The Romance of Archaeology
Most people know the character Indiana Jones, but fewer know the man who inspired him — the self-made archaeologist and rugged adventurer, Roy Chapman Andrews. He exuded nothing but regal fearlessness and a fervor for discovery during his often dangerous travels to China, Korea, Alaska, Indonesia, and Japan. This was exemplified by his accounts of several near death experiences eluding typhoons, wild dogs, bandits, vipers, and cliffs. Funded by the American Museum of Natural History, he ventured into the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and found the earliest evidence of dinosaur eggs, the first of their kind, before the Great Depression in the United States and the Chinese Government forced him out of the country.
Roy Chapman Andrews, with his charismatic charm, came back from excavation and married a hollywood actress at the time, which earned him a place in New York City’s high society. He was a celebrated explorer who made headlines, won over fans with his engaging storytelling, and was a glamorous character, which was transferred to cinema. “This was exceptional [since] most archaeologists don’t make it that far,” chuckled Dr. Nicolas Zwyns, professor of human paleontology at UC Davis.
Because of his interest with mammals and his chance findings of dinosaur fossils, Andrews’ stories popularized and romanticized the notion that archaeologists only dig for dinosaurs and mummies, when in fact, archaeologists are more often concerned with the material culture of humans and reconstructing their life pathways. The romantic archeologist in the days of Roy Adams dealt with a profession that was more easily understood in terms of adventure and danger, due to the threat of pot looters and grave robbers, rather than one of science and the pursuit of knowledge. However, towards the turn of the century, the amount of looters and grave diggers searching for treasure declined in number, presumably due to the reformation of archaeology as a structured ‘hard’ science. As it turns out, the life and work of an archaeologist is more slow paced and dry than portrayed in the Indiana Jones books, comics, novels, or even lived by the exceptional Roy Chapman Andrews.
Archaeologists are not who many think they are. “There’s a lot of archetypes that are built around being an archaeologist,” Zwyns frowns. People assume archaeologists are these rugged male figures with a beard and a whip, but in fact, Zwyns believes there are as many, if not more, female archaeologists than males.
Students who choose to entertain the romantic image of becoming an archaeologist, or those who understand the drudgery this profession requires, enroll in a field school during or directly following their undergraduate experience. UC Davis offers a field school every summer in various locations in northern California and Western Nevada for those willing to bathe themselves with dirt for four weeks. ‘Willing,’ is a debatable word, however, because an archaeological field school is a requirement to have a career in archaeology. Still, the knowledge of having to “vacation” in the 102 degree foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range with no cell service or running water would be enough to discourage all but the most dedicated undergraduates pursuing this career.
Students in the field school spend up to ten hours a day working in the sweltering hot sun and in return receive up to nine units in a more hands-on environment (literally digging for their grade) than a traditional classroom setting. Its purpose is to teach proper techniques archaeologists employ while excavating or conducting research in the field.
It prepares students for a career in both academia and cultural resource management (CRM), which is often funded and headed by state or federal governments to protect artifacts and sites that may be destroyed by building new infrastructure. Typically, academia allows more freedom for research design, whereas CRM does not, which then alters the methods an archaeologist will employ in a career setting.
Nick Hanten, the director of the 2017 field school and teaching assistant for the new prerequisite spring course titled ‘Archaeological Field Methods,’ suggests that one of the obvious challenges of the field school is doing labor intensive work in a unique social setting with the same twelve students day after day. “If you don’t absolutely love one person and absolutely hate another by the end of it, you did it wrong,” he says in a humorous, yet honest tone.
Zwyns, having endured over a decade of summers in the field, from Mongolia to Syria to Russia to Iran, is familiar with the difficulty of living in close quarters with others. He not only works with colleagues worldwide, but also has made a career out of studying humans (anthropo= human from Greek origins). For these reasons, he seems to be in tune with our nature. He’s noticed that a tribe often emerges from the group, outcasting those who fail to socialize in a such a setting. “Humans are complicated and they are even more complicated when you put them together” in a remote location, he suggests. Not everybody feels comfortable in the “micro-societies” that fieldwork lends itself to.
