This field course will provide training in the interdisciplinary documentation of archaeological sites and landscapes, with the intent of better preparing students for the management of cultural and natural resources, as well as related careers dedicated to environmental planning and sustainability, education, and preservation of the world’s cultural heritage. Students will learn how to apply technological approaches to surveying, documenting, and interpreting the landscape, with an emphasis on recording archaeological landscapes via laser scanning. The field school will be splitting time between the Northern Cheyenne Reservation (near Busby, Montana), working closely with tribal elders and the local tribal college to document a reservation era village and cabin sites as well as visiting the ongoing archaeological survey of Kase'eetsevo' estaneveosehaesta'tanemo (Where the Girl Saved Her Brother)/Rosebud Battlefield. The field school will also be working at Pictograph Cave State Park outside of Billings, Montana, where students will learn how to apply a variety of technological approaches, such as laser scanners and three-dimensional model development, to the documentation of places like Pictograph Cave and Ghost Cave.
This field school will expose students to basic field and lab methods, with special skills related to fieldwork documenting cultural landscapes, with an emphasis on a historic battlefield, a prehistoric cave complex, and related sites relevant to an archaeology of colonialism and landscape transformation in Montana and the American West. This course will provide instruction in archaeological field methods, such as general survey techniques, map making, excavation, historic structure recording, historical record interpretation, and laboratory analyses. At the conclusion of this class students will have acquired the ability to: