Dr. Mark Groover
<b>Department: </b>Anthropology<br><b>Research Area: </b>Historical archeology of the eastern US, Midwest and Southeast from 1700s to early 1900s.<br>
Department: Anthropology
Research Focus: My research focus is historical archeology of the eastern US, Midwest and Southeast from 1700s to early 1900s.
Potential Student Project(s): The student project is archeological artifact analysis and reporting related to the 2021 ANTH 445 Archaeology Field School course. The course is approved and will be held May 17 to June 18. There are currently 7 students enrolled for 6 hours and 4 students enrolled for 3 hours of field school credit in the course. The anthropology dept chair confirmed to me today in a faculty meeting (April 20) that the course currently has enough enrollment to proceed in the summer.
The student assistant will engage in the following tasks: artifact washing, cataloging and identification; artifact data entry and quantitative analysis; archeological reporting: filling out State of Indiana archeological site forms and the required artifact inventory; writing draft sections of the archeology field report of investigations, especially the history section of the report. The student will be listed as a co-author on the site report that is required by and submitted to the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology.
Attributes/skills/background sought in undergraduate: Knowledge/interest in archeology; knowledge/interest in artifact analysis and archeological lab work and reporting.
Mentoring Plan: The research assistant is requested for Fall Semester 2021.
Mentoring Plan:
- Weeks 1-16
- 2/3 of student's time per week: processing, cataloging, analyzing artifacts from excavations;
- 1/3 of student's time per week: writing draft section of archeology report, especially historical background section.
- Lab space: The student will work in the historical archeology lab in Burkhardt Building.
- Due to the pandemic, for safety the student will be the only other student/staff person using the historical archaeology lab.
- I will ask the student to create a work schedule and I will check in on them daily to see if they have questions re work assignments.
- I will be in the lab as needed but the student will be expected to adapt to a task work system and work unsupervised.
- I will monitor their progress on work assignments over the course of the semester.
- I will probably stagger the tasks, such as artifact processing and analysis, so they can gain experience in all steps of archeological lab work and analysis. For example, they will process artifacts from one excavation square and then proceed to artifact identification, data entry and analysis. After completing and learning the above steps for one excavation location, they will proceed to another excavation provenience.
- The student will also be provided reading and reference materials to study and learn about archeological lab analysis.
Contact: 765-285-3567, BB 314G