Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2015 - (Page 22)

My Summer at Crow Canyon by Thea O'Hea W hen I was growing up, the Egyptian wing of the Field Museum in Chicago was my favorite place to be on a weekend. As I got older, my childhood interests grew into full-fledged history geekdom, and there wasn't a time period-ancient Greece, medieval England, Renaissance Germany-that I didn't find fascinating. And then I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time and got excited about the idea of finding forgotten history and bringing it into the light of the modern world. As I finished my junior year of high school, I decided I wanted hands-on experience to determine for sure if archaeology was the career I wanted to pursue. Online, my mother found the summer High School Field School at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. At first I was hesitant because I didn't know much about Native American archaeology. But a dig was a dig, so I signed up. Summer Home In June, I flew to the tiny airport in Durango, Colorado, where I was met by staff from Crow Canyon. Arriving with me was another girl, Elana, who by the end of the day would be one of my roommates and my friend. We took a bus from the airport to the Crow Canyon campus. As we approached, I got my first sight of Sleeping Ute Mountain, a peak in the Ute Mountains that run along the northern edge of the Ute Tribe Reservation. Over the weeks, whenever we'd been away for a long day trip, the sight of the Sleeping Ute against the sky would signal that we were home. Elana and I were the first kids to arrive. Over the course of that day and the next, the rest trickled in-five boys and five girls in total. We met our teachers, Paul and Tyson, as well as our counselors, Marsha and 22 imagine Colleen, who welcomed us to the program and helped us get settled. The next day, we would get our first glimpse of the dig. Playing in the Dirt We were excavating at the Sagebrush site on Indian Camp Ranch, a large tract of land adjacent to Crow Canyon. The Sagebrush site is mostly Pueblo II, the penultimate era of the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. A Pueblo II settlement is characterized by three features: room blocks, kivas, and middens. A room block is a type of housing made by stone rectangular rooms laid end to end. Outside the room blocks, built mostly underground, would be a kiva, a circular structure that served both as a community center and a place for religious activities. Finally, the midden was a large area designated as a trash heap. I found the midden most intriguing: If an elementary school fascination with espionage taught me anything, it's that there's a life story in every trash can. Fortunately, my dig partner, Jake, and I were assigned to a unit in the midden. At first, digging up the prickly grasses and tossing out beetles was tough going, but it wasn't long before we were rewarded for our hard work. We found a wealth of artifacts-pot sherds, stone tools, and animal bones that were at least 800 years old. One of our best finds was a piece of polychrome (red, white, and black) pottery. Whether those pieces were made on purpose or through an accident in the firing process, they're not common. Logan and Henry, the two guys working in the kiva, made another important find: a large charred piece of a wooden beam. Wood is invaluable to archaeologists: Using a process called dendrochronology, they can use wood to put a precise date on the site. That piece of beam was very carefully bundled up and taken away to the labs.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2015

Big Picture
In My Own Words Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns
National Treasure Volunteering at the National Archives
Driving My Future, Exploring the Past The many rewards of genealogy
Past in Focus National History Day
People-Powered Movements Studying revolutions at Phillips Academy Andover
Hooked on History From paleontology to conservation science, four graduate students share their research
This is History My summer at Crow Canyon
The Benefits of Majoring in History
Making History My journey to the inaugural International History Olympiad
Historians in Training The Concord Review Summer Program
The Ultimate Game
In My Own Footsteps Putting my choreography in the spotlight
Selected Opportunities and Resources
Off the Shelf Review of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options Interview with archaeologist Inna Moore
One Step Ahead Be your own priority
Planning Ahead for College Choosing the best college for your major
Students Review: University of Washington
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2015