How COVID has Changed/Affected our Work

Hi Fort Followers,

I’ve introduced myself before and written some blogs in the past, but it’s been a while since I’ve written a one so I will reintroduce myself! My name is Lucy Clark, I took the field school in 2019 and then became an independent study student under Dr. Nassaney for the 2019-2020 academic year. I graduated from Western in the summer of 2020 with a degree in anthropology and was supposed to work at the 2020 field school as the lab coordinator, but due to COVID I had to wait another year. I’m back now working as the lab coordinator for the 2021 field school. 

Due to COVID, there have been a lot of changes in the field school and how we conduct lab and field work. While there are some major changes like not living together and having the lecture series virtually, there are also a lot of smaller aspects of field school that we have had to alter due to the restrictions put in place. In the field, we all have our own toolboxes this year that we have assigned numbers for, so we don’t run the risk of mixing up tools. 

There are also specific wet screen stations assigned to specific units, so only two people work at that specific wet screen station. 

Since we don’t have lab at the barn where we usually stay, we had to completely change where we conduct all of our lab work. This year, we have to transport all the artifacts to the lab at WMU, where we wash, dry and sort them. In the lab, we have specific buckets with all the tools you’d need to clean artifacts assigned to each student with their names on them. Much like the toolboxes, this is so we don’t mix up tools or have to sanitize them every time we use them.

It might seem like all these changes are a negative, but I think that it shows how adaptable we are and that we can still figure out a way to work throughout these hard times. It was a real bummer to not be able to work at the 2020 field school, so to be able to have the field school this year with only a few changes in place seems like a small price to pay!

Thanks for reading!