BACKGROUND INFLUENCES

Archaeological field schools may be sponsored by private, academic, or governmental institutions. But despite differing sponsors and different numbers of participants, many schools encounter general preparation, leadership, and governance issues. The author's observations come from work in cultural resources management (CRM), as a university field school assistant, as a faculty-director at an American field school, and as staff anthropologist for an American-Nigerian faculty fieldwork program. Recent experience includes organizing single Archaeology Day activities for the public and serving as an outdoor leader/trainer for the Appalachian Mountain Club. Finally, written evaluations from student and faculty participants as well as program assessments from external stakeholders have informed the policies, procedures, and thinking described here. These experiences have shaped my identity as a leader who understands the value of community building and inclusiveness for safe team-based work.

The North American archaeology field schools that I have attended exposed participants to not only field methods but also field traditions such as excessive drinking and gossip-fueled situational humor. Examined anthropologically, these traditions reflect a subculture shaped by local living conditions, outdoor activities, physical labor, and frenetic off-hours recreation. Many participants embrace these experiences wholeheartedly. Others are often left out and silent for various reasons—also a reflection of field school subculture. Of course, there are many different field school contexts and variants of fieldwork subcultures.

Early in my career, the iconic field-director personalities I encountered ranged from charismatic professor to pseudomilitary commander to consensus-driven facilitator. The behavior of archaeology leaders may influence how people are organized and learn on a field team. For a related example, a study of National Outdoor Leadership School participants suggested that instructor behaviors strongly influenced participants in outdoor adventure learning (Schumann et al. Reference Schumann, Paisley, Sibthorp and Gookin2009). Although it is not my intent to judge past archaeology personalities, it is obvious that field schools and working expectations have changed significantly over the past 30 years. Some field school issues, however, such as exclusion from a group, have not.

As a graduate field assistant, I remember hearing others talk about clique formation within a digging community as a means to survive the rigors of physical work, escape conflicting personalities, and get in on off-hours social activities. I have witnessed participants who were left out and heard their complaints. I have experienced firsthand feeling unsafe at a remote field site without a vehicle. At extreme locales or in foreign countries, this can be traumatic and even dangerous. Years later, when I was directing a field school, this participant exclusion issue surfaced again. With the help of an excellent staff, we began to work on community building by arranging off-site group trips, encouraging inclusive awareness, and looking after each other. This awareness begins with communicating expectations for everyone from preplanning to post–field school activities.

COMMUNICATION

A multiyear project in Virginia compelled me to think more about inclusiveness and team-based learning. Communication became an immediate issue when I first planned this distant summer field school for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). The first step to moving toward a welcoming and well-planned field school was to facilitate clear communications with internal and external stakeholders.

With a department mandate to create an accredited field school quickly, we found the participant demand for information immediate. We created a participant Frequently Asked Questions list to explain the when, what, how, and why of archaeological field schools to a large student audience. Later, it evolved into a comprehensive participant guide that communicated program outcomes and expectations, including how to apply, driving directions, daily operations, environmental hazards, skills training, weekly assignments, lab methods and artifact identification, personnel and team policies, assessments, and end-of-school procedures (Emerson Reference Emerson2020). Accompanying the guide was an application packet that included a memorandum of agreement defining professional conduct. First-time planners may find this documentary approach useful because it concisely informs your audience of your intentions and the expectations and rewards of your field school.

A participant guide may also be a planner's first step in organizational governance. Our guide satisfied staffing inquiries and described a program of study that was both accepted for course credit and eligible for aid and funding from internal sources. It also described professional expectations that were welcomed in discussions with institutional administrators and legal counsel assisting with landowner agreements, risk management, contractual services, curation needs, admissions, and an alcohol policy. Our communications described pre-career training and the possibility of financial aid that attracted students who might not otherwise have traveled 1,000 miles from home. Activities included visits to other digs, visiting scholar lectures, interactions with local residents, and laboratory learning. All of these organizational factors involved timely communications with internal and external stakeholders and institutions to create a team whose members were thousands of miles apart. Moreover, the guide proved to be useful support for grant applications and professional field school certification by the Register of Professional Archaeologists. Creating a detailed online or printed user guide for your field school that communicates your organization, professionalism, and inclusiveness to internal and external stakeholders is a best practice.

