1. Education

Field Schools and Scheduled Excavations in the Western USA

Numerous field schools and other planned excavations are held each year in the western United States. Here's a sampling of the most recent.

Field schools listed below with dates older than the current year may indicate an ongoing project that has not yet established dates for this season.

Birch Creek, Owyhee River Valley, Oregon

May 24- June 1, 2010. Washington State University. Site dated between 7,000 to 2,000 years ago and is situated along the northwestern boundary of the Great Basin culture area. The most recent occupation of the site is a large village of numerous pit houses that were occupied and abandoned on multiple occasions.

Catalina (Pima) Island (California)

July 10-August 16, 2012. Institute for Field Research. The Pimu Catalina Island Archaeology Project provides a RPA certified field school where students are immersed in 9,000 years of cultural history while developing field and lab skills as well as the application of cultural resource law and policies with lectures by local experts, Tongva professionals, and researchers.

Visit the Project Website

Chaco Stratigraphy Project (New Mexico)

Ongoing. University of New Mexico.Welcome to the Chaco Stratigraphy Project, an interdisciplinary research program at the University of New Mexico involving field investigations in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Chaco was the center of an unprecedented cultural development between ca. AD 800 and 1200 known as the "Chaco Phenomenon." During this period, people living in and around the canyon experienced an explosive episode of economic growth that culminated in the construction of large masonry buildings called "great houses."

Clarksburg, California Shipwreck

October 22-26, 2007. Past Foundation. Clarksburg Shipwreck Project, a week-long field project to document a 19th century shipwreck in the Sacramento River near Clarksburg

Cooper's Ferry, Idaho

June 21 to August 13, 2010. Oregon State University. Cooper's Ferry is an early Paleoindian site in the Salmon River valley of Idaho since 2009. The site has a long record of repeated human occupation, beginning with a Western Stemmed Tradition/Paleoarchaic artifact assemblage.

Crow Canyon Archaeology Adventures (Colorado)

June to September (annually). The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center continues its on-going research on ancient Pueblo Indian communities with weekly dig programs for adults, teens, families, and other groups.

Eagle Lake Zooarchaeology Ecological Field Course (California)

June 27-July 24, 2010. Cotsen Institute, UCLA. Laboratory-based field schourse that includes the identification of the animal remains, and the interpretation of those remains.

El Presidio de Santa Barbara (California)

July 5-August 12, 2011. California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, California Polytechnic State University. Intensive 6-week course in both field and laboratory methods at historic Spanish colonial fort (1782-1846) in downtown Santa Barbara

Field Methods in Rock Art (Texas)

June 5-June 29, 2012. Shumla School and Texas State University. A three-week field school in rock art recording offered through the Department of Extension Studies, emphasis on the Lower Pecos rock art. Are you a looking for an amazing field school opportunity? Every summer SHUMLA offers its Field Methods in Rock Art field school course. This year, this unique experience will be held from 5-29 June 2012. Enroll to spend four intense weeks exploring desert canyons and recording world-class rock art while earning three graduate or six undergraduate college credit hours through Texas State University. You will learn: - How to establish a field research design and data collection protocols - Current theories regarding the meaning and function of rock art - Rock art recording methods, laboratory procedures, and data analysis - The archeology of the Lower Pecos, hunter-gatherer lifeways, and foraging adaptation For more details, visit our Web-site http://www.SHUMLA.org/, contact the office at programs@SHUMLA.org or call (432) 292-4847.

Fort Vancouver (Washington)

June 14-July 30, 2011. Portland State University, Washington State University Vancouver, the National Park Service, Northwest Cultural Resources Institute, and the Fort Vancouver National Trust. Historical archaeology at Fort Vancouver, the ca. 1825-1860 regional headquarters and supply depot for the Hudson's Bay Company, and Vancouver Barracks, the first (ca. 1849-2003) permanent U.S. Army post and command center in the Pacific Northwest. This year's field school will explore Fort Vancouver's multicultural Village (also known as "Kanaka Village"). This colonial village was the largest settlement in the Pacific Northwest in the 1830s and 1840s. It contained people from all over the world and the Pacific Northwest, including Native Hawaiians, African Americans, the Metis, and people of many different American Indian tribes. The field school will provide a means to recapture the early history of multiculturalism in the Pacific Northwest while engaging the modern Portland/Vancouver area in the unique history of their closest National Park site.

