PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY FIELD SCHOOL AT FORT VANCOUVER 2012

Tuesday–Saturday, June 19–August 4, 2012 Portland State University, Washington State University Vancouver, and the National Park Service are pleased to announce a field school in historical archaeology at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. The program will introduce the methods and theories of fieldwork in historical archaeology. Students will participate in all aspects of field and laboratory work: laying out units, excavation by shovel and trowel, mapping, drawing, photography, and cleaning, identifying, and analyzing artifacts. The season includes lectures by guest speakers and staff. The National Park Service and its partners are committed to sharing cultural resources and preservation values with the public. On a rotating basis, students will discuss the field school activities with visitors, including interpreting the significance of the site and the educational purposes of the project. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is an unparalleled archaeological laboratory, comprising the remains of Fort Vancouver, the ca.1825-1860 regional headquarters and supply depot for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Vancouver Barracks, the first (ca. 1849 -2010) permanent U.S. Army post in the Pacific Northwest. This year’s field school will continue explorations in Fort Vancouver’s multicultural Village (also known as “Kanaka Village”). This colonial village was the largest settlement in the Pacific Northwest in the 1830s and 1840s. It contained people from around the world and the Pacific Northwest, including Native Hawaiians, Scots, French Canadians, African Americans, the Métis, and people of many different American Indian tribes. The field school will provide a means to recapture the early history of colonial Fort Vancouver, a place of multiculturalism in the Pacific Northwest, while engaging the modern Portland/Vancouver area in the unique history of their closest National Park site. This year will also continue the recording of baseline conditions of grave markers in the Old City Cemetery. This partnership project is helping to train students in cemetery recording and analysis, while collecting information to better manage this threatened historical property. For one week during the latter portion of the course, the school will move to Lewis and Clark National Historical Park to conduct test excavations at Fort Astoria/Fort George, a National Historic Landmark property related to the terrestrial fur trade and the history of the War of 1812 in the West. For more information, click here. Applications are due no later than May 4, 2012