Real life adventures of an archaeologist

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/anthro-field-crs01.jpg” caption=”McMaster students (L to R) Cody McNae, Rose Monachino, and Diana Etling enjoy the adventure of putting together pieces of the past in an archaeological field school course. Photo credit: Aaron Clemens”]Aaron Clemens is a third-year representative from the McMaster Anthropology Society, who has recently participated in a spring field course in anthropology. Clemens' personal account is yet another Daily News story intended to represent the various rich experiences offered by members of McMaster's diverse community.

Nothing is more exciting or cool than to be able to say to people “I'm an archaeologist.” Of course, the usual response is often “Oh, so you dig up dinosaurs? That's awesome!”

No, we do not dig up dinosaurs; that is palaeontology, not archaeology. Sometimes, to avoid that response, I will call myself an anthropologist, in which case I often get mistaken for studying insects. Another popular comparison is to that of Indiana Jones. Yes, I do get to wear a cool hat, and I might know how to use a tool or two. However, I do not own a whip, nor do I go on amazing adventures finding buried treasure, and I've never engaged in a gunfight with Nazis or an underground cult. Furthermore, archaeology is not the looting of artefacts in caves or ancient structures to sell for profit. These are some of the stereotypes perpetuated by various media forms. As Indiana Jones said “There are no maps to buried treasure, and 'X' never, ever marks the spot. 70% of all archaeology is done in libraries, with research.”

Since we've covered what archaeology is not, let's discuss what archaeology actually is. Archaeology is literally the study of the old: 'archaeo' meaning 'ancient' or 'earlier,' and 'logy' meaning 'study of.' Archaeologists study past cultures through the examination of the material remains those cultures left behind – learning what they can through recovery and reconstruction. However, to get a real sense of what archaeology is cannot be derived from a textbook or news article; archaeology has to be experienced firsthand to really understand what it is all about.

I recently took part in an excavation at Coote's Paradise as part of the archaeology field course offered by McMaster University to gain credits toward my Honours Bachelor of the Arts in anthropology. Our instructor, Scott Martin, along with teaching assistants, Meghan Burchell and Natalie Brewster, led sixteen of us in the excavation of 23 square meters of land. Over a six-week period the group discovered a total of 4,027 artefacts, and 17 features. The days were often hot, cold, and/or raining. Despite the weather conditions, and taking time out of my usual summers of hibernation, I enjoyed every single minute of it.

The course started off, like any other, with an introduction to the basic theory of archaeology, how to use some of the equipment, and, of course, introductions amongst the students and instructor. The first thing we did upon our arrival at the actual site was to get on our hands and knees and crawl through the grass looking for artefacts on the ground's surface. Eventually, we found about 70 to 80 artefacts, and we laid down our one-meter squared units in the most concentrated areas.

The equipment we used was pretty basic: a trowel, a dustpan, a bucket, and a screen; no archaeologist should ever be caught without these basic tools. Accessories included a line level, a lot of string, tape measure, and root clippers. As we dig, we put the dirt into buckets, and then mashed it through a 1/8-inch wire screen to find any artefacts we may have missed. Any found objects were put in plastic 'baggies' and labelled accordingly.

At the end of each week, we would take our artefacts back to the lab for cleaning and cataloguing. In addition to mastering the basic skills of math, tolerance of heat, rain, mud, and the ability to spot tiny artefacts amongst clumps and mounds of dirt, archaeologists must also be skilled in the art of data entry.

Jeff Schuster holds up a large pottery shard found at the dig. Photo credit: A. Clemens

The majority of the artefacts that we recovered from the site were lithic flakes. Lithic simply means 'stone'. Flakes are the leftovers from the creation or retouching of stone tools, such as scrapers, net sinkers, and everyone's favourite: projectile points. (The general term for the stone, bone, or wooden tip of a projectile – the point that is attached to a weapon such as an arrow, dart, lance, or spear.)

Finding actual stone tools were very rare, all we found was essentially the waste left behind in making them. Occasionally we found native pottery, but only very small shards, with no whole pots or vessels. Other artefacts discovered included rope, glass, modern ceramics, spent bullet shells, and small animal bones and teeth.

The experience itself was definitely one of the most rewarding, exciting, and interesting things I have ever done in my life. Anyone can read about history in a book or see it on television, but very rarely is someone afforded the chance to actually dig it up, play with it, and reconstruct a past that has long been forgotten. To physically hold human history in your bare hands, to me, is far more fascinating (and safer) than dodging booby traps and outrunning a giant boulder.

The Anthropology 3CC6 Archaeological Field School course, with funding support from Experiential Education, runs most years at Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, led by John Triggs. This is the first year that excavations have been conducted in the Royal Botanical Gardens (Coote's Paradise) with instructor Scott Martin'at the helm'. The goals of the course include instructing students in the practical elements of pre-contact archaeology in Ontario and investigation of a site that has not seen formal archaeological attention in nearly 40 years.

“Except for one, however, none of the students had been engaged in archaeology in the field before,” says Martin. “So the sheer newness of the enterprise probably had something to do with their exuberance – that and being out of the classroom in the sun after a long winter taking part in a scheme that allowed numerous different formats of learning/teaching.”