Winterville Mounds & Courtland Plantation are just two of the many sites our department has worked very closely with in the past. Field School is no easy endeavor. Field school requires a l0t of time, sweat, tears, and yes, sometimes shedding a little blood; trust me, it is all worth it! Ask any student, including myself, about their time in the field with one of these professors and boy, will they have some stories to tell!
What an honor it is to have such a fun-loving and experienced group of students as well as professors to work so closely with just to try and solve a mystery that, without them, would be long forgotten! You will be highly dissapointed if you don't enjoy sweat and hard work because without those two things, field school will become a nightmare!
My experience with the joys of field school started on a plot of land in Adams County, Mississippi, also known as Courtland Plantation. I had no idea what to expect when I got there, only that a large group of students and Dr. Amy Young would be sharing a trailer for a few weeks. If any of you are from the northern part of the state, I'm sure you know where this little town is. Close to Natchez, Mississippi, Adams county is a little one-stoplight town with not a whole lot to look at. Little did I know it is filled with old southern plantaions that still have the original signs that trace back a couple of hundred years! This type of discovery would have been the history my grandfather would have loved. On this particular plantation, the owner was really nice, but just didn't have a whole lot to say. Dr. Young and a few students had previously completed some testing on the site just to see what they were dealing with. By the time my group arrived, we were ready to start excavating! We all know how hard Mississippi mud can be in the middle of summer...hard as a rock! A lot of work was required, but we mapped the site, created a grid to work in, dug a couple of 1x1 units, and began to unearth some pretty cool stuff! The land of Courtland Plantation, primarily used for hunting and farming, had literally chopped into pieces artifacts that may have been on the surface. By the end of the summer, we discovered the original brick foundation of slave quarters, dating back to 1816. This exciting discovery was exactly the type of future I could see myself doing for the rest of my life! To be among the first to see those brick foundations again in almost 200 years was an amazing sensation! Findings such as those discovered on Courtland Plantation is what archaeology is all about! Life truly is one big puzzle with an unlimited amount of varying pieces; it's our job, as well as our honor, to locate these pieces and place them back together again for the rest of the world to discover.
What an honor it is to have such a fun-loving and experienced group of students as well as professors to work so closely with just to try and solve a mystery that, without them, would be long forgotten! You will be highly dissapointed if you don't enjoy sweat and hard work because without those two things, field school will become a nightmare!
My experience with the joys of field school started on a plot of land in Adams County, Mississippi, also known as Courtland Plantation. I had no idea what to expect when I got there, only that a large group of students and Dr. Amy Young would be sharing a trailer for a few weeks. If any of you are from the northern part of the state, I'm sure you know where this little town is. Close to Natchez, Mississippi, Adams county is a little one-stoplight town with not a whole lot to look at. Little did I know it is filled with old southern plantaions that still have the original signs that trace back a couple of hundred years! This type of discovery would have been the history my grandfather would have loved. On this particular plantation, the owner was really nice, but just didn't have a whole lot to say. Dr. Young and a few students had previously completed some testing on the site just to see what they were dealing with. By the time my group arrived, we were ready to start excavating! We all know how hard Mississippi mud can be in the middle of summer...hard as a rock! A lot of work was required, but we mapped the site, created a grid to work in, dug a couple of 1x1 units, and began to unearth some pretty cool stuff! The land of Courtland Plantation, primarily used for hunting and farming, had literally chopped into pieces artifacts that may have been on the surface. By the end of the summer, we discovered the original brick foundation of slave quarters, dating back to 1816. This exciting discovery was exactly the type of future I could see myself doing for the rest of my life! To be among the first to see those brick foundations again in almost 200 years was an amazing sensation! Findings such as those discovered on Courtland Plantation is what archaeology is all about! Life truly is one big puzzle with an unlimited amount of varying pieces; it's our job, as well as our honor, to locate these pieces and place them back together again for the rest of the world to discover.