Knowledge in the Round

Jacquie Enyart, a University of Oregon senior double-majoring in anthropology and classics, was a bit nervous before attending last summer's Archaeology and Geoarchaeology Field School. Not only did she lack practical knowledge of archaeological techniques, she had never even camped before. But she found the field school, a six-week summer program held in south-central Oregon, "absolutely amazing."

According to Enyart, within just a few days, the thirty-plus participants became fast friends, camping and working together in the Fort Rock Basin. Enyart gained hands-on experience excavating a 4,000-year-old house pit, a remnant of a home built by predecessors of the Klamath Indians. Best of all, Enyart says, even though she was engaged in very detailed work, the field school helped her grasp the big picture about the ancient culture she was helping to unearth. "You're in your own little microcosm, and then you stand back and there's this whole house being uncovered," she explains. "You've got your own little thing, but it's part of a much bigger scale."

The UO's archaeological field school offers a six-week course focusing on archaeological survey and excavation methods, as well as geomorphological field methods. On weekdays, students live in a tent camp behind North Lake School, with access to kitchen, washroom, and laboratory facilities. Students don't need previous experience to attend the field school, just a strong interest in archaeology.

Dennis Jenkins, staff archaeologist at the Oregon State Museum of Anthropology who supervises the school, says about two-thirds of the undergraduates who participate in the program are anthropology majors. But, the program also attracts students of all ages from around the world, and is one of the country's oldest and most established archaeology field schools.

Luther S. Cressman, founder of the UO's anthropology department, started the field school in 1937 to study the extent of human history in the Great Basin. Cressman wanted to research a then-controversial theory that human cultures had occupied the area for many thousands of years, a view that was vindicated when he and his field-school excavators uncovered sagebrush-bark sandals below a layer of volcanic ash in Fort Rock Cave.

The discovery proved that people had lived in the Fort Rock Basin since before the eruption of Mt. Mazama -- the volcano that blew off the top of what is now Crater Lake -- nearly 7,000 years ago. Jenkins says the find "shocked the scientific community," which had maintained that humans migrated to the Great Basin much later.

Several years ago, the UO field school returned to Fort Rock to study the human ecology of the region over a broader time frame. Students are helping to paint a picture of how various cultures lived over thousands of years, as climates and landscapes shifted. "The biggest problem we're addressing is how people relate to their natural environment and how they change their way of life as their natural environment changes," says UO anthropology professor Mel Aikens, who directs the summer program, along with the Museum of Anthropology.

Aikens says that without student support, such research would not be possible. "Students are the major contributors," he says. "We're teaching them what to do and how to appreciate it. But they're learning how to learn and contributing to the advancement of science."

He points out, however, that field school students take home more than just a simple understanding of archaeological techniques. "It's more than just admiring a perfectly flaked dart point. It's helping people think in the large," he says. "I think the field school does that in a rather different way than studying a course book."

The 2000 field school will be held from June 19 to July 28. More information is available over the Web at http://darkwing.uoregon. edu/~ftrock/index.html.