Arizona based opportunities for aspiring archaeologists

Looking back at Christopher Caseldine’s resume, it’s hard to imagine a time when the Mesa-born educator was a first year student at Mesa Community College (MCC). Now an assistant research professor and curator of collections for the Center for Archaeology and Society within ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Caseldine has made the most of MCC’s long standing relationship with ASU. Now, he’s continuing to give back to the next generation through an innovative, collaborative field school at MCC that is providing affordable, first-hand research experience to both MCC and ASU students.

“Archaeology has an upfront cost to it and not everybody can devote the time and money that it requires. So things like the MCC field school is an opportunity for students who normally couldn't do field school,” said Caseldine.

The course, SB231: Introduction to Archaeological Field Methods, gives students the opportunity to work on local excavation sites. It has been offered at MCC since the 1990s and has featured a cast of some of the area’s most influential educators, including Jerry Howard, the curator of anthropology at Arizona Museum of Natural History.

Since 2018, the course has been taught by Kirk Costion, a residential faculty member in archaeology at MCC, with assistance from Caseldine.

“We typically have at least five to seven ASU students that take the class each year and a lot of my students move on to ASU to study with Chris [Caseldine] and the Center for Archaeology and Society,” said Costion. “The students get this wide variety of experience between the two schools. We build the relationships here at MCC and then it continues as they move over to ASU.”

Over the last five years, students have worked on a site located on the northern edge of the Mesa Cemetery. The site was identified as a small Classic Period Hohokam trash mound and the students’ work has helped assess the nature and integrity of cultural remains within the site to assist the Mesa Cemetery’s compliance with the State Historic Preservation Act.

For Caseldine, the course is important for more than just giving students practical field experience.

“Sometimes, students will watch movies like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, and think they have an idea of what archaeology is. The good thing about the MCC field class is the community aspect of it. The students hear from and work with various tribal representatives at every step of the process,” said Caseldine. “It’s important that they realize that cultural resource management has to happen and it has to be done responsibly.”

Gabby Phleger, who graduated with her BA in anthropology from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change last fall, said that she signed up for MCC’s field school after graduation because it gave her invaluable practical insight into the region.

“I enrolled in the field school because I felt it would give me the opportunity to learn more about the material culture of this region, which I knew would be the most relevant for the work I planned to do in the future. It definitely helped and I strengthened my excavation skills and artifact identification,” said Phleger.

The documentation of the integrity of cultural remains found near the Mesa Cemetery trash mound has been overseen by Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and several other local agencies to ensure compliance.

With the high demand for cultural resource management professionals to uphold Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) compliance, Caseldine sees MCC’s field school as a great career stepping stone for students.

“During the pandemic, people stopped going into archaeology at the rate that they were before. It used to be pretty competitive, especially on the federal government side. Now, I am seeing a lot of job postings that I haven’t seen before. With NAGPRA regulations there are going to be more jobs in cultural resource management and heritage management than there are people. It’s a good time to be in the field,” said Caseldine.

In April, former field school students will add even more professional experience to their resumes as they present their excavation findings at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zane McCracken and Ryan Burke, undergraduate students in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, will join graduate student Molly Corr, and recent alumni Phleger, Zithlaly Vega and William Dundas for the presentations.

At the conference, the students will present their analyses of artifact distribution patterns, ceramic pastes, red-on-buff pottery painted design elements and arrowhead morphology. They will also present findings on the environmental DNA (eDNA) and macrobotanical remains at the site. All of which provide insights about domestic life in an early Hohokam Classic period community.

“It’s a professional conference and gives the students an opportunity to get comfortable with presenting in a professional meeting. With them being students, they're able to learn how to put together a professional presentation and people don't critique them very hard because they understand the type of presentation it is and that they're developing,” said Caseldine, who will serve as the group's discussant.

While witnessing his students graduate and present at a major conference is the end goal for Costion, it can be bittersweet.

“All of the students presenting, except Molly [Corr] were MCC students before they moved on to ASU. Students are usually with us for two or three years and then they're off, which is the whole goal. It's hard sometimes because by the time we get to know them and realize that they're good students and actually a fit for archeology we have to say, ‘good-bye.’ But I know we are putting out great archaeologists, and that’s ultimately something to be proud of,” said Costion.