"Let's Walk Over Here...": The Ways Leland Ferguson Taught Us Archaeology By Teaching Us About Life

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As his student and friend, Leland asked me to walk and talk with him and contemplate the world around us. He taught us how to look at things differently, with patience and attention. He made me ponder not just archaeology in the field, but life. Through Leland's subtle cues I have adopted an autoethnographic approach to my archaeological practice that continuously, reflexively, shapes who I am as a human. In my paper I share the insights I learned from Leland, how I've used his hints and cues to delve deeper into the sites I work and my life as I work those sites, and how Leland's ability to teach us about archaeology really helped us all learn more about our lives. Through this I hope to express that some of Leland's best taught lessons were not on dirt and artifacts, but on ways archaeology can "make us better people."

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow