Anthropology sophomore Lucy Walters has been interested in anthropology since her dad introduced her to Indiana Jones when she was little. Now, much like Indiana Jones, Walters has contributed to the unearthing of a lost cityーonly instead of being a fictional character in Egypt, she did so as a Wichita State University freshman in Kansas.
Courtesy photoOn June 6, Walters attended a four-week-long field school to dig at the Etzanoa site. Located in Arkansas City, Kansas, near the confluence of the Arkansas and Walnut rivers, Etzanoa was home to 20,0000 Native Americans for over two hundred years. It was abandoned when residents fled the Spanish in 1720. Now the site offers unique opportunities for students of anthropology.
“I think it’s really cool that there’s a place like that so close to here,” Walters said. “A lot of graduate school programs won’t accept anthropology students without field school work, and a lot of people have to go to like Romania to do field work. So getting to have this experience, especially as a freshman, will be very helpful.”
“Archaeological field experiences are required for a career in archaeology, yet universities across the U.S. are struggling to offer these trainings at an affordable rate. The State of Kansas applied learning grant made this opportunity available to students who would not have afforded it otherwise, which helps break down the barriers between our students and the career of their dreams,” Crystal Dozier, associate professor of anthropology, said.
Dozier also serves as the chair of the anthropology department at Wichita State and as the city archaeologist for Wichita. She and Matthew Howland, assistant professor of anthropology, oversaw the field school at Etzanoa. According to Dozier, the three-week dig offered rare learning experiences students couldn’t have received in a classroom setting.
“The archaeological field school at Etzanoa represents the very essence of applied learning – literally getting your hands dirty doing the job for which you are training for. Students got to excavate real artifacts from a real archaeological site, physically learning the skills of artifact identification and documentation that can’t be replicated in the classroom,” Dozier said. “They got to test their critical thinking skills to develop their own interpretations and communicate that to the public. Our Wichita State students got to learn these skills while creating their own discoveries that add to our knowledge of the past.”
Walters said she developed a stronger bond with Dozier during the field school.
“I definitely feel closer to Dr. Dozier. She treated us like professional peers and also took us on fun outings,” Walters said. ”She always seemed to be there to help and was always very kind to explain things.”
At the field school, Walters and other undergraduate students woke up before 7 a.m. and dug until 4 p.m., with breaks for waterjug refills and snacks. In return for their hard work, students earned four hours of college credit, and a $2000 scholarship provided by the state’s applied learning grant. Students who took the digital anthropology workshop conducted by Howland received one additional credit hour.
“Archaeological field experiences are required for a career in archaeology, yet universities across the U.S. are struggling to offer these trainings at an affordable rate,” Dozier said. “The applied learning grant made this opportunity available to students who would not have afforded it otherwise, which helps break down the barriers between our students and the career of their dreams.”
While Walters’s excavation hole was mostly filled with debitage, or stone scraps from Native American carving processes, she was thrilled to excavate two fragments of a canine’s front incisor. Another student found a projectile point, and another found bison bones.
“I feel like I learned how to handle artifacts in a serious manner, realizing how fragile they were,” Walters said.
“Finding objects that have been untouched for hundreds of years is a way different experience than going to a museum. It makes you realize how fragile they are and how to be so careful handling them,” Walters said.
In addition to material artifacts, students found closer bonds with each other.
“I have a couple classes with some girls I was on the dig with. You make some very strong connections being out there in a hole for a month. It’s kind of crazy,” Walters said.
At the site, students learned professional anthropology and archaeology skills such as shoveling, troweling, and using LIDAR, which uses remote sensing technology to create 3D models of the environment. Learning what anthropological fieldwork was actually like reinforced Walters’ desire to be an anthropologist, and broadened her vision of what she wants to do with her career. Walters has known for a long time that she wants to be a biological anthropologist for the Smithsonian Institution, but she used to only want to focus on the osteological side of biological anthropology. Now she would like to do both lab and field work while focusing on paleoanthropology and human evolution.
During this month-long field school, Walters learned skills and made memories that will follow her throughout her career and her life. What she says she will remember the most in fifty years are the friendships, the heat and the bugs.