First-time planners may also wish to review comprehensive teaching reference guides that cover the details and decision making of running an archaeology field school (see Baxter Reference Baxter2016). Other resources that may offer useful insights are educational websites such as the PBS “Into the Field: Archaeology” collection, recent YouTube student fieldwork testimonies, and frank discussions on the Archaeology Podcast Network.

INFORMATION OFFICER

Following communication as an organizing and team-building idea, it is recommended that field school planners assign a person (or persons) to act as a point of contact to respond to inquiries from the media, your sponsoring organization, participant family members, descendant communities, and other stakeholders. This person, an information officer, needs to have firsthand experience with managing operations and provide regular updates on research progress. The information officer knows who is currently in the field and what is happening, and can relay contact information in emergency situations.

Your information officer(s) should not be directly under the authority of the field school staff, which will make it possible for this individual to be helpful as an ombudsperson for participant concerns. Given that field schools are extensions of physical campuses, classrooms, and business offices, your institution/organization should support this type of position. An information officer protects field school personnel in several ways, such as monitoring professional conduct and assisting with incident reporting. Training for this position should include, but not be limited to, bias awareness, anti-racism and discrimination, harassment and sexual assault, and the requirements of the American Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition, this person should have knowledge of any participants who have chosen to self-identify protected characteristics or disclose special needs for accommodation. This information may be collected from participant application forms, advisements from human resources personnel, or voluntary interviews. Your officer should be trained to protect student information as required by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and know that such information should not be disclosed publicly (Hlavac and Easterly Reference Hlavac and Easterly2015).

Providing your officer with updated press releases to distribute to media is also a good practice. The officer also assists by protecting the privacy of landowners, the safety of field teams, and the security of sites. This individual may also monitor and limit participant posting of site locations and participant pictures on social media. A media control policy is particularly important for team security in remote areas or when working in a foreign country. An exception to this might be if community leaders or descendant groups involved in your fieldwork wish to negotiate media coverage. Delegating an information officer to provide up-to-date communications to assist with personnel concerns and support team security is a best practice for making a field school safe.

TEAM-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

“Active,” “experiential,” “authentic,” “project-based,” and “team-based” are frequently used adjectives in pedagogical writings about learning (for examples, see Armstrong and Fukami Reference Armstrong and Fukami2009; Pritchard and Woollard Reference Pritchard and Woollard2010). Their definitional differences are revealed by understanding an instructivist-to-constructionist learning continuum that parses out by whom and how people are taught, and the way they apply that learning either individually or in groups to accomplish new things. For archaeological work, parts of all of these theories apply.

Team-based learning is an instructor-framed method that requires pre-class work along with subsequent collaboration to complete an activity by applying course-learned methods and techniques. Key to team-based learning is teaching people to listen and value the contributions of others, learn from mistakes, and peer manage to create a team that achieves more than what an individual could accomplish (Vancouver Island University 2020). Field school participants engage experientially through skills instruction and eventually grow into a decision-making team in the field and laboratory. This learning evolution comes quickly for some but not for others. Insights to team-based learning illuminate this point.

The participant guide mentioned earlier also served as a course syllabus with modular assignments and skills assessments supportive of team-based learning. Moreover, operations procedures supported a team-based structure that scheduled participants in daily tasks that immersed them in team-based thinking. Upon arrival, participants were assigned in pairs or small groups to rotate through survey, digging, screening, lab work, food preparation, and cleaning. Unstructured time for discussion and honing field skills, such as working with a theodolite, is a good practice for encouraging team-based thinking and peer-to-peer support. Although the organization of staff and participants may vary at different field schools, the purpose of team-based thinking is universal. It often requires leadership patience.

One participant reminded us of this when we were teaching the sensitive excavation of a bone pit. Isolated in a unit a few meters away from the bone pit, a participant continued to dig down in their unit 2 m below the shallow topsoil layers into sterile subsoils. Fortunately, no features were disturbed, and we used this mistake as a teaching moment and the unit as a stratigraphic profile of subsurface soils for the benefit of all. It was a good reminder that archaeology fieldwork can be personally immersive and requires compassionate instructors to model supportive team-based interactions.

