Combined Archaeological Field Methods

Course Description

Combined Archaeological Field Methods is onsite training in maritime and terrestrial archaeology (6 weeks each), providing structured hands-on experience including training in both field and laboratory methods. Emphasised methods include site control grids, setting up excavation units, basic excavation techniques, use of hand tools, identification of ship structure and features, screening techniques, field documentation, principles and procedures. ⚠⚠ A diving certificate from a nationally recognised programme and permission are required, and a Material and Supply Fee will be assessed.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, ANT is the Anthropology prefix. UWF publishes this at 1–9 semester hours, with ANT3101 as prerequisite.

⚠ This entry contains the only duration statement UWF publishes

"6 weeks each" is, so far, the closest thing to a contact-hour statement found anywhere in the UWF catalog, which publishes no contact hours for any course. It is used here directly: twelve weeks of full-time fieldwork at roughly 40 hours a week gives approximately 480 contact hours, taken at the published maximum of 9 semester hours. That makes this the largest single course in this repository by contact time, and the figure is derived from the catalog's own words rather than from a convention.

Doing both halves in one course is a genuine advantage and a genuine commitment. Maritime and terrestrial archaeology share their logic and differ in every practical respect, and a student who has excavated in both is unusually well prepared — but twelve weeks is most of a summer, it cannot be combined with employment, and the diving requirement has to be satisfied beforehand.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Excavate competently using hand tools on terrestrial sites.
• Excavate competently on submerged sites within diving limits.
• Establish and maintain site control grids on land and underwater.
• Lay out and record excavation units in both environments.
• Excavate stratigraphically and recognise deposit changes.
• Maintain provenience control in both environments.
• Screen excavated matrix and describe recovery bias.
• Identify ship structure and describe vessel features.
• Recognise and record archaeological features on land.
• Produce accurate field drawings in plan and profile.
• Produce accurate underwater site plans using offset methods.
• Photograph contexts to a documentary standard in both environments.
• Complete field forms, unit records, and dive logs.
• Maintain field notes another person could work from.
• Apply field laboratory methods to recovered material.
• Apply field conservation procedures, including keeping material wet.
• Compare terrestrial and maritime method and explain the differences.
• Plan dives and work within programme limits.
• Apply scientific diving safety practice.
• Apply heat, weather, and excavation safety practice on land.
• Work effectively in both a field crew and a dive team.
• Take direction and correction during fieldwork.
• Describe the legal and ethical framework governing both environments.
• Describe the transition from field records to report.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe photogrammetry in both environments.
• Describe remote sensing and its integration with excavation.
• Describe the conservation pipeline for a field season's material.
• Describe curation preparation and repository requirements.
• Describe CRM employment pathways in both specialisms.
• Describe graduate study in maritime archaeology.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Terrestrial excavation
• Submerged excavation
• Site control grids in both environments
• Unit layout and recording
• Stratigraphic excavation
• Provenience control
• Screening and recovery bias
• Ship structure identification
• Terrestrial feature recognition
• Field drawing
• Underwater site plans
• Documentary photography
• Field forms and dive logs
• Field notes
• Field laboratory methods
• Field conservation
• Comparing terrestrial and maritime method
• Dive planning
• Scientific diving safety
• Terrestrial field safety
• Crew and dive team work
• Taking direction
• Legal and ethical framework
• From field records to report

Optional Topics

• Photogrammetry
• Remote sensing integration
• The conservation pipeline
• Curation preparation
• CRM pathways
• Graduate study in maritime archaeology

Resources & Tools

• Society for American Archaeology (saa.org) — free Principles of Archaeological Ethics, and inexpensive student membership.
• Register of Professional Archaeologists (rpanet.org) — free; its eligibility criteria state exactly what a professional archaeologist is expected to have done, and a field school is on the list.
• Florida Division of Historical Resources and the Florida Master Site File (dos.fl.gov/historical) — free; Chapter 267, permitting, and the survey forms this work produces.
• Florida Public Archaeology Network (fpan.us) — free programmes and volunteer fieldwork across the state.
• Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (achp.gov) — free; the Section 106 regulations that generate most survey work.
• American Academy of Underwater Sciences (aaus.org) — the scientific diving standards you will work under.
• Divers Alert Network (dan.org) — join before the season; emergency support and dive medicine guidance.
• Register of Professional Archaeologists (rpanet.org) — this course satisfies the field school requirement twice over; keep the documentation.

Career Pathways

• Anthropologists and archaeologists — SOC 19-3091.
• ⚠ Cultural resource management is where the jobs are — the great majority of professional archaeologists work in compliance, driven by Section 106 and its state equivalents rather than by research funding.
• Field technician — the entry-level role, and a field school is the standard prerequisite for it.
• Crew chief, project archaeologist, principal investigator — the CRM progression; a graduate degree is generally needed above technician.
• State and federal agencies — SHPOs, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers.
• Tribal historic preservation offices — a growing and important sector.
• Museums, collections management, and curation — SOC 25-4012 and 25-4013.
• ⚠ Be realistic about entry conditions. Field technician work is seasonal, project-based, frequently far from home, and modestly paid. Many do it for a few years and then move up, move into agency or museum work, or leave.
• ⚠ Doing both specialisms is a genuine differentiator. Maritime archaeology is small and competitive, and a candidate who can also work terrestrially is employable in both markets rather than waiting for the smaller one.
• Maritime and underwater archaeology, and state submerged lands programmes.

Special Information

⚠⚠ This is a variable-credit course — the published range is 1 to 9 semester hours

• UWF publishes this course at 1–9 sh, not at a single value. The credit earned depends on the length and structure of the field season, and it is agreed with the department rather than fixed by the catalog.
• ⚠ The figures shown in this guide are a representative case, not the course's value. They assume 9 semester hours over 12 weeks — six terrestrial and six maritime, as the catalog states, at roughly 40 hours a week — the normal pattern for a full-time archaeological field school — giving approximately 480 contact hours. Confirm the credit, dates, and duration with the department before enrolling.
• Contact hours scale with the credit taken, so a student registering for fewer semester hours should scale the figure down proportionally.
• ⚠⚠ A field school is a full-time commitment, whatever the credit says. This is the single most important practical fact about it: you cannot hold a normal job during a field season, and the credit value badly understates the time. Plan employment and finances around it a term ahead.
• A Material and Supply Fee is assessed, and there are usually further costs — travel, accommodation, equipment, and personal gear. Ask for the total cost, not the tuition. Diving certification and equipment are additional prerequisites and costs.

⚠⚠ Scientific diving is not recreational diving — and the distinction is legal as well as practical

• ⚠⚠ A recreational certification does not qualify you to dive scientifically. Open-water certification teaches you to dive for pleasure within narrow limits; scientific diving means working underwater while task-loaded — recording, measuring, excavating — which is a substantially higher demand on skill and gas planning.
• ⚠ Scientific diving in the United States operates under an organisational framework, not individual discretion. Programmes follow AAUS (American Academy of Underwater Sciences) standards under a Diving Control Board and a Diving Safety Officer, which is what allows scientific diving to be conducted outside the commercial diving regulations. You dive under the programme's authorisation, to its limits, with its logging and its buddy requirements.
• Medical clearance is required, and it is a real examination rather than a form. ⚠ Some conditions are disqualifying and some are waiverable — asthma, ear and sinus problems, seizure disorders, and cardiac conditions among them. Get screened before you invest in the pathway.
• ⚠⚠ Never hold your breath on ascent. Expanding gas ruptures lung tissue and can drive gas into the arterial circulation — arterial gas embolism can be fatal within minutes and can occur from a depth of only a few metres. It is the fastest-acting diving injury and it is entirely preventable.
• Understand decompression sickness, nitrogen narcosis, and oxygen toxicity, and plan dives with real margins rather than to the limit of a table or computer.
• ⚠ Respect the surface interval and the flying-after-diving rule. Travelling home too soon after a field season has caused real injuries.
• Archaeological diving is frequently harder than the diving people trained on — low or zero visibility, current, entanglement in lines and grids, overhead obstructions, and long bottom times on repetitive dives. Task loading is what turns a manageable dive into an incident.
• Know the emergency plan before you enter the water: the nearest recompression chamber, the evacuation route, and the emergency contact. Divers Alert Network (DAN) is the standard resource, and membership is inexpensive.
• ⚠⚠ Call a dive you are not comfortable with. Anyone may end a dive at any time for any reason, without explanation and without argument — this is a core rule of the discipline and a programme that does not honour it is not one to dive with.

⚠⚠ Twelve weeks is most of a summer — plan it like the commitment it is

• ⚠⚠ You cannot hold a job during this. Twelve weeks of full-time fieldwork removes an entire summer's earnings as well as costing tuition and fees — which for many students is the binding constraint, and it needs planning a year ahead rather than a term.
• Ask about the total cost early: tuition, the Material and Supply Fee, travel, accommodation, food, personal gear, and diving equipment and certification.
• ⚠ Ask whether financial aid, scholarships, or paid positions apply. Some field schools carry stipends or assistantships, and departments do not always advertise them.
• Satisfy the diving requirement well in advance. Certification takes time, and medical clearance can disqualify — find out before you have committed money.
• Get fit for it. Twelve weeks of excavation and diving is physically demanding, and arriving unprepared makes the first fortnight considerably worse.
• Expect heat, insects, early starts, and repetitive work. The romance of archaeology is real and it is about ten per cent of the experience.
• ⚠ Disclose relevant medical conditions to the director, confidentially, so support can be planned — particularly anything affecting heat tolerance or diving fitness.
• Keep documentation of everything you did. Sites, dates, hours, methods, supervisors — this is what professional registration and job applications require, and reconstructing it later is difficult.

