Archaeological Field School
Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona
May 30 – June 24, 2011
Northern Arizona University, in
partnership with the Kaibab-Vermilion
Cliffs Heritage Alliance and the Bureau of Land
Management, offers this field school based out the headquarters of the Grand Canyon Trust's Kane
and Two Mile Ranches on the Vermilion
Cliffs National Monument north of the Grand Canyon. This intensive
archaeological field school is designed for graduate and undergraduate students
to gain practical hands-on experience. Earning four hours of course credit,
field school students will be instructed in methods of survey, excavation, and artifact
analysis. This will be the fourth year of the field school, and we will be continuing
excavations at West Bench Pueblo and Two Mile Pueblo to mitigate damage from
past impacts. This year we will also
be beginning documentation of the geomorphology and soil stratigraphy along
House Rock Wash for environmental studies of climate changes and impacts of
prehistoric agriculture and historic grazing.
Students will be camping at historic ranches with kitchen and
bathroom facilities for the duration of the field school. Students should be
able to withstand 5 miles or more of hiking over uneven terrain in a hot, arid,
and high elevation (5000-7000') environment.
Tuition and fees
will be approximately $1900 for 4 units of credit. Tuition is the same for both
in-state and out-of-state students. This includes meals. Students will be
camping around the headquarters cabin, which has a kitchen and shower. Work
will be done five days a week, with weekends used for group field trips or individual
free time to visit archaeological sites, the Grand Canyon, and other nearby attractions.
At Two Mile Pueblo, we will be
learning basic excavation methods, how to identify soil strata, and how to make
profile drawings. This site was originally recorded
by the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) in 1967, and was re-located and
re-recorded during the 2008 field season. We will be continuing test
excavations begun during the 2010 field season that will assist in determining
the nature and extent of subsurface deposits that have been disturbed by the
development of ranch infrastructure, determining what deposits remain, and
collecting a representative sample of artifacts that may provide additional
data on site chronology and function.
During the excavations at West Bench Pueblo, the students will be
learning how to excavate and interpret more complex deposits, including
structural remains. The former alignment of a ranch road passes through the
site, and it has been further damaged by vandalism and looting. 2007 test
excavations by the BLM suggested that the structures visible on the surface are
underlain by the remains of even earlier structures, and the 2008 field school
work confirmed this. These findings suggest the site saw cycles of use,
abandonment, and re-use and renovation over several generations. The 2010
excavations revealed remarkably well-preserved room floors in the former
roadway, and recovered evidence that domestic turkeys were raised at the site.
The 2011 excavations will be continue these investigations.
We will be continuing our survey efforts in
the Two Mile Ranch headquarters area in the House Rock Valley, where three
previous seasons have documented 30 archaeological sites on 310 acres. These
sites include Archaic lithic reduction sites, Basketmaker and Puebloan
habitations, and a historic Mormon homestead.
The field school
will be co-directed by and Michael O’Hara and Josh Edwards. O’Hara is a
doctoral candidate at Arizona State University who received his MA from NAU in
1998 and has since conducted survey, excavation, and tribal consultations in
Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah while working for private CRM consulting firms. He
is currently preparing a research design and management recommendations for cultural
resources on the Kane-Two Mile Ranches. Edwards is an archaeologist and
geomorphologist who received his MS from NAU in 2002 and has conducted archaeological
and geomorphological investigations in the American Southwest, Mexico, Peru,
and Europe. Both have worked together in the CRM field for nearly a decade, and
have team-taught for NAU on several occasions. For more information contact: fmo@asu.edu
Conference posters
on field school research:
Archaeological
Research on the Vermilion Cliffs National Monumment
Excavations at West Bench Pueblo
Historic Sites of the Two Mile Ranch, Vermilion Cliffs National
Monument
Domesticated Turkeys on the Arizona Strip
Technological
Style of Virgin and Kayenta Corrugated Pottery
Photos from
past field seasons (more scenery, flowers, and wildlife than archaeology):