Michael Adler

Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology

Southern Methodist University

(Published in the Society for American Archaeology Newsletter 2001)

Each of us remembers our first field school experience. If your introduction to field archaeology was anything like my own, your field school was a supervised excavation populated by eager students, most of whom joined you in having no idea what they’d gotten into. You were away from home, in a new place, and you knew you were going to get the opportunity to explore past cultures.

This is how most our students continue to be introduced to archaeology and I believe it is an appropriate and essential experience. No matter how long you've been in archaeology you will remember coming face to face with the archaeological record for the first time. I also believe, however, that as a profession we can enhance these early archaeological experiences for our students. Today's field school needs to represent today's archaeology, instilling knowledge of new cultural properties regulations, international antiquities laws, increasing the inclusion of descendant aboriginal populations in our research, and applying the many recent technological advances in the realms of remote sensing, preservation, and computerization of many field tasks.

As part of its mission to enhance archaeological professional standards, the Register of Professional Archaeology (RPA) has recently initiated a program to certify archaeological field schools. A similar program was established by the Society of Professional Archeologists (SOPA) not long before the transition to the Register took place, and the same procedures have been carried forward from those of SOPA. The overall goals of the RPA program are to establish basic standards for archaeological field schools, and to recognize academic field schools that meet these standards by awarding them RPA certification.

RPA President Don Hardesty has appointed a Committee on Field School Certification. The goals of the committee are to review applications from programs seeking certification, assess the existing standards for field schools, and make recommendations for modifications to the certification standards. Members of the Committee include Michael Adler (Southern Methodist University, chair), William Lipe (Washington State University), Elizabeth Pena (SUNY-Buffalo), and John Doershuk (Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa). Even though the RPA Field School Certification program is just beginning to be publicized, several applications have been received, reviewed and certified since early April 2000.

The field school certification program has set several goals. First, the certification program will create a context for disseminating information on the current professional standards for archaeological field schools. Even if field school directors decide to forego certification, and we hope you don't, the program will reacquaint directors with SAA and RPA field school standards. Second, certification will, we hope, encourage improvements in existing field school programs. The Register is not interested in reducing the number of field schools in existence, but instead seeks to foster improvements and innovations. Field schools remain the single most common context for the professional training of our next generation of archaeologists and we need to treat this training seriously. Third, students and prospective employers will benefit from the certification program because the process will establish a listing of those field programs that meet established professional standards. There are already several sources that advertise field schools, including the AIA Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin and the Fieldwork Opportunities web site (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ioa/cgi-bin/show-opps.pl). These and other field school information sources have agreed to signify those programs with RPA certification in their books and web sites, and the Register will also list certified programs in its literature and web site. Finally, certification will include peer-review of research designs and field methodologies, increasing the exchange of information and suggestions regarding field school research and methods within the archaeological community.

Overwhelmingly, the answer would be "yes." During the 2000 academic year I gathered a range of information on archaeological field schools to better understand the variability in the offerings that are available to students. The primary objective was to (roughly) measure modern field schools against the RPA standards to see, in fact, how many current field schools that offer university credits are potentially certifiable. The data collection methods were not a study in methodological rigor. Data were collected from a sample of fifty uncertified field school programs from field school flyers, past AIA publications, and web pages dedicated to individual field school programs. Information was collected on field school location, duration, research focus, field experiences, costs, and ratios of students to supervisors. The fifty field schools were relegated primarily to North America, Mexico, and Central America, with only seven Old World field schools. Even so, the Old World field schools did not differ appreciably in scope or intentions from their New World counterparts.

The current RPA certification standards cover five areas, including 1) personnel, 2) operational procedures, 3) field procedures, and 4) sponsorship, 5) purpose. The full text of the standards and application form can be found at http://members.aol.com/harrisrpa/notes/field_school_application.pdf and is also available from the Register. There is insufficient room to discuss all of the standards here, but let me begin with field school personnel. My primary question here was "do field school supervisory personnel meet the minimal requirements for being RPA certified?" This is important because applicants to the field school certification program must be RPA certified or in the process of gaining RPA certification. Within this sample only three programs mention personnel with RPA certification. For the remaining forty-seven programs nearly all of the supervisors listed would have, or already did have, the professional credentials required for RPA certification. For example, forty-four programs listed Primary Investigators, all but two of whom had a doctorate in anthropology or archaeology.

In the area of "Operational Procedure" which covers instructional contexts, introductory lectures, and other vehicles for field education, I estimate that 75-85% of the field schools easily meet or exceed basic RPA criteria. This percentage would be higher if more program details were available. Under the rubrics of "Field Procedures" and "Structures" the Register recommends that students be instructed in a wide range of field operations, including all aspects of excavation, note-taking, laboratory analysis, mapping, and use of appropriate technologies. It also outlines the basic facilities that should be available to field school students to enhance living and working conditions. Again, the descriptions of the field schools indicate that at 70-80% of the field schools meet these standards if we take the field school advertisements and literature at face value.

The criteria for Institutional Sponsor suggests that field schools be sponsored by credit-granting institutions, and only one of the fifty field schools surveyed did not meet this criterion. The single exception was field school run by a non-profit educational organization, but the same program was supervised by personnel with teaching positions at universities in England and Canada. In other words, 100% of the programs reviewed meet the sponsor standards set by the RPA. There are many non-university archaeology field schools, but in most cases these are field research offerings that are not set up as credit-granting field programs. The realm of non-credit archaeological education needs to be addressed in our ongoing RPA review of certification criteria since there are very good institutional field schools that are not sponsored by university programs.

Before addressing "Purpose," a few words about the duration of field school programs. The Register does not presently have a minimum duration criterion for field schools, but certification committee members feel that it is an important consideration for future revisions of the standards. One question I ask you to consider, then, would be whether to require a minimum duration of planned field and laboratory work for certified field schools. Within this sample the average duration of field schools was 5.5 weeks (standard deviation: 1.6 weeks), one week being five days of field or laboratory work. If we used a six-week minimum, 45% of surveyed field schools would not qualify. Dropping the minimum to five weeks would exclude 36% from certification.

One option that is presently being considered would be to recognize more than one level of field school certification. In other words, certification would not be an either-or proposition, but a graduated scale. As an example, shorter field schools running three weeks or less could apply for a level 1 certification, while programs offering the equivalent of four to five weeks might apply for a level 2 certification, and so on. We would appreciate feedback on this and other criteria.

Now onto the topic of PURPOSE, the realm in which I think we have the most room for improvement in current field schools. Assuming there is a relatively strong correlation between what is described in the course literature and syllabi and the actual fieldwork, nearly every field school surveyed would meet RPA standards for field education. The simple explanation for this is that our field schools are meeting our stated methodological standards, but bear in mind that those standards were adopted over twenty-five years ago. A I remarked above, our discipline could benefit from revisions to our educational standards. My own bias is that our archaeological field schools need more emphasis on research design, ethics, publication, and the process of scientific inquiry. These are topics that will be considered as our committee reviews standards over this next year of certification.

Based on this informal survey, at least three of every four field schools meet and exceed the current SAA and RPA standards for field schools. This is encouraging, but we do have room for improving the field education opportunities available to tomorrow's professional archaeologists. Over the next several months the committee will be soliciting information on the certification standards, application procedures, and related topics. The RPA will be sponsoring a round table on the topic of certification at the SAA meetings in New Orleans on Friday morning, April 20, and hope to see you there. In the mean time, we encourage everyone to apply for certification, and to submit their ideas, criticism, and encouragement to certification committee members.