom right: my unit. 

  

After we leave the field each day we head straight to the local YMCA. The Y has graciously allowed us to use their showers! Which is amazing because instead of waiting in a 19 person long line at our residence we are in and out in 15mins. Thank you YMCA! 

Every night an assigned set of pit- partners prepares dinner for our group. Tonight we had curry; I have never tried curry before but it was great and I'm glad we have an opportunity to try new things. Some nights we are lucky enough to be hosted by community members. It's always a treat when the community hosts us because you really get to see first-hand how much this project means to them.

Every Wednesday we attend lectures at the Niles District Library. This year’s lecture series theme is Technology. So far, we have heard lectures on "Cross Cultural Technologies of the Great Lakes Region during the Fur Trade Era" (18th century reenactment) and "Explaining the 'Boom' in Copper in Copper Studies: How New Technologies Help us to Understand Old Ones" and this past Wednesday the topic was "Crafting Culture at Fort St. Joseph: The Technology of Tinkling Cone Production". The lectures are always interesting and give us new insights on understanding the artifacts we find.

Brush'em, brush'em, brush'em!

In the evenings we have 2 hours of lab where we wash and sort the artifacts that we collected from the field. The artifacts are then placed on a drying rack. Once the artifacts have dried, we sort them and catalog them.

And that's all I got to say about that.