Garden Archaeology

No, I have not been performing excavations in the backyard. But I think I have found what I want to do this summer. I’ve been debating about the relative merits of continuing full-time school during the summer term and getting a job and actually making some money this summer. I was heavily leaning toward the latter, but then I was reminded about the archaeology field school at the Vancouver National Historic Reserve. It’s a 40 hour/week fieldwork class at Fort Vancouver, and this year they’re excavating the gardens – how cool is that? I had thought about doing it last summer, but they were working on the powder magazine, which was completely uninteresting to me. But it would be cool to do archaeology in an old garden site. The flyer says: “Excavations will search for remnants of the garden well, garden paths and beds, and collect samples for analysis of plant remains.” Fun!

Another cool thing about the field school is that it would fulfill all of my remaining anthropology elective requirements – 12 credits of upper-division electives. After the summer I would only have one more required anthro class to take! (That’s not to say I’d graduate immediately, since I still have some University Studies classes to take care of, and there are other interesting classes I want to take.) That would be very cool indeed. And they’re cheap credits, too – somehow the tuition is lower than regular tuition, which is great. Of course, there would be extra costs for transportation, but I’m sure people set up carpools, and it’s just over the river, so it shouldn’t be too bad. And it would only take the first six weeks of summer (starting the Tuesday after spring finals), so I’d still have nearly two months at the end of the summer to try to get some paid employment in.

I have a final tomorrow morning (thank goodness that class will finally be over!), and then I get to concentrate on the final project for my faunal class. It seems like every time I go in to my professor’s office hours with a question I come out with more things to think about and more things I want to include in my report. It’s kind of frustrating because it feels like it’s never going to end, but it’s good stuff to think about, and it’s a good kind of challenge. But I get a break from working on that when Graham comes up to visit this weekend – hooray! Let’s hope this beautiful weather holds up for just a few more days. :)