In order to really understand how archaeology works,
you need to get your hands dirty.
Quite literally, you need to get in the dirt with the trowel.
And that's what 13 students from 10 universities did
at a field school led by UTRGV anthropology assistant professors
Dr. Sarah Rowe and Dr. Guy Duke.
This summer, we were in Ecuador... investigating the ancient lifeways
at a village that's nearly 6,000 years old.
We were digging for just cultural artifacts.
Leann Castillo, a senior at UTRGV, participated in the program,
which is part of the Institute for Field Research.
We were mostly looking for lithics,
which are manmade stone tools,
also looking for ceramics,
basically, anything we could find.
We were excavating or working in the field
with the students for five weeks.
Most of them never had any sort of field experience.
so they were learning excavation techniques while we were there.
We are in the dirt. 
We're in the jungle.
And we're digging.
It is a cleared space, so you're right next to the jungle.
So you can still hear the howler monkeys,
but you can't really see them.
But there's a lot of bugs all over the place.
It's really muddy.
There may have been just a little bit of trial by fire.
It's really important
if you're thinking about a career in archaeology
to actually get the experience of doing it,
because fieldwork can often be very different
from your normal day-to-day life.
This is the first field school Drs. Duke and Rowe led.
While in Ecuador, they made sure their students
had the opportunity to meet with other experts
and students in the area.
We want our students to see of the diversity
of archaeological studies that are going on in that region.
I really enjoyed it.
I learned a lot.
I feel like I grew as a person.
And I got to meet some really great people,
so I have connections all around the country now.
You can learn more about research underway
in the U-T-R-G-V anthropology department
by visiting U-T-R-G-V dot E-D-U slash anthropology.
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