Student Perspectives on Archaeological Field Schools with Federal Agencies

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Recent Directions in Florida’s Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Field schools are as diverse as the students enrolling in them. This paper examines the perspective of students and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) participating in the joint University of Central Florida – US Forest Service field school in the Ocala National Forest (ONF). Field schools remain the primary way to apply classroom instruction in a real-world setting. We discuss our participation in the past two years of the ONF field school and how faculty, GTAs, and federal archaeologists collaborated on the project. Our paper examines engaged strategies for teaching and learning archaeological surveying, phase I, II, and III excavation, artifact analysis, and other common archaeological methods. The ONF field school also provided unique opportunities for past students to return as supervisors (e.g., graduate TA). We conclude with a discussion of the ways a diverse group of participants maintained an inclusive, supportive, and professional working environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Directions in Florida’s Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow