Terrestrial Archaeological Field Methods

Course Description

Terrestrial Archaeological Field Methods is onsite training in terrestrial field methods that includes use of hand tools, surveying equipment, and some power equipment. Emphasised in the field are excavation techniques in a variety of situations, field scale drawings, and documentation, and field lab methods are often included. Permission is 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.

The field school is the single most important course in an archaeology education, and it is the one that determines whether you can be employed. The Register of Professional Archaeologists requires it, cultural resource management firms require it, and graduate programmes expect it — because there is no way to demonstrate that someone can actually excavate and record without watching them do it for several weeks. Everything else in the curriculum is preparation for this.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Excavate using hand tools with appropriate control and precision.
• Set up and maintain a site control grid.
• Lay out excavation units accurately.
• Use surveying equipment to establish elevations and positions.
• Operate power equipment safely where the project uses it.
• Excavate stratigraphically and recognise a change in deposit.
• Adapt excavation technique to different soils and conditions.
• Maintain vertical and horizontal provenience control.
• Screen excavated matrix and recognise recovery bias.
• Collect samples appropriately, including for flotation and dating.
• Recognise features and distinguish them from natural disturbance.
• Excavate and record a feature.
• Produce accurate field scale drawings in plan and profile.
• Draw and interpret a stratigraphic profile.
• Photograph archaeological contexts to a documentary standard.
• Complete field forms and unit records fully and legibly.
• Maintain field notes that another person could work from.
• Bag, tag, and record recovered material correctly.
• Perform field laboratory processing of recovered material.
• Work safely in and around open excavation units.
• Apply heat, weather, and site safety practice.
• Work effectively as part of a field crew.
• Take direction and correction during fieldwork.
• Describe the ethical and legal obligations governing excavation.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe backfilling and site stabilisation.
• Describe total station and digital recording workflows.
• Describe photogrammetry in the field.
• Describe the transition from field records to report.
• Describe curation preparation for a field season's material.
• Describe field school as preparation for CRM employment.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Hand tool excavation
• Site control grids
• Unit layout
• Surveying equipment
• Power equipment safety
• Stratigraphic excavation
• Adapting to soils and conditions
• Provenience control
• Screening and recovery bias
• Sampling
• Feature recognition
• Feature excavation
• Field scale drawing
• Profile drawing and interpretation
• Archaeological photography
• Field forms and unit records
• Field notes
• Bagging, tagging, recording
• Field laboratory processing
• Excavation safety
• Heat and weather safety
• Crew work
• Taking direction
• Ethical and legal obligations

Optional Topics

• Backfilling and stabilisation
• Total station and digital recording
• Photogrammetry
• From field records to report
• Curation preparation
• Field school and CRM employment

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.

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.

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 6 semester hours over 6 weeks, at roughly 40 hours a week — the normal pattern for a full-time archaeological field school — giving approximately 240 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.

⚠⚠ The field school is what makes you employable — treat it as the interview it is

• A field school is the standard entry requirement for professional archaeological work, and it is the first thing a CRM employer looks for on a resume.
• ⚠ It is also an extended assessment of whether you are someone people want on a crew. Directors are asked for references constantly, and the students who get recommended are the reliable ones, not the fastest excavators.
• Show up on time, every day, ready to work — in heat, after a bad night, and when the work is tedious. That is most of the job.
• Take correction without arguing. You will be corrected constantly and in front of others; it is how excavation is taught, and taking it personally makes the season miserable.
• ⚠ Write legible, complete notes. Recording is the deliverable, and a good excavator with poor records has destroyed a deposit — the notes are what everything downstream depends on.
• Ask when you are unsure rather than guessing. An unrecorded feature cut through by accident cannot be recovered, and asking costs nothing.
• Look after yourself and your crew. Water, salt, shade, sleep, and watching a colleague who has stopped sweating are part of the work.
• Do the unglamorous tasks properly — screening, backfilling, cleaning tools, washing finds. Directors notice who does them without being asked.
• ⚠ Keep a record of what you did. Sites, dates, techniques, and supervisors — you will need it for job applications and for professional registration.

⚠⚠ 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.

ANT4824 is published at 1–9 semester hours at the University of West Florida, with ANT3101 as prerequisite and permission required. ⚠ The credits and hours shown are a representative six-week case — confirm the actual credit, dates, and total cost with the department.