Lancelot Tei
October 25, 2016
As an undergraduate student from the islands of American Samoa, working in Chaco Canyon has been quite a unique and interesting experience. Being able to work in an area where Ancestral Puebloans made use of the available resources such as sandstone for housing, clay deposits to make ceramics, rocks to make chipped and ground stone tools, and sometimes fauna for food and tools, provides a different view of the past. Being from a small island out in the South Pacific, I am used to seeing a lot of water, whereas here in the Southwest water is scarce especially here in Chaco Canyon. Living here would require immense adjustments to the weather and the wildlife in Chaco Canyon. The UNM 2016 Field School has given me the opportunity to practice archeological methods of excavating and processing our findings, all while learning a completely different culture from that of my own.
October 25, 2016
As an undergraduate student from the islands of American Samoa, working in Chaco Canyon has been quite a unique and interesting experience. Being able to work in an area where Ancestral Puebloans made use of the available resources such as sandstone for housing, clay deposits to make ceramics, rocks to make chipped and ground stone tools, and sometimes fauna for food and tools, provides a different view of the past. Being from a small island out in the South Pacific, I am used to seeing a lot of water, whereas here in the Southwest water is scarce especially here in Chaco Canyon. Living here would require immense adjustments to the weather and the wildlife in Chaco Canyon. The UNM 2016 Field School has given me the opportunity to practice archeological methods of excavating and processing our findings, all while learning a completely different culture from that of my own.
Waking up this morning was quite different from the past few weeks here in Chaco, overnight we received a fair amount of rainfall. The rainfall caused a slight delay to our day-to-day basis; it was wet and work on the site would get quite messy. Instead of heading out to the site, we went to the lab to finish sorting and categorizing some of the artifacts from our individual units. We then loaded the trucks and made our way to the Wetherill Trading Post site where we were briefed on a very interesting task which is to find similar features between Old Alto and Tsin Kletzin. As an archeologist these are some of the things we encounter and being able to adjust to different situations and being able to analyze and compare sites or features makes the job interesting and challenging.
The whole experience so far has been good and I am very blessed to be here
working under the supervision of Dr. Wills and graduate students Joe Birkmann
and Jacque Kocer, who have all been informative and helpful. Working with a
diverse group of individuals with different areas of expertise brings different
interpretations and techniques to achieving certain goals. Being an archaeologist
requires a lot of patience and determination where much of the finds may yield
promising or disappointing results. I have learned that some disappointments
open up new avenues of interpretations which is a great thing about archeology
where a single question can be approached from various angles.
My goal as an archeologist is aimed towards the South
Pacific where I hope to understand more about the trade network within the
South Pacific and how American Samoa (Tutuila) plays an integral role within
this network, preserving much of the pre-historic and historic materials of the
Samoas. As of now, I am working towards earning my Bachelors degree and enjoying
the overall experience of working/training in Chaco Canyon. This is truly an
amazing experience that I hope a lot of eager individuals can take part in.
| Lance's Field School Nachos |
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