Want to experience a Destination, but not quite ready to travel out of the state? You are in luck! This year, GSUSA is hosting an AMAZING Destination in Cortez from June 30- July 6, 2019.
Join archaeologists at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez to take part in hands-on fieldwork. You’ll help excavate great houses on a site located nearby on private land. When you’re not busy digging into the past of ancestral Pueblo great houses, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, going to restaurants, museums, and sites such as Hovenweep National Monument, the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and Mesa Verde National Park.
On the day you arrive, researchers will conduct an orientation and brief you on the work you’ll be doing. Fieldwork will begin on the second day, where you will:
Excavate ancient households and public architecture: Most days, you’ll arrive at the dig immediately after breakfast and spend much of the day working with hand trowels, brooms, buckets, and screens to remove and identify artifacts and other archaeological finds. Your work may focus on the excavation of homes, middens (trash deposits), and the great houses.
Survey for future excavation sites: Help with remote sensing surveys that identify likely areas of archaeological significance. Remote sensing tools are used to identify features beneath the ground that may have been overlooked by standard survey techniques.
Survey for future excavation sites: Excavate a site of the ancient Pueblo II community.
Lab Analysis: Process artifacts recovered from excavations—pottery, lithics (stone tools), ground stone, and animal bone—which includes washing, sorting, cataloging, and labeling them.
In the evenings, you’ll head back to the field station for dinner and time to relax. Additionally, you may attend programs, including an introduction to research at Crow Canyon, presentation by staff archaeologists, and guest lectures on current research in Southwestern archaeology.
Find more information and apply by March 31, 2019: http://forgirls.girlscouts.org/travel/archaeology-culture-uncovering-the-mysteries-of-colorados-pueblo-communities/