Alexandra Mcdougle

The North shore field School really emphasizes the holistic nature of anthropology. The University of Hawaii at Manoa as a whole places a heavy emphasis on a “four field” approach that encourages students to branch out of their intended subfield and experience other aspects of anthropology.Today was one of my first real experiences with interdisciplinary anthropological work. I didn’t realize until today that my own interpretation of this four field approach was deeply flawed. I looked at it as a way to appreciate each individual field rather than to integrate them into one another. Working with this field school showed me that it really is impossible to do any part of archaeology without acknowledging the cultural and biological implications of the data this uncovered. This is especially relevant to working in Hawaii given that we are analyzing the material culture of what is still a very active native community.While working on this field school rather than looking at things as being either in a contemporary cultural context or a strict archaeological sense, I began taking into account the “big picture” that included contextualizing archaeological findings with respect to both current and prehistoric cultural values.

Of all the misconceptions about archaeology, to me the biggest and most misleading is the idea that it’s something you can do on your own. Nearly every part of archaeological fieldwork involves working as a small part of a larger community. On one level you work as part of a field team of other archaeologists, photographers, GIS/GPS specialists or Cultural practitioners. On another level, by doing archaeological work you become an active member of the local community you are working with.Everyday we worked on tasks that were physically and mentally demanding. Some days this meant hiking in the rain and other days this meant trying to map rock formations to scale but throughout it all no challenge was faced alone. Everyone on our team came with different backgrounds, ways of learning, skill levels, and ideas. At times this could be stressful and frustrating but more often than not it was one of my favorite parts of being in the field. It taught me how to be more flexible and open-minded in my own thinking and learning.Between the team leaders, fellow field school students or community members there were always people around to create a supportive environment to learn and. work in.

#hollistic #gis #gps #culturalpractitioners