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Archaeology campers dig for clues By Celena E. Kusch
Penn State Department of Anthropology graduate students Janet Schulenberg (left) and Jaimin Weets teach archaeology campers the techniques of bone identification at the Matson Museum of Anthropology located on the University Park campus. photo by Dick Ackley University Photo/Graphics	Last summer, 10 students from throughout the Northeast participated in Penn State’s Archaeology Camp: Digging for Clues.   For one week, campers used archaeological methods to look into the lives of past and present generations of people from around the world. In a bone identification activity, students determined a subject’s age by analyzing the condition of the teeth and the connections between plates in the skull. Instructors asked students to remember their own dental and physical histories, including bone breaks, tooth loss or gain and dental work. According to Dr. Claire Milner, curator of the Matson Museum of Anthropology and camp director for the past two years, this act of comparison offers students a context for understanding cultural diversity and encourages them to imagine what contemporary behaviors will produce as markers for future generations of archaeologists.   The archaeology camp is sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts, Continuing Education and the Matson Museum of Anthropology. The program provides an opportunity for middle and high school students from around the nation to learn from Penn State research and teaching in archaeology. Most of the camp’s content is developed from museum programming and collections and from faculty who teach introductory classes for undergraduates. Milner and other Penn State researchers with field experience in the United States and beyond teach the campers.   “The camp provides an introduction to archaeology and to what archaeologists really do,” Milner said. “This field promotes critical thinking. We engage the students by giving them a body of data—from the contents of a garbage can from a contemporary Japanese hotel or an American office to items found in a prehistoric site. We ask them what we can say about that data just by critical observation. Then we introduce archaeological methods and use them to test and refine the students’ earlier analysis.”   Along with the classroom-based activities, students learned to conduct an archaeological excavation in both simulated and real sites. In the simulated dig, boxes of dirt were planted with real artifacts from the museum collection. Students learned to recover artifacts from the site, then reconstruct the past using an interactive software program.   “We designed the sites to be as close to reality as possible and to show the methods and thinking archaeologists use,” Milner noted. “In the digs, the students see themselves acting as scientists. It is wonderful to expose them to these practices so early in their academic careers.”   This year, the camp also collaborated with staff at Centre Furnace Mansion to give students experience in a working archaeological site. Milner explained the partnership, saying, “The mansion personnel are interested in finding out more about the function of some of their standing buildings. They were delighted to have professional and budding archaeologists looking at their site.” The campers also benefited by making a contribution to an ongoing research project. An outreach program of the Department of Anthropology, College of the Liberal Arts