The Pemaquid Field School, offered by Southern Maine Community College is a three-week hands-on archeological program under the direction of Dr. Neill De Paoli. Participants learn excavation and recording techniques, laboratory procedures, and artifact identification while helping with excavations at Pemaquid Falls, a site with a rich prehistoric and colonial history.
Indigenous people used this site 4,000 years ago. In the mid 17th-century, it became an English farming community. Dr. De Paoli has been excavating the site of the late 18th-century farmstead of prominent Pemaquid merchant Robert Given since 2001.
The program (Field School Flyer 2011 PDF), offered July 25-Aug. 12, 2011, is open to upper-level high school and undergraduate and graduate students seeking course credit and experience in historical archaeology, teachers in need of re-certification credits, and history buffs. It includes field trips, films, and discussions.
Can I possibly join in for just a couple of days in early August?
You’ll have to check with the school.
Discourage grave robbing of native peoples. Are you willing to let strangers dig up your grandparents disburse their belongings and then put their bones in museums, likely no. Just because sites are old does not mean they’re no longer sacred to aboriginal people.
Thank you for your comment; point taken. This dig is on the site of a fort, so it isn’t unearthing aboriginal peoples but rather early settlers and soldiers–not that that changes anything.
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