In creating working teams, first-time planners should consider not assigning relatives, couples, or friends together at first. This ensures that everyone starts as an equal social member of their team. Pairing experienced workers with novices and placing different ages together is a good practice and fosters general inclusiveness. There are, of course, exceptions such as arranging reasonable accommodations for participants with disabilities (ADA National Network 2020). Written participant evaluations commented on feeling safe knowing what to expect from living and working at a field school, when they would be assessed, and how they would get along with others (Emerson Reference Emerson2004). Encouraging inclusivity and a judgment-free learning environment where mistakes are instructional moments and all are included in both the process and product of good work is a best practice.

PRE-FIELD TRAINING AND PROBLEM SOLVING

Team-based learning requires special leadership that is dedicated to instruction and safety and that delegates tasks when appropriate. Outdoor leader training sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club teaches novice leaders that when a team member is injured or disruptive, it takes time, task delegating, and people to manage the situation (Appalachian Mountain Club 2020). This also applies to any field school. As reported in other articles in this volume, advanced first aid and leadership training are all good practices for first-time planners and field school staff (see Eifling Reference Eifling2021; Hawkins Reference Hawkins and Winstead2021)

A safe archaeology field school has a balanced leadership of men and women trained to listen to and assist participants with emerging concerns. Role-playing various group scenarios is also used extensively in outdoor leadership training, and it is valuable for pre–field school planning. Strategies for reporting injuries and handling disruptive participants include who directs, who records, and who accompanies victim transport or follows up with disciplinary action. The expertise stressed here is not medical knowledge, skills, and available medical kits, but the organizational leadership strategies used to aid a participant or manage a team that may have witnessed an injury, danger, or disruption. Role-playing prior to the field school and strategizing how to handle emerging hazards and personnel concerns is a best practice for field school leadership teams.

PROFESSIONAL TONE

Professional tone is a compilation of individual attitudes and behaviors that define a group's working subculture. Tone is the essence of conduct that is learned, shared, and portrayed by field school team members and leaders. Field school organizations have published guides for codes of conduct, and the Register of Professional Archaeologists has created an ethics database that first-time planners are encouraged to review before going to the field (RPA 2020b). An example of unprofessional behavior by one individual can disrupt the efficacy of team-based learning in a single day or make participants feel constantly unsafe during a field school.

An experienced professional can determine quickly if participants are well organized, immersed in team work, and respectful of peers and staff. Less engaged participants can be distracted easily. For example, while I was working as a graduate assistant at a historic California site, over 100 students watched as a student removed a large rattlesnake from a back dirt pile and proceeded to play with it to show off. Perceived as wildlife abuse, this stunt sparked a number of emotions, disrupted the work, and set the tone for the day. An unprofessional tone portrays an unsafe workplace and a lack of respect for others. Distractions can lead to accidents and disrupt field learning. It is challenging to maintain composure and morale when enduring insects, extreme climate, and hard labor, and yet there are inclusive forms of humor that speak to field difficulties. Professional tone reflects higher goals such as the value of field research to contribute knowledge to a local community or to a larger society. Portraying a professional tone before, during, and after field school that also promotes group-friendly humor and team excitement is a best practice.

DISCRIMINATION, HARASSMENT, AND SEXUAL ASSAULT

Interpersonal relations often seem to affect the tone of a field school team. Given the stresses of fieldwork, different hardships can bind and break personal relationships. Conditions may drive people either away from or toward each other on unequal ground through misunderstanding or conflict. Unconscious bias studies indicate that people may discriminate at times without being aware of it (Ross Reference Ross2019). Moreover, the American Anthropological Association advises that “field settings are particularly problematic spaces for sexual assault or sexual harassment” (Reference Pritchard and Woollard2018). Professional archaeology associations also have informative resources on this issue. It is best to mirror these resources and/or the protocols of a sponsoring institution in your field school planning and literature with an understanding of Title IX regulations and responsibilities, some of which have been recently revised (Brown Reference Brown2020).

