Kansas State University has supported an active, regionally recognized archaeology program since the 1960s. Archaeology faculty have placed high importance on creating valuable opportunities for student learning. These include field and lab courses that provide hands-on experience in archaeological methods. Professional training in archaeology ensures that material evidence is responsibly uncovered and properly documented to assure essential data are available to research for today's and future generations.
A commitment to professional data recovery, research, stewardship of the archaeological record, and preservation of knowledge about past societies is manifest in the educational and scholarly work of K-State's archaeology faculty and students. Likewise, K-State's archaeology program is dedicated to partnering with and servicing local, state, and regional institutions and communities. These traits exemplify K-State's land-grant mission.
The mission of Kansas State University as a land-grant institution is commitment to the education of Kansans and to inspire learning through research, creativity, and accessibility to resources. As highlighted in K-State's 2025 Visionary Plan for the future, the university seeks to:
"Create a culture of excellence that results in flourishing, sustainable, and widely recognized research, scholarly and creative activities, and discovery in a variety of disciplines and endeavors that benefit society as a whole."
K-State's Anthropology program is among the many disciplines that address these objectives and has been doing so for over half a century.
"The anthropology program at Kansas State University has three missions: a general education role; professional training; and service to the community and state."
Faculty in the anthropology program have promoted our institution's land-grant mission through instruction in and outside the classroom. Archaeology especially has provided professional training of undergraduate students, while serving the community and state through revealing our region's human past, and provided related services to local communities and federal agencies.
Archaeological Field and Laboratory Methods classes have provided hands-on instruction for K-State and other students for over 60 years. Each field and lab course has been linked with an ongoing research or service project to provide real-life student training. Many of these opportunities have been conducted in collaboration with nearby universities, in connection with federal and other agencies, and engaged with local communities.
Combining field and laboratory training with traditional in-class learning has prepared students for research and advanced study. They have gained understanding of prior human societies. These include ancestral ways of living of this region's Native peoples and subsequent Euro-American settlers. Among the latter are those who set the foundation for Kansas State University.
Anthropology is a discipline comprised of four subfields; archaeology, cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Initially, K-State's anthropology classes were offered only occasionally under the guise of the Department of Sociology.
These first courses were led by Dr. Linwood Hodgdon in the early 1950s. About a decade later, the Department of Sociology added a full-time cultural anthropologist, Dr. Robert B. Taylor, to their faculty. As interest in anthropology as a field increased, K-State's program continued to grow. By the end of the 1960s, the department became known as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
The first professional archaeologist hired by K-State was Dr. Michael B. Stanislawski. Soon after he arrived in 1963, Dr. Stanislawski launched K-State's first Fall semester Archaeological Field Methods course. This Saturday class integrated teaching and research, guiding students through the discovery and documentation of archaeological evidence in the Manhattan area. He continued this research and training into the summer.
Dr. Patricia J. O’Brien replaced Dr. Stanislawski in 1967 after he left K-State. She carried on the Fall Archaeological Field Methods course for another 30 years and added a laboratory component. She also formalized a summer archaeological field school. In the meantime, K-State's anthropology program continued to add faculty in the other subfields of anthropology.
Courses like the archaeological field and laboratory methods classes provided hands-on learning a research setting. This began a tradition of providing students with direct experience with scholarly archaeological inquiry. This started with a research plan, systematic recovery of archaeological evidence in the field, followed by processing and interpreting the recovered material remains in the lab. Later archaeologists, such as Drs. Lauren W. Ritterbush, Brad Logan, and Donna C. Roper, continued this established means of professional training and added to the knowledge of this region's culture history.
Interpreting our human past starts with problem-oriented research questions. These guide the recovery and interpretation of material clues of past lives and lifeways.
Over the years, many K-State students have gained an understanding of the research process and formal means of uncovering, documenting, processing, describing, and interpreting archaeological remains through archaeological field schools and other field and laboratory methods courses.
In the field, students were taught how to systematically uncover the remains of former human activities, carefully map those finds, make detailed observations about the context or setting of each discovery, and document this information in a professional manner on standardized forms and through their own daily journal.
Recording detailed observations and measurements in the field is essential to interpreting the nuances of past activities. The artifacts and vital notes, photographs, and other field records are returned to the lab. There, the students learned to care for the remains and documents before accurately describing the finds. This allows analysis of the archaeological remains, leading to interpretations of their meaning.
Many students expanded their learning through additional field and laboratory experiences. They have co-authored technical reports for projects undertaken for federal, state, and municipal agencies and organizations. They also have presented and summarized research at professional conferences and in articles published in scholarly journals. A number of K-State's archaeology students attend graduate school in pursuit of a career in archaeology and related fields. Student training and research have formed the core of a vital program of archaeology at K-State over the decades. The training provided in field courses like this has been invaluable to their participants.
One of the early developments with K-State's archaeological field training program was collaborating with other institutions of higher learning and providing archaeological services for federal and other agencies. In the late 1960s, Dr. O’Brien developed professional ties with archaeologist Dr. Alfred E. Johnson at the University of Kansas (KU). They created a joint summer archaeological field school that brought together faculty and students from different institutions and with varied backgrounds and interests. By 1968 K-State, KU, and Wichita State University collaborated on a joint archaeological field school investigating two sites in northeastern Kansas. The site investigated and the institutions involved changed over the years, but collaborative teaching and research continued for many years.
Kansas Archaeological Field School students and faculty, Summer 1975
Often these training experiences were undertaken as part of cultural resource management projects for federal agencies, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or Bureau of Reclamation, or with support from the National Park Service through the Kansas Historical Society. These partnerships continued for more than four decades. In addition to professional and service collaborations, these archaeological teams relied on the gracious cooperation of landowners, various agencies and institutions, and occasional community volunteers.
Expanding local and regional knowledge has always been the focus of K-State’s archaeological research endeavors. K-State archaeology faculty and students, in collaboration with others, have advanced our understanding of Native and Euro-American societies in the same places we live today. Their work has helped uncover and tell the stories of the lives of earlier peoples who thrived in this region. K-State's archaeology program has fostered an appreciation of our community and region's cultural resources and history.
Konza Tallgrass Prairie
The archaeological knowledge, expertise, and training provided by K-State has enhanced students' lives, the public, descendant populations, and the state and nation. These are just a few of the many ways that K-State has given back to the varied communities with which it is entwined. Learn more about these endeavors as we highlight some of K-State's archaeological projects through the decades.
KSU Archaeology Through the Decades: 1950s