Preparation for the field school is no easy feat either. Students often complain of cost for the program, and even if they receive financial aid during the rest of the school year, the outside individual costs for the “suggested” (but really required) gear adds up if you don’t previously own it. Such items include a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, hiking boots, headlamp, work gloves, line level, metric tape, clipboard, trowel, compass, and the list continues.
In advocating student enrollment for the field school, Zwyns jokes that it’s better for students to learn early on if they hate dirt or can stand it enough for a profession in archaeology. Jenny Chen, optimistic about her upcoming experience, feels this opportunity allows “people to get their feet very very very wet” when it comes to learning the ropes of a potential career. Only a select few are crazy enough to spend their time bent over a one by one meter hole. They are aware archaeologists enter the field not for the money, but for the strenuous physicality, tediousness, and occasional thrill of discovery. This dullness is a lifestyle prospective archaeologists either presume they will enjoy or don’t realize is part of the gig.
Several prospective archaeologists change their mind following their four weeks hiking everyday in the foothills in the heat for 12 hours a day. In fact, only a small bunch of undergraduates will choose to pursue archaeology following the field school. One student, who participated in last summer’s school, is returning as a teaching assistant for this summer’s course. He described last year’s experience as living in a “swamp,” although apparently, the swamp life doesn’t phase him. Another student, who thoroughly enjoyed lab work, left field school after one week, deciding she couldn’t stick it out.
For others, it’s the lab work that contributes to the drudgery of the job. Archaeologists spend more time in the lab than they do in the field; one summer in the field often leads to one or two years in the lab analyzing the data and cataloguing the artifacts. “They never show Indiana Jones going back and going through all of his paperwork,” Hanten, says, “or taking notes,” adds Roshanne Bakhtiary, Anthropology graduate student who led last year’s field school through Davis.
Although archaeologists will find some aspect of the job (either excavating, surveying, lab work, or other) as monotonous, the end result of finding a fossil or artifact is gratifying and, in fact, somewhat romantic. To some, the analysis and publication that follows, which benefits the greater scientific community, may be the most intriguing parts of the job. Students assist a graduate student whose PhD research is dependent on the artifacts found during the field school. For that reason, the field school gives students a share in advancing the scientific knowledge of settlement patterns and population size of Native Americans, as an example.
Other astonishing finds include the 2013 discovery of Homo naledi, a first time find of an ancient human species that contributes to and alters our view of our own evolutionary background, from extinct ape-like creatures, to modern Homo sapiens. The fossils, found by archaeologist Lee Berger, displays the long wait (nearly two decades) an archaeologist may face before a significant find. Yet the knowledge and new perception of humans’ evolutionary trajectory retrieved from ancient teeth and bones found on a Friday afternoon in Johannesburg, South Africa is invaluable.
Of Zwyns particular find during his first field school, he considers it a beautiful crisis of “existential vertigo.” When you pick up a paleolithic artifact, “there is almost some kind of mystical shock when you touch that object,” he describes. Part of this is due to the inability to fathom an item made by someone hundreds of thousands of years ago. Zwyns believes humans try to scale time according to their lifespan, but hundreds of thousands of years becomes an “abstract number.”
Bakhtiary describes Zwyns as a passionate field archaeologist, even though sometimes he glances across his lab, cluttered with flakes and lithic tools, and jokingly sighs “Oh no, more rocks.” He recognizes that like most strong emotions, the thrill of finding and manipulating objects in the field gets less compelling over time. As it seems, and as to be expected, most archaeologists will dislike some aspect of their job description. But to be an accomplished archaeologist, they themselves probably indulge in the romantic image to some degree. Archaeologists must behold a personal love for the antiquity of items created by humans thousands, even millions, of years ago. Like Roy Chapman Andrews and Lee Berger and Nicolas Zwyns, there is something fantastical about their ventures into the wilderness and their esteemed contribution to the scientific community. Despite the strenuous activity, perhaps one student will emerge from this summer’s sweltering foothills and bring archaeologists back into the spotlight, as Andrews has modeled. Goodness knows it would sure help the field’s notoriety.
