While at Dartmouth, the Anthropology Department had not yet developed their impressive menu of field school opportunities. If you wanted to learn how to dig a trench properly, you had to temporarily ally yourself with the Classics Department. So I found Caves Branch Archaeological Field School in San Ignacio, Belize. I grabbed my chloroquine and went.

We studied Maya archaeology's history as an academic (and colonizing) endeavor, ceramic analysis and conservation, excavation protocols, and mapping with survey transits. Assessment was structured across three domains: field skills, lab work, and content knowledge. During the session, we visited several nearby Maya sites including Tikal, Xunantunich, and Cahal Pech. After the school ended, I remained on site to produce site maps for the Belize Department of Archaeology. I returned as a volunteer for a week in 1999.

Skills: Analog transit survey · Site grid establishment · Excavation unit management · Stratigraphic recording · Feature identification · Field notes and site documentation · Soil description · Screening and recovery · Photographic documentation · Site mapping · Artifact processing and cataloguing · Ceramic analysis and conservation · Maya cultural history and cosmology · Mesoamerican ethnohistory