Student Mentorship and Reflections of Service on DPAA Recovery Projects

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fulfilling a Nation’s Promise: The Search, Recovery, and Accounting Efforts of DPAA and Its Partners" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological recovery of missing service personnel on conflict landscapes have increased since 2015 through strategic partnerships between the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and volunteer organizations, heritage and cultural resource management (CRM) businesses, and universities. Such partnerships result in the sharing of methodologies and innovative technologies that are adapted and implemented at incident-related sites. Team members with varying levels of experience in field recoveries are offered opportunities to train in specific archaeological methods related to the DPAA. Partnership projects operating as academic field schools or commercial-style projects expose early career archaeologists, as well as veterans or other volunteers, to different learning opportunities through adaptive and strategic cooperation while on site. As a result, supervisors and assistants collaborate to teach archaeological field methods, discuss recovery challenges, and receive crucial mentorship throughout the project from experienced professionals. Collaboration between project participants from multiple countries increases the social value and educational potential of DPAA projects and fosters invaluable cross-cultural experiences for foreign students, volunteers, and professionals engaged in US-funded and directed projects. In addition, such collaborations may result in the establishment of similar organizations in foreign countries focused on the recovery of their own unaccounted MIA service members.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Fulfilling a Nation’s Promise: The Search, Recovery, and Accounting Efforts of DPAA and Its Partners

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37905.0