Excavating my own archaeology
Editor's note: This is an installment from the U of I's Behind the Scenes series, which features blog posts, photos, and videos from Illinois faculty, researchers, students, and staff about their work and lives. Tamira K. Brennan is a graduate of the College of LAS (BA, '02, anthropology)
I stand at the edge of an archaeological excavation on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, watching in disbelief as students dig up the remnants of a structure I helped build 22 years ago as an undergraduate student in an experimental archaeology course. This structure was modeled on one recovered from a true archaeological site I helped excavate in 1999 — a log-and-thatch dwelling dating back 900 years from a Mississippian mound site near present-day St. Louis. This site is associated with the nearby UNESCO World Heritage site known as Cahokia.
The experimental archaeology course was the brainchild of one of my best friends at the time, undergraduate Michael Litchford, who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer when he proposed that the anthropology department offer credit to a handful of students who would spend a semester recreating an ancient building using the same tools and materials available to Native Illinoisans 900 years ago. Timothy Pauketat oversaw the experimental archaeology class all those years ago as an anthropology professor. Today, Pauketat is the director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, where I have served as a curator since 2020. The “small world” aspects of this project make it feel even more surreal.
I am here with a dozen students from all over the country. They range from 19 to 65 years old and are enrolled in a six-week field school offered by the Institute for Field Research. The students sweat out their first two weeks learning survey and excavation techniques at this experimental-site-turned-teaching-lab, where the level grassy surface has obscured the deconstructed house beneath. Although the last four weeks of the field school are indoors and focus on archaeological collections, the students will need this experience as background to help them interpret the context of those collections.
No one really knows what to expect on this dig, since we typically excavate considerably older features. It surprisingly looks and digs just like an ancient site, save for the bits of brick, shale and other historic debris scattered throughout the dirt used to backfill the hole that was left when the experimental building was taken down.
At approximately 18 inches below the ground surface, we unearth a maze of charred cedar logs lying horizontally across what was the structure’s subterranean floor. The logs once stood upright in individual post holes we dug into the earth by hand using large mussel shells — an extraordinarily tedious job that made me and my fellow students appreciate the advantages of modern tools. Those poles held up the notched wall-plate that supported the structure’s hipped roof. I remember covering the roof in layers of big bluestem grasses tied on by hand.
Today, the poles allow field school students to practice their trowel work as they attempt to remove soil from around the logs without damaging them. The students also hone their mapping skills as they accurately recreate the scene in bird’s eye view on graph paper.
We are reminded that we are recording the very recent past when we find a Leinenkugel beer bottle beneath the charred logs, the label still visible after several decades in the ground. It’s a fun find that makes me think of Mike, who made even the hardest work enjoyable. It’s a bittersweet moment, since Mike died in 2009.
We soon move on to the curation part of the field school, where just across town at ISAS’ Illinois Department of Transportation collections repository, the students experience the “other side” of archaeology — everything that happens with the artifacts after the dig is done. This is what the bulk of field school is focused on because there are very few opportunities to learn about curation in anthropology curriculum.
That lack of educational opportunities is partially responsible for an ongoing “curation crisis,” in which the deficit of resources allotted to archaeological collections prevents their proper care. This is a serious threat to the cultural heritage that archaeologists are ethically bound to protect, yet many professionals unwittingly contribute to it out of ignorance. My curation field schools are an effort to fill that gap, even it’s only 12 students at a time. They arrive at field school curious about preserving the past and, if I’m successful, they leave as passionate advocates for the continuing care of all that remains after an archaeological site is excavated.
This year’s students are good — they attentively inventory and rehouse the material from Illinois’ single largest archaeological project to date: FAI-255/270, named after the interstate highways that prompted the research. That project spanned the length of the St. Louis Metro East, lasted about a decade and yielded nearly 5,000 cubic feet of excavated material. Although the students will only complete work on 40 boxes from this collection before their field school is over, that work is an important first step towards completing consultation on the collections with descendant Tribal Nations, facilitating research and ensuring that these resources are properly cared for long after all of us are gone.
I return to the dig site on a Saturday after excavations have ended to meet up with Mike’s mother and show her the parts of “his house” that we uncovered. We agree that Mike would be thrilled that a new generation of archaeologists are benefitting from his legacy, even though that was never the intention. One of my favorite things about archaeology is that it’s full of surprises.
ISAS is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Subscribe to Behind the Scenes for short blog posts, photos and videos from Illinois faculty, researchers, students and staff about their work and lives. Send an email with “SUBSCRIBE BTS” in the subject line.
