THE EARLY HISTORY OF field schools in Southwestern archaeology has recently been addressed by Gifford and Morris (1985), who emphasize the period between 1920 and 1940 when these institutions provided nearly the only preprofessional, practical experience for archaeology students. The kinds of field classes offered by Edgar L. Hewett, founder of the University of New Mexico field school, have been described by Chauvenet (1983). Field schools have a recognized long and venerable history and have provided American archaeology with many of its most acclaimed practitioners. By the time I assumed directorship of the UNM summer field school in archaeology in 1974, between ten and sixteen institutions offered summer field schools in the Southwest, and a large and growing number of schools offered fieldwork for credit throughout North America and elsewhere. Some Southwestern field schools, such as the University of Arizona's at Grasshopper, primarily addressed the needs of advanced students. Others, such as Southern Methodist University's program at Fort Burgwin, offered specialized laboratory training in addition to general field experience. The UNM field schools of the 1970s and early 1980s remained committed to undergraduate students and to providing these students with as broad a range of field experiences as possible. The following is a personal reflection on the UNM field school as I knew it. A field school often provides a student's first field experience, as it did for me in 1964 when, as one of five undergraduates from George Washington University, I journeyed to New Mexico to join Dr. Florence Hawley Ellis in her excavations at Sapawe, near El Rito. It is a tribute to the seriousness of this venture that three of the five of us earned Ph. D.'s and pursued professional careers in anthropology, although I was the only one to to do so in archaeology.' The field school may also furnish the first supervisory experience for graduate students, as it did for me in 1965 when I worked for Dr. J.J. Brody excavating pit house sites near Taos. My fellow teaching assistants included John Beardsley, Nancy Hammack, and Michael Marshall, all of whom subsequently found careers in archaeology. A host of graduate students, far too numerous to mention here, also supervised field school students before going on to become professional archaeologists. Finally, of course, field schools supply the human resources essential to the archaeological research of the faculty member responsible for the project. Research in ethnology, linguistics, and biological anthropology is generally undertaken by one person working alone. Although some archaeological projects can be completed with the labor of one or a few individuals, most excavation
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