Caribbean Archaeological Adventure June 2009

In February 2009 I found myself without a job. I had just finished grad school the year before and now had to pay for it. My undergrad degree was in Archeology and History, so I decided to do a month-long archeological field school on the tiny Caribbean island of St. Eustatius, known as Statia by the locals.
I got one of my college buddies to go with me, and in the beginning of June we headed off on our adventure!
We arrived at the small airport on Statia and got picked up by the archeology intern who was working at SECAR that summer.
There were about 7-8 of us staying at the SECAR building, which consisted of a living room, lab, kitchen, 2 bedrooms with bunk beds and bathrooms.

Inside SECAR building

Being summer in the Caribbean, it was hot...and all we had to help cool us was a ceiling fan and ocean breezes. We all got along well and ate and played games together when we weren't working or exploring the island.
Over the 4 weeks I was there, some people left while others arrived. We were all in our early to mid-20s and loved to play in the dirt! One particularly windy day I got tons of dirt blown in my face while sifting for artifacts:

Me enjoying the dirt

In the morning we would go to the dig site, which was an 18th century colonial site, and dug, sifted and used our trusty trowels to uncover artifacts and the remains of a building where people used to live.
The site had a nice view of the ocean, and after we cleaned and cataloged artifacts back in the lab we would go down to the beach and cool off in the Caribbean waters. Since the sun is closer to the earth near the equator, most of us got sunburned as well:(

The director of the field school also took us around the island and we got to see the Atlantic side (luckily we were on the gentler Caribbean side), went on several hikes, including up and down inside the caldera of a dormant volcano known as The Quill, and basically all over the 7-mile long 2-mile wide island.

The Quill volcano

Me on the way up to the top of The Quill

Me by big tree in the caldera of the volcano

Me on one of our hikes around Statia

Caribbean sunset

Some of the artifacts we unearthed were rusty nails, clay pipe stems, and, I even found the remains of a small hearth used for cooking my last week there!

hearth I uncovered

All in all, it was a worthwhile experience that I enjoyed before going back home and starting the job hunt and fully joining the world of adulthood:)

Happy Travels!

Rachael

#archeologyfieldschool #caribbeanadventure