The Great Plains Archaeological Field School was a multi-institutional training and research program first established in 1967 by archaeologist Al Johnson at the University of Kansas (KU). At that time, K-State's archaeology program was in transition so did not participate. However, after Dr. O'Brien arrived at K-State, she began a long-term collaboration with KU. Together, Drs. O'Brien and Johnson developed an annual summer archaeological field school that occasionally included other institutions and students from many different colleges and universities. Eventually this program became known as the Kansas Archaeological Field School (KAFS) and was offered roughly every two years.
The primary organizational institutions behind the Great Plains Archaeological Field School (GPAFS) were KU and K-State. Wichita State University also participated in 1968 and the University of Missouri at the Lyman Center for Archaeological Research in 1970. Collaboration between these institutions had many advantages. Some were logistical in finding funding and providing necessary equipment and supplies for this hands-on training program. There were also many advantages for the students. As noted in one funding proposal,
"Perhaps the most important advantage, at least from the standpoint of the student participant in the field school, is that [they] will be offered a wide variety of field training experiences. This results from the fact that the director and co-directors have themselves gained experience in different situations and under different circumstances. A wide variety of methodological approaches have been devised to cope with special archaeological situations. ... The tri-university cooperative situation should assure the student participant in the field school an opportunity to become acquainted with many ... approaches."
The collaboration also enhanced research through the sharing and critique of approaches and ideas. As Dr. Johnson noted after his first summer of collaboration with Dr. O'Brien in 1968,
"I should mention the personal satisfaction resulting from working with co-director Patricia O'Brien during the summer. This association resulted in a great deal of intellectual stimulation, and variety of new experiences resulting from close association with an individual trained in a somewhat different background in anthropology and archaeology. Hopefully, some of the differences in approach were communicated to student participants in the field school. I look forward to a continuation of this association in the future, ..."
This collaboration was not just between the directors and instructors of the summer field school, but also with and between students. Both graduate and undergraduate students participated in the GPAFS. They were recruited from K-State, KU, Wichita State University, Washburn University, the University of Colorado, the University of Arizona, Luther College (Iowa), Hunter College (New York), the State College of New York at Oneonta, and many others over the years. Living, working, and learning side-by-side at the research and training sites, in the archaeology lab, and in the daily living quarters created many opportunities to share experiences and build friendships.
The GPAFS was taught over eight weeks at the sites selected for investigation with communal housing provided nearby. Students enrolled in eight academic credit hours. Most days (Monday-Friday) included rising early for breakfast together and leaving for the site by 8:00 am. If the field sites were far from their housing, the crew packed coolers with lunches to be eaten in the field around noon. Training continued on site until about 4:00 pm when they returned to their living quarters to clean up before supper. Fieldwork also continued on Saturday mornings with the afternoon off to do laundry and other errands and relax.
On rain days or especially hot afternoons, students would be trained in the field laboratory in how to clean, label, and identify finds from the recent fieldwork. Several evenings a week, students attended lectures that provided contextual information necessary for interpreting the data they collected. Discussion of findings were encouraged throughout the day and during the evening activities. Engaged learning was facilitated by a ratio of one instructor to every four or five students and close interaction throughout the day and evenings. Additional educational opportunities were provided on Sundays through field trips to other archaeological sites and local museums.
1972 Kansas Archaeological Field School group photo
The GPAFS typically focused instruction and research at two major sites each summer. Students learned to recover and documents material remains from these sites through excavation. Their finds were then analyzed to fill in gaps in our knowledge of ancestral Native Americans who once lived along the Missouri River in what is now Kansas and Missouri. The contingent of 15-20 students was divided between these sites but shared their experiences during their larger evening gatherings and while on weekend field trips. The students also learned about artifact processing and analysis in the field laboratory.
Students gained hands-on training in mapping and gridding using the metric system, careful excavation using trowels, shovels, brushes, and other hand tools; how to make detailed observations and record data through notetaking, maps, and photography; exposing and analyzing vertical profiles to understand stratigraphy; and more. Between the field and lab students learned how to handle different kinds of artifacts and other material remains (for example, animal bones, shell, soil samples). Laboratory training included how to clean, stabilize, and catalog recovered materials; artifact classification, basic analyses, and report writing.
In addition to providing instruction and experience with archaeological field and laboratory methods, students in the GPAFS contributed to archaeological studies that have revealed information about early Native peoples of this region. This was sometimes done through archaeological survey, commonly conducted on Sunday mornings. Pedestrian survey was used to find and carefully document previously unknown locations of past human activity. Excavations at the primary study sites were designed to recover remains and thoroughly document those in preparation for further analysis. Interpretation of these data started in the field lab as student's knowledge expanded beyond basic methods of recovery in the field. By the end of the field school, students were able to prepare a detailed descriptive report of finds from a portion of the site.
Research questions guided the selection of the field school sites. During the early years of this collaborative endeavor, research was designed to gain greater insight into the ways of living and belief systems of two major ancestral Native American cultural complexes. These were western Hopewell societies that existed roughly 2000-1000 years ago and what archaeologists call the Central Plains tradition dating very broadly to 1000-500 years ago. These archaeological cultures developed in what today is eastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri.
Missouri River Valley, 1968
In 1968, the GPAFS conducted investigations of two sites in northeastern Kansas along the Missouri River. Their living quarters were in a school building in White Cloud, Kansas. The next summer, the field school was held across the river with excavations carried out at two sites in Missouri. The Kansas collaboration was expanded in 1970 by teaming with the University of Missouri to investigate somewhat similar, but also later sites in central Missouri. That year the field school was renamed the Midwest Archaeological Field School. Over the next four years, K-State and KU returned together to northwestern Missouri to further study Central Plains tradition (specifically Steed-Kisker phase) and Kansas City Hopewell sites while training a new crew of students each year. It was at this time that the K-State-KU collaborative field school was renamed the Kansas Archaeological Field School (KAFS). Park College in Parkville, Missouri, provided a home base for the 1969 and early 1970s field schools.
K-State Archaeology Through the Decades: 1960s
