Anthropology 104: Field Methods in Archaeology - Spring

Selected Saturdays depending upon the weather

Dr. Michael Fuller - Professor of Anthropology

Office Phone: (314) 984-7987

Website: http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/

Web Notes are at https://blackboard.stlcc.edu

Your USER ID is your Student ID number with no dashes. Your initial password is the same as your 6-digit birthdate in MMDDYY format. Forgot you PIN? Go to http://stlcc.edu/banner/ for information on resetting your PIN or contact the admissions office at your campus. After logging in, students should click on the appropriate course link. NOTE: PIN (Blackboard password) modifications will not take effect in Blackboard until the following day.

Email address: MFuller@stlcc.edu

Welcome to the St. Louis Community College excavation in Chesterfield, MO. The goal of the Field School is twofold, to educate the Field School participants in archaeological method in North America, and to perform a service learning project to study and restore one of the few surviving mounds in St. Louis County.

Everyone taking the class for credit needs to purchase the assigned textbook:

Kipfer, Barbara Ann

2006 The Archaeologist's Fieldwork Companion (Spiral-bound). Wiley-Blackwell publisher.

You should familiarize yourself with archaeological technique and theory. Then, having done that, remember that the main criterion for successful archaeological fieldwork is flexibility. Every site is different, and techniques need to be adapted to the requirements (topographical, environmental, historical, legal, cultural, even budgetary) of that individual site.


St. Louis Community College just finished 14 field seasons of excavation at Tell Tuneinir on the Syrian/Iraqi border. STLCC has conducted 3 seasons of fieldwork in the Republic of Macedonia. STLCC conducted field schools in St. Louis County at the Scott Joplin House and the Pac Man Site. Here are the relevant websites:
http://www.stlcc.edu/fv/tuneinir/
http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/MarkoviKale2007.html/
http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/pacman.html
http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/joplin.html

Here is the webpage for the site that we will be researching this spring:
http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/blake.html

An archaeological excavation can be both an exhilarating and frustrating experience. There will always be some stress, for we are engaged in an important project, an excavation that promises to have great impact on the field. If we are to be successful as an excavation and an educational experience, it is imperative that we work together. Even the best-planned systems will break down if we do not have teamwork and cooperation.

Course Requirements for the Field School

Our fieldschool offers one of the best opportunities to learn the process and theory of archaeological excavation. This program also introduces the student to the cultural history of the Missouri. This is a real excavation that must conform to the limits of budget and time. Therefore as a field student, you must first and foremost be a participant of this project, and as mandated by archaeological codes of ethics, the excavation is the number one priority.

Your grade will be based on three criteria:

1. A daily excavation journal: You will need a small field book for this. This journal should summarize your archaeological work and you should discuss this journal once a week with Professors Fuller.

2. Performance and attendance: Your attendance at both the lectures and daily fieldwork is required and it is critical to your learning experience and to the success of the field season. Fieldwork will be made up of excavation, laboratory, pottery washing and processing and survey experience. Your daily fieldwork schedule can vary by the demands of the excavation.

3. Final project: each student taking the class for credit will prepare a written summary of one aspect of their fieldwork. The specifics of this project will be developed during the second and third weeks of the excavation. It will require the student to analyze and compare some aspect of their research with published (hardcopy and web copy) results from other excavations.

Overview of the Excavation Project

The word Blake site consists of a moderate size mound and an adjacent village. The mound was unscientifically excavated somewhere during the late 1800s or early 1900s. Our research during spring semester is designed to 1) restore part of the looter's spoil into the robbery pit and 2) identify the variety of artifacts and ecofacts left behind in the spoil dirt for clues to when the mound was constructed and its purpose.

A scientific excavation of the village site was conducted at the site by Joe Harl on behalf of University of Missouri - St. Louis. Sadly, the Anthropology Dept. at UMSL did not complete the analysis of the artifacts from the site. We are going to analyze a portion of the artifacts from the UMSL excavation to help understand what we will discover in the excavation of the looter's spoil dirt.

Staff Hierarchy

Mark Leach is the local expert on the Blake Mound site and will be with us at every step. There is a good chance that we will be visited by several different individuals:

Neathery Fuller (adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Meramec and Mississippian expert)
David Hanlon (Professor of Photography and Art History at Meramec)
Edward Fliss (Professor of Biology at Florissant Valley and skeletal specialist)
Peter Warnock (Adjunct Professor at Meramec and seed experet)
Pam Ashmore (Professor of Anthropology at UMSL and skeletal analysis specialist)
John Kelly (Professor of Anthropology at WU and pottery expert)
David Browman (Professor of Anthropology at WU and mound expert)

First and second saturdays will be spent summarizing what is known about the Woodland Period and Mississippi Period cultures in Missouri. Third saturday will be spent analyzing artifacts from the UMSL excavation at the site. The remaining time will be spent at the site, in the field. One Saturday will be spent in a morning seminar of field methods in Europe, with a followup on fieldwork in Missouri.