On Tuesday we held our first Graduate Colloquium of the semester. IUP students travel all over the country, and even around the globe, over summer break to do archaeological research. We use the first colloquium to give graduate students the opportunity to share their experiences. This year, we had four presentations on thesis research and field schools.

Isabel Srour, a member of the second-year cohort, was the first presenter of the colloquium. She spent her summer doing research on community mapping for the Tell Hisban site in Jordan. Tell Hisban is a site that has been occupied since the early iron age. Isabel’s research involved interviewing locals and attempting to gauge how accessible the archaeological research is to them. One of the objectives of her thesis is to create a website to share information about the site.

Connor Winslow is in his second year at IUP, and he presented on his thesis research at Camp Security, a Revolutionary War prisoner fort in York County. Connor used ground-penetrating-radar (GPR) to find a continuation of the previously excavated palisade wall that encircled the fort. He was then able to excavate test units and examine the features left behind by the wall. He worked alongside volunteers, many of whom were descended from guards and prisoners that occupied the camp.

Nathan Coughlin and Tyler Fanell, also in their second year of the applied archaeology program, presented on their work at IUP’s Squirrel Hill field school. It was their job to direct the students learning at the field school. Located in Westmoreland County, Squirrel Hill is a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it represents one of the largest known Monongahela villages in Pennsylvania. This summer, Nathan and Tyler were able to conduct valuable research there while also training a new generation of archaeologists.

Dakota Dickerson and Ryan Devanny presented on the forensic archaeology field school in Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany. Ryan is in his first year at IUP, and Dakota is in her second. They both worked as graduate assistants for Dr. Palmiotto, who is working with the Department of Defense to locate missing service members. Students learned field methods and were able to use GPR. On the weekends they visited various cities throughout Germany. Ryan’s favorite city was Friedrichshafen because they went boating on a lake and visited a zeppelin museum. This trip was an excellent opportunity for students to train in forensic archaeology, visit a new place, and to do important work for the families of service members back home.

Greetings everyone! My name is Brenden Patterson, and I will be managing the blog this year as the Public Archaeology Graduate Assistant. I am in my first year as a graduate student in the Applied Archaeology program here at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and I am looking forward to sharing everything we have going on in the program as the new Public Archaeology GA. I graduated from Iowa State University (in a far away land) with a B.S. in Anthropology and a minor in Biology. I attended field school at Lakeside Laboratory back in Iowa, where we excavated the area surrounding a late nineteenth century cabin tied to a major conflict with the Dakota in the Spirit Lake area. There, I was able to dip my toes into some historical research in combination with our field efforts. That being said, I am mainly interested in bones of all kinds, and I am generally interested in pre-contact archaeology. I spent the last year and a half working for Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist as an embedded consultant with the cultural resources team at the Department of Transportation. I did a variety of field work, interacted with the public, and contributed to the Section 106 consultation process. I hope I can use my background to come up with a variety of interesting topics to explore on the blog this year. We will be sharing some of the research our students are conducting at IUP, as well as other highlights like our graduate colloquiums. IUP students: If you have anything you’re excited about and would like to see featured on the blog, just let me know. Stay tuned for more!