Hawai'i Archaeological Research Project

June 15-July 15, 2009. San Jose State University. North Kohala, Hawaii Island learning learning archaeological survey and excavation techniques.

Migrant Stations in Tucson (Arizona)

June 17-July 22, 2012. Institute for Field Research. Using traditional archaeological analytical methods and ethnography, this project examines migrant material culture to understand many aspects of this temporary stations occupied by undocumented works from Mexico.

Pecos Canyonlands Rock Art (Texas)

March 26-30, 2012. SHUMLA SHUMLA’s research team and Dr. Jim Keyser have launched a comparative study of scratched and incised imagery evidenced in the rock art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands and the Columbia Plateau. This year, participants in Pecos Experience have the unique opportunity to join these experts as they investigate this promising new avenue of rock art research. This is your chance to explore the canyons of the Lower Pecos, to expand your vision of the meaning and function of rock art, and to experience the excitement of making connections through discovery. For more details, visit our Web-site http://www.SHUMLA.org/, contact the office at programs@SHUMLA.org or call (432) 292-4848.

Rancho de Taos (New Mexico)

May, June, August, 2012. (three sessions). Southern Methodist University. Students take between 12 and 18 hours for this four-field Anthropological approach to archaeological methodologies focused on ecological and cultural resources survey, Archaic through Historic period rock art recording, and historic excavations on the historic Ranchos de Taos plaza in Taos New Mexico.

Rock Art Ranch (Arizona)

June 4-July 6, 2012. University of Arizona. Rock Art Ranch contains some of the most spectacular rock art in the Southwest, dating from 6000 BC to AD 1400, all of which has been documented. The ranch lies in the high desert at 5100’ elevation, in an area used over the past eight thousand years by mobile hunting and gathering groups, early farmers, and later, after A.D. 500, by more sedentary farmers representing archaeological cultures of the adjacent Mogollon Rim and Colorado Plateau regions. Until the fieldschool began in 2011, no professional archaeological work has been conducted on the ranch or its nearest neighbors other than documentation of the petroglyphs.

The Hawai'i Archaeological Research Project

June 15-July 15, 2009. University of New Mexico and San Jose State University. Students will spend four weeks in North Kohala, Hawaii Island learning archaeological survey and excavation techniques.

Totah Archaeological Project (New Mexico, USA)

June 6-July 15, 2011. San Juan College and B-Square Ranch. The Totah Archaeological Project Field School is being offered and supported by San Juan College in partnership with Tommy Bolack and the B-Square Ranch. The goal of the project is to provide archaeological educational opportunities for San Juan College students, local community members, and visitors to the region, and to contribute to research on the Anasazi culture in the Totah area.

Valles Caldera National Preserve (New Mexico)

June 8-July 10, 2009. University of New Mexico and the Valles Caldera Trust. This year’s Field School marks the beginning of the Valles Caldera Archaeology and Paleogeography Project (VCAPP), a multi-year investigation of the importance of high altitude landscapes to Southwestern hunter-gatherers. VCAPP seeks to understand how environmental and cultural changes may have affected the pattern of human use of the Valles Caldera over the course of the Holocene.

Wind Wolves Preserve (California)

July 8-August 11, 2012. Institute for Field Research. Since 2005, the Enculturating Environments Project has been investigating rock-art, habitation, and special-purpose sites throughout this region. This field school will continue this work throughout the preserve with particular focus on the only known Chumash cache cave having extensive perishable material remaining in situ.

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