Activities

• Talk to elders about where people used to live, where structures used to stand, or where festivals used to occur. Ask about old village sites, abandoned camp sites, and ancient battle grounds ... maybe even old burial grounds. Attempt to determine ownership or previous occupancy by word-of-mouth or through village records.
• Once you've chosen a site, either in the village or elsewhere, sectionally divide the site with string or rope in a grid fashion. Make sections about three yards square.
• Each student should be responsible for one grid. Start careful digging and use a screen sieve for fine work. Look for pits, mounds, bones, utensils, cut rock, etc.-anything that looks out-of-the-ordinary.
• When something is discovered, record from which grid, how deep it was found, and what else was there. Write to the museum at the University of Alaska for survey methods and mapping used and for methods of preservation.
• Use photographs where possible and do "exploded" drawings to show relative positions of artifacts in relation to other artifacts at the same dig.
• Send samples to the museum for dating and write a site report.

Resources

• University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum
• Alaska Historical Library and Museum
• Society for Historical Archaeology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83843
• a long handled, rounded or pointed shovel
• some trowels, several cheap paint brushes
• small screen with wooden frame, some containers, and an atomizer
• Robbins, Maurice. (1973). The Amateur Archaeologist Handbook. Crowell

Variations

• Film the excavations.