CAA High School Field School

# CAA High School Field School The Center for American Archeology has run archaeology education in the lower Illinois River valley for more than seventy years. Its High School Field School puts teenagers on an active research excavation alongside professional archaeologists, working the German site, a Late Woodland / Jersey Bluff Phase habitation site on a colluvial slope in the Crawford Creek valley. Students live in Kampsville, a village that functions as a working archaeological campus, and rotate between the field, the lab, and evening programs. ## What You'll Do - Excavate at an active research site, learning shoveling, troweling, mapping, measuring, soil description, and flotation sampling - Process finds in the lab: artifact washing, sorting, identification, and flotation - Attend evening lectures given by staff archaeologists on regional prehistory and current research - Try hands-on prehistoric technology sessions such as flintknapping and atlatl throwing - Enroll for one, two, three, or four weeks depending on how deep you want to go ## Who Should Apply Students ages 13 to 17 (rising high school students through graduating seniors). No prior experience is necessary - the program is built for beginners. Students 18 and over enroll in the CAA's Adult Field School instead. ## Outcomes Participants finish with genuine excavation and laboratory experience on a research project, a working vocabulary of archaeological method, and a realistic sense of what anthropological fieldwork involves before choosing a college major. High school or college credit options have been offered in past seasons.