The Role of Federal-Academic Partnerships in Training the Next Generation of Archaeologists: A Case Study from the Ocala National Forest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Ocala National Forest is the largest in the southern United States. Its 400,000 acres is home to 14,000 years of human history. In 2019, authors Dysart and Gonzalez-Tennant developed a multiyear project centering on an iterative approach to predictive modeling, including field testing to refine results. Annual internships, field schools, and graduate theses support this and related goals. Dozens of students have been trained, and many, particularly graduate students, have been engaged (and financially supported) as core members of the partnership, which is designed to prepare students for professional careers with state/federal agencies and private companies. This paper discusses our approach to creating and sustaining the partnership, our collaborative process for training students, and an overview of documented resources. For instance, use of open-source GIS to identify unrecorded Indigenous mounds via lidar. Other open-source digital technologies (e.g., photogrammetry, RTK GNSS) support our work through the rapid documentation of historical resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36384.0