K-State and KU recognized the continued importance of collaborative teaching and research beyond its initial years. In October 1971, James McCain, President of K-State, sent a letter to Dr. O'Brien congratulating her on the partnership established between K-State and "our sister university."
He went on to say,
"...the people of Kansas invariably respond enthusiastically to cooperative enterprises involving our two institutions."
This collaboration during the summer months complemented training provided by Dr. O'Brien each fall semester. The latter course focused on local archaeological research and linked fieldwork to laboratory training for K-State students "in their own backyard."
As K-State continued to build its expertise and training program in regional archaeology, Dr. O'Brien, widely known for her frugality, assembled necessary equipment for archaeological field and laboratory work. This included everything from kitchen and gear for daily living (e.g., army cots and water-tight packing crates) to shovels, hand tools (e.g., trowels, brushes, tape measures), wheel barrows, screens, surveying transits and compasses for mapping, cameras, and other field equipment. For the lab, she built tables and book shelves and obtained measuring tools (e.g., calipers), microscopes, a light table and drafting tools, a photo stand, and more, all at minor costs.
"your request of 7 March 72 for a station wagon to be used by Dr. O'Brien is approved"
Letters in K-State's archaeology lab archives reflect some of the logistics and provisioning done behind the scenes to ensure students would have meaningful opportunities for archaeological learning. The group living situations for the summer field school provided time and a place for communal activities that created lasting bonds between students and faculty.
In service to our state and nation, many of K-State's summer training and research programs were completed for federal agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation. Much of archaeological work in the United States is driven by federal legislation requiring archaeological considerations before major highway, dam, pipeline, or other constructions. These mandates also impacted the long-term management or stewardship of archaeological remains on federal lands. These acts ensure that irreplaceable and culturally valuable information about the past is not lost to modern development or on-going natural and human actions. As this movement towards greater awareness of the value of and threats to non-renewable cultural resources expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, K-State provided archaeological expertise to locate, identify, and learn from these. Federally funded service projects also gave students real-life training in the field of cultural resource management.
By the early 1970s, Dr. O'Brien developed two major and one minor area of archaeological research. The former is exemplified by her research at Steed-Kisker phase and the Witt lodge sites. Her Steed-Kisker phase research developed out of work at several sites explored as part of summer archaeological field schools in northwestern Missouri with KU. In her studies, Dr. O'Brien attempted to link Steed-Kisker finds to those she had explored from a major site to the east (St. Louis area) as part of her graduate education.
The Witt lodge site investigation was comparable to earlier research started by Drs. Hodgdon and Stanislawski in the broader Manhattan area. Students were integrated into this local research during the Fall semester Archaeological Field and Laboratory Methods courses. Dr. O'Brien's studies of the Steed-Kisker phase and Witt lodge site were conducted in different areas of the broader central Plains region, but they both reflected the lives of ancestral Native Americans with similar but also unique ways of living at the same time during the past.
K-State Archaeology Through the Decades: 1980s