⚠⚠ Florida field conditions are a genuine hazard — prepare deliberately

• ⚠⚠ Heat is what actually hurts people. Florida field seasons produce real heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and heat stroke is a medical emergency that kills. Drink before you are thirsty, take shade breaks, and know that the highest-risk person is the one who is unacclimatised — which on day one of a field school is everybody.
• Confusion, irrational behaviour, or staggering in a hot-weather worker is heat stroke until proven otherwise, and the person may still be sweating. Cool first, transport second.
• ⚠ Lightning ends fieldwork immediately. Florida has the highest lightning density in the United States. If you can hear thunder you are within range — get to a hard-topped vehicle or a substantial building and wait it out.
• Sun protection is not cosmetic. A career of field seasons is a real cancer risk; long sleeves, a hat, and sunscreen.
• Assume every body of water holds an alligator, and keep well back from banks and edges.
• ⚠ Venomous snakes are present statewide. Watch where you put hands and feet, never reach into what you cannot see, and leave any snake alone — most bites happen to people who tried to handle or kill one.
• Ticks, mosquitoes, chiggers, and fire ants are constant. Use repellent, check for ticks daily, and treat mosquito-borne illness as a genuine Florida concern.
• Learn poison ivy, which grows abundantly here and climbs as a vine.
• ⚠⚠ Excavation units are trenches. Deep units can collapse, and trench collapse kills quickly and buries people who thought a shallow unit was safe — know your project's depth limits and shoring requirements.
• Lift properly and rotate tasks. Screening and mattock work injure backs and shoulders over a season.
• Tell someone where you are, carry water and a charged phone, and never work alone in a remote area.

⚠⚠ Excavation is destruction, and the record is what survives

• A site can be excavated once. Removing material destroys its context permanently, and context is where nearly all the information is.
• ⚠ Which is why recording is the actual work. The site is gone; the notes, drawings, photographs and samples are what remains of it. A dig with poor records has destroyed a site and produced nothing.
• ⚠⚠ Do not collect. Surface collecting, souvenir-taking, and metal detecting on a project or a public site are unprofessional and frequently unlawful — and a single artefact pocketed by a student is context destroyed and a career jeopardised.
• Do not buy, sell, or appraise antiquities. The professional societies treat commercialisation of the archaeological record as incompatible with the discipline, because market demand is what funds looting.
• Curation must be planned and funded before excavation, not after. Repositories are full, and excavation without a curation plan is destruction with extra steps.
• ⚠ Human remains require consultation, not just permits, and descendant communities have legitimate authority over the treatment of their ancestors.
• Publish, or the destruction was for nothing. Unreported fieldwork is a recognised failure in this discipline.
• ⚠ Report finds rather than recovering them when you are not on an authorised project. A recorded position is valuable; a surfaced object is context destroyed.

⚠⚠ The legal framework, and why survey work sits inside it

• Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to consider effects on historic properties, and it is the single largest driver of archaeological employment in the United States — most professional survey work exists because of it.
• The Archaeological Resources Protection Act governs archaeological resources on federal and tribal land and makes unauthorised excavation, removal, and trafficking a federal offence.
• ⚠⚠ NAGPRA governs human remains, funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, creating consultation and repatriation obligations.
• ⚠ Florida Chapter 267 vests archaeological resources on state-owned land and state-owned submerged land in the state. Collecting from them without a permit is unlawful — which matters directly to anyone diving on a Florida wreck.
• ⚠⚠ Florida section 872.05 makes it a felony to knowingly disturb an unmarked human burial. If human remains are encountered, work stops and the statutory process is followed.
• The Florida Master Site File is the state inventory; recording sites into it is a professional obligation, and its forms are a standard survey deliverable.
• Sunken military craft remain flag-state property regardless of age or location — a Spanish colonial warship or a United States naval vessel is not abandoned property.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies. Preservation law and consultation requirements change; verify with the State Historic Preservation Office and the relevant agency.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

ANT4121 is published at 1–9 semester hours at the University of West Florida, with ANT3101 as prerequisite and a diving certificate and permission required.

⚠ The catalog's "6 weeks each" is the only duration statement UWF publishes — the figures here follow it directly. See also this repository's ANT4824 and ANT4835 guides for the single-specialism versions.