Wesleyan Students Take Part in Fieldwork Around the World in Summer 2025!
Jay Watson, Class of 2026
In the summer of 2025, I attended two separate field schools over the course of three months, all made possible by the Wesleyan Archaeology Program's Research Fellowship. The first of these being the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project, through which I excavated at the Middle to Late Classic Maya site of Dos Hombres. Found within the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, a protected tropical rainforest spanning 250,000 acres, this remote site offered unique learning opportunities and challenges. Rising at 5AM daily to hike around two miles into the jungle, it was a rugged but infinitely fascinating look into the archaeological process. Being my second year at Dos Hombres, I was also able to play a role in assisting and teaching field students alongside excavations. Working alongside Field Director Dr. Rissa Trachman of Elon University, I was able to expand my knowledge of Maya household architecture and lifeways while strengthening my field experience. Additionally, I learned important lessons about crew and student safety. Dos Hombres is located deep in dense jungle forest, making the nearest medical clinic a near two and a half hour journey from start to finish. This meant that excavations, hiking, and our work with and around the forest flora/fauna (snakes, scorpions, spiders, and spiked trees!) had to be disciplined and focused.
This field school taught me technical skills, particularly in excavating architecture, that are essential to fieldwork as a professional. Producing precise profile and plan maps, microexcavating objects, and exposing collapsed structures were all skills that I expanded on while researching in Belize.
In Armenia, I had the pleasure of working under Wesleyan’s own Dr. Jayson Gill. Excavating a Stone Age site named Ptghavan-4, I was able to gain hands-on experience with technology critical to modern archaeological practice. For instance, I learned how to produce precise geospatial data of artifacts around the site using a total station. Learning how to use this technology, which is found on most field sites today, is critical to building my technical foundation as an undergraduate student. Researching Stone Age materials of the Debed River Gorge, geologic science is very important to the context of the site. I was able to learn from both the professional geologists on site and from the dirt in my bucket, an experience you can only have at a field school. I was also able to engage deeply with Armenian and Georgian culture, interacting daily with people in and outside of archaeological contexts. Returning to Wesleyan this fall, I’m hoping to continue helping Dr. Gill by researching samples taken from PTV-4 this summer.
These experiences would not have been possible without the support of the Wesleyan Archaeology Program and the donors responsible for creating the Summer Research Fellowship. I hope that in the coming semesters I will be able to assist fellow students and faculty through my knowledge and experiences. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to travel, explore, and learn from such beautiful places of the world.
Luke Kim, Class of 2026
This summer, I was lucky enough to be able to join Professor Jayson Gill in Armenia and participate in the Pleistocene Behavior Landscapes of Northern Armenia Project. The funding I received from the Archaeology Fellowship was indispensable in letting me take advantage of the opportunity. Working in the field was able to provide me hands-on experience with facets of archaeology such as spatial mapping technology, lithic identification, and stratigraphy. While working on site, Ptghavan-4,we spent time unearthing lithic artifacts and dating them based on what portion of the ground they're found in which had been dated by a number of geologists. After cleaning and sorting the artifacts, they're to be analyzed for the different techniques used in their creation or technologies which they represent. In combination with the date ranges for each artifact's context, our work is able to determine the different technologies at play in different periods of human history in Armenia.
Ian Moran, Class of 2026
I spent my summer working at the Poggio Civitate Field School in Northern Italy, digging an Etrsucan site that dates back to approximately the 8th century BCE at the earliest. Thanks to the generous grant that the new Archaeological Fellowship provided, I was able to return to that site for my second year, which was absolutely fantastic and helped advance my professional goals. I worked as a co-trench supervisor, meaning that I was not only digging, but also documenting, analyzing, and planning the whole process of excavation for my trench. It was a draining, yet fulfilling experience and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else this summer. Truly, I think that being in the field is a necessity for any archaeology student and being able to do so twice is something that I will forever be grateful for. The experience of being the first person to see and hold an artifact for the first time in nearly 2,500 years is something that can’t be taught, only felt. The six weeks that I was on site were mostly spent working in a variety of ways, from logging excavation activities in our trench book, to sorting thousands of pieces of pottery, to hours of paperwork, and much more. While this may sound trying, and at times it was, all of this gave me a taste of what archaeology is all about and I loved it. Additionally, I started to help with other projects, specifically aiding in the recording of pXRF data of ceramics, which I am in the process of turning into my thesis. The work wasn’t even the only part that was great, the people you meet, the connections you make with professors and fellow students, all of this factored into making the time I spent there amazing. If it fits into my future plans, I would absolutely return, so once again I need to thank the donors who made this possible.