A field leadership team should have a clear understanding of how discrimination, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are defined as well as what constitutes the difference between a criminal offense, sex-based or gender-based discrimination, and the unwelcome behaviors that are characteristic of harassment. Gurchiek (Reference Gurchiek2019) reported data that the various forms of harassment can have a long-term effect on female workers and learners. A recent survey of southeastern American archaeologists has also identified the consequences of sexual harassment on female career longevity (Meyers et al. Reference Meyer, Horton, Boudreaux, Carmody, Wright and Dekle2018). Harassment can affect both men and women and seriously disrupt the team-based relationships that are essential for good fieldwork.

First-time planners must provide participants with this important information. It is recommended that the director(s) and/or information officer talk with staff and participants early on in preplanning and provide subsequent reminders in the field. Advocating zero tolerance for discrimination, harassment, or assault of any kind in your field school is a best practice.

Incident reporting is the most effective means of handling complaints during field school fairly. Seek out your Title IX coordinator or human resources personnel for reporting standards, forms, and a workflow process that illustrates how to do it properly. Important to the process of incident reporting are two responsibilities of leadership. The first is assuring participants and staff that they can safely report incidents. Secondly, field school leaders must understand that it is their responsibility to report crimes such as sexual assault to the requisite authorities right away.

A person may not feel comfortable bringing a complaint to the leadership if it involves the leadership. Advising people on whom to report to may be difficult given daily interactions and emotional discomfort resulting from an incident. An example of student reporting at Amherst College provides insights into this problem. Undergraduates indicated that they would report incidents to 16 different contact points on campus, which included faculty, staff, counselors, health-care workers, friends, Title IX coordinators, and authorities (Amherst College 2017). Again, a balanced field school leadership team of men and women is most efficacious for incident reporting. An information officer who is not under the authority of the field school director(s) can also fill the listening and reporting role. More detailed policy suggestions for archaeology field schools can be found in a recent article drawing on recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for preventing harassment of women in academia (Colaninno et al. Reference Colaninno, Beahm and Drexler2020).

GROUP DYNAMICS AND INTERVENTION

Field schools today have more age, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity than in the past due to more opportunities and the welcome inclusion of community descendants in fieldwork. Moreover, today's students expect to receive more from academic programming and to be involved in matters of assessment and governance. Key to creating a safe field school within this socio-educational milieu is determining when and how to impose rules and structure. Many field schools encounter personnel problems, and the challenges faced are the product of many attitudinal and behavioral interactions. The iconic leader types mentioned earlier managed group compliance with strict rules, group consensus, or a “join me” charismatic approach. I have learned through leadership training and administrative experience that a diverse group of participants requires situational leadership and governance (see Blanchard et al. [Reference Blanchard, Zigarmi and Zigarmi2003] for information on situational leadership). It follows that team-based thinking and learning should be encouraged in team-based living.

For example, dinnertime in the first season of my SIUE field school was a disaster initially. The cook prepared sufficient food for 13 at the required time, but first-in-line participants grabbed it up, leaving none for latecomers or the director. Some food was consumed, some ended up in personal quarters, and some was wasted. Despite new portion dictates, attitude warnings, and consensus voting for equitable behaviors, this situation did not change for three days.

The solution lay in thinking inclusively and imposing structure that encouraged team-based thinking at the dining tables. It was a fairness issue, and participants were asked to stand by their chairs until everyone had arrived before food was served. The solution was immediately successful because participants further policed themselves and others by calling latecomers and ensuring that everyone had equal access to food. This dinner gathering structure worked well for five seasons and became a stimulus for thinking about other group concerns and policies.

Rumor-spreading, distasteful humor, minor misunderstandings, and lack of cooperation in group kitchen and living tasks are some of the uncomfortable aspects of living in the field with strangers. Different leaders may dictate rules, monitor intermittently, or ignore these concerns. When and how do you intervene to deal with behaviors that make others uncomfortable? For first-time planners, your group intervention policy should consider how to protect individual participants and team-based cohesion. For example, how would you respond to a nonphysical bullying situation? One answer is that bullying can be identified as an issue that threatens personal safety, undermines team-building fairness, and impacts group security. Setting policies and structure for matters that threaten fairness, safety, and security is a best practice for any organized group.

The clarity of this intervention policy was appreciated and supported by field school staff and participants for several reasons. Speaking though reflection experiences, some participants felt safe when they knew that a leadership member might intervene in individual or group problem situations. Others preferred nonintervention, particularly if staff were not living with participants. In some situations, living together may encourage participants to govern themselves through peer-to-peer management. In other cases, individual or group behaviors may be discomforting but not endangering. Today, field school leadership is neither top-down and authoritarian nor facilitated by consensus. Instead, it is the product of good planning and distributed power dynamics. A people-safe organizational table for archaeology field schools illustrates how authority and responsibilities can be distributed through the roles and functions played by director(s), staff, participants, information officer, and institutional administrator (Table 1).

Table 1.

People-Safe Organization for Archaeology Field Schools.

Personal safety is feeling safe living with others who may have different values and behaviors. Group safety requires cooperation, listening, and being aware of the actions of others as well as hidden dangers. An example of personal and group endangerment is excessive alcohol consumption in the field. Some field schools forbid it, and others avoid the problem because they know that drinking is difficult to control. Working with SIUE legal counsel, I wrote a simple, one-page document: Safety-First Alcohol Policy (Emerson Reference Emerson2020). It limited appropriate age drinking at institutional living quarters, required designated driver sign-in/out, and released institutions from liability for participant accidents with alcohol. An alcohol policy is an effective intervention and best practice to protect personal and group safety, particularly for off-site traveling.

Security issues revolve around where the field site is located and where participants live. As mentioned earlier, it is recommended to limit participant reporting on your location and have prepared remarks when speaking with those not involved in your research, such as the public or the media. To protect private landowners and sites, first-time planners might consider standardized responses for inquiries about digging locations and finds. Your information officer may also assist in protecting landowner and participant privacy and security. For example, during ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria, our team movements were closely monitored by local villagers, which helped us feel welcome and secure. Traveling in other areas, we were not as safe. Of course, security concerns are different everywhere, particularly if the public knows where you are digging or if your site area is promoted by an institution or descendant community. First-time planners must consider the security of participants and visitors, the archaeological resources under investigation, and the property owners who have authorized the access.

ASSESSMENT AND SUMMARY

Feedback is a gift, and all of us can improve what we do and how we do it. First-time planners are advised to build in structured and casual assessment mechanisms into their field programs. Written evaluations, ungraded reflections presentations, and casual exit interviews are all good sources of feedback. A reflection activity may provide some deep insights into what a field school experience means and what individual goals were achieved. Participants may talk about an artifact, their relationship with a trowel, or a word they used daily that sums up their experience. Personal assessments are a best practice because they provide insights into the ways a team of individuals has grown, solved problems together, and shared different observations, values, and senses of humor.

All of these mechanisms give insight to answering that post-field question, How did your team do? They should also help you plan for your next season.

In summary, first-time field school planners should consider the following best practices:

• • Creating a detailed field school user guide that communicates your organization, professionalism, and inclusiveness to internal and external stakeholders

• • Delegating an information officer to provide up-to-date communications, assist with personnel concerns, and support team security

• • Encouraging inclusivity and a judgement-free learning environment where all are included in the process and product of good work

• • Providing a safe archaeology field school that has a balanced leadership of men and women trained to listen to and assist participants

• • Engaging leadership and staff in pre-field school role-playing to strategize about how to handle emerging hazards and personnel concerns.

• • Portraying a professional tone before, during, and after field school that also promotes group-friendly humor and team excitement

• • Advocating zero tolerance for discrimination, harassment, or assault of any kind

• • Setting policies and structure for matters that threaten fairness, safety, and security

• • Implementing an alcohol policy that ensures personal and group safety

• • Using personal assessments to provide insights into the ways a team of individuals has grown, solved problems together, and shared different observations, values, and senses of humor.