Field School fiasco

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I need to know how to handle an interpersonal dispute in my summer field school.

Long story short, I needed an archaeological field school experience as a precursor to applying for a graduate program. I really enjoy the work but the director of archaeology seems to have a real problem with me. Every time he responds to my questions or comments he seems very snide or sarcastic, although this could be an error of interpretation on my part. However, last week it came to a head because it was my turn to present a topic (artifacts and material culture). I set up an activity using assemblages of artifacts from a house which I restored (my own).

Backstory: During the restoration I had made notes regarding which items were found where, and when excavation was required I stood in front of the workers, making notes about the site and screening every last bucketful of dirt for artifacts, even though the city was constantly on my case about why the project was taking so long. I saved every item I found, from pins and buttons to tableware to rusty nails to glass slag and coal to animal bones and peach pits as well as the usual ceramics and glass bottles. All in all, ten boxes of items, carefully sorted by type and location. I also decided to leave certain areas of the site undisturbed, and covered them over to protect them from damage by the renovations, on the assumption that they could be carefully excavated later.

So now to my activity: I made up bags representing three distinct areas of the site: yard, kitchen wing (demolished ca. 1890), and crawlspace. Each bag contained materials found in that area, which the other students were supposed to assess to assign a date range, socioeconomic factors, activity types and usage, etc. It wasn't meant to be exact, just to give everyone an idea of things to examine and consider when assessing artifacts.

That morning, I told the director what I intended and asked how much time I should allot for the discussion. He looked at one of my artifact bags, and loudly (so loudly that everyone in the lab could hear) said he was "concerned" that I was looting a significant archaeological site, and he forbade me to present my activity, because he didn't want the other students to think it was permissible to simply tear into the archaeological record. Okay, that would be a fair argument--except that's NOT what I did! I took the best approach I could to document everything, despite the fact that I had very limited time to get the house up to code so the city didn't demolish it. Despite the fact that, if I had proceeded as my neighbors do, everything would have gone into a dumpster to be hauled off to the local landfill. Despite the fact that I had no money to hire assistance in the process, and still spend every day of my life with a paltry income, I have never once been tempted to "cash in" on any of the artifacts--some of which are worth hundreds of dollars! I was drawn to participate in this particular field school because the site offered clear parallels to the artifact distributions at my own site, and I knew it would be helpful for writing a report. When I am finished with the report, all the artifacts will be numbered and deposited with the state department of historic resources. Is this looting??? I don't think so! I can't honestly be expected not to touch anything that surfaces after a rain, or after planting a shrub, or falls out of a wall when I update the electrical; I had to excavate to install a kitchen and bathroom, and if I had deposited the artifacts elsewhere in the yard, it would have been creating a false context. Never mind that a huge percentage of archaeology is salvage work, where you have a few weeks to "grab" what information / artifacts you can and get out before construction crews move in to obliterate the site. In many ways, what I faced was a more realistic representation of archaeology than what occurs at an established site with adequate funding and no time constraints.

I tried to explain this to him, but he said it was "disgusting" and that the only way he would consider using the materials from my site was as an example of improperly handled material, for which the site context is dodgy. Everyone in the field school avoided me all day, and I overheard them talking about me and my "unprofessional" project at lunch.

Problem is, I am committed to the field school for four more weeks and have invested $1200 in these credits. I have to find a way to deal with this guy, and to do a good job even though I am having major anxiety meltdowns even doing the reading, much less working in the field. I really want to become a professional archaeologist but I am increasingly questioning whether I have the ability to endure the flak others throw at me.

Any suggestions? Any other Aspies in this field who have insight?

While I cannot comment on how to mend the bridges with the program director I will comment on the general idea. I have found that people in general do not react well to the surprise of seeing something done "out of the box". It sounds like the result you achieved was abnormal, perhaps it could be lumped in with a way of processing the site that could be construed as "bad". I would imagine that is not the case and that the director is looking at your project through a very monoline lens. He doesn't care what the background is, or how your project isn't actually bad.

I have had this happen to me before in my work history. I will look at my position and prioritize what is important and proceed in a way that does the most good for the entire organization. This does not always align with the specific expectations of a project or role. This will make anyone agitated and lead to dismissal of the good in what you have done. Personally I tend to blow projects out of scope to the point where people are no longer interested in following me. One simple example is my father-in-law likes to go gold panning. He lives in a state where there is not much gold but it's fun to hike to a stream and run a gold pan for a couple hours to find a tiny flake of gold. I look at this and think, hey why not increase the production level and use a sluice. I even bought him a sluice box so we could go out and actually find gold that you can see with the naked eye, Apparently this did not match up with his concept of what he wanted to do and found the whole idea ridiculous. I just want to "do it right" if I'm going to bother doing something.

In any case I would pay close attention for the next few weeks and deliver exactly what is expected. Do not stray from the boring script of what they want you to deliver. If they say find 5 things and catalog them in this way, do it that way to a T. It may be wrong or ignore interesting work but that is not what you are there for. I'm sorry to say this does not change when you start working. In my job I have all of these silly expectations. I need to make X # of phone calls in a month (it doesn't even matter who I call, I could call the same phone # 400 times in a row and they don't even look to see who I called), present X amount of this, click X amount of clicks in our CRM software each month etc... I call it filling buckets, and much to my dismay filling buckets is what my employer REALLY WANTS. They hardly even care about the results. It dumbs the job down to an unbearable busy work bulls**t job. However to keep my job and healthy salary I fill those buckets the best I can.

Thanks Acidic, you have really hit the proverbial nail on the head in your assessment of what supervisors want. Intelligence? Creativity? Innovation? No matter what the job listing says, these seem to be liabilities rather than assets if you try to incorporate them into your work.

I do like the analogy of "filling buckets," because that is literally what I do for several hours each day in the field: I fill buckets full of dirt, then I screen the dirt, then I dump the buckets and start again! Archaeology can seem very tedious to onlookers But your visual metaphor also helped me to reorient my thoughts, because the best way for me to get through the next four weeks is to absorb all the information I can, and save the processing and analysis of it for the end when I can reflect openly and objectively.

Part of what irritated me about the incident was the fact that underlying it was a worthwhile academic discussion which never had the opportunity to take place, because my supervisor was so focused on criticizing me. What I mean is that there are literally thousands of sites which aren't given the benefit of thorough investigation, and archaeologists need to be considering ways in which they can still make a meaningful--if limited--assessment of such sites based on artifacts which are no longer in their original context. So I guess when the field school is over, I will make good use of the situation by writing a scholarly article suggesting the methods of conducting such assessments and interpretations.

Thanks for helping me to put this in perspective! Moving forward...

I'm glad that was helpful. It definitely made a huge change in my career. I have done quite a few jobs over the years and looking back I definitely made that mistake several times. I remember being a "shop helper" for a auto body shop. The boss was a real d-bag but initially we clicked because we were both wrestlers in HS. Anyways what he had really hired me for was to clean the shop and help the auto body guys when they had big projects. What ended up happening is that I found helping them to be way more fulfilling and seemed to me to be MUCH more important than cleaning. I was a floater where I would drive crosstown for that part that needed to be here yesterday or help someone do whatever needed done. Being a HFA I really sucked at cleaning the shop. After 9 months he laid me off using the recession in 2002 as an excuse. I was totally shocked but looking back I wasn't meeting his needs so it's a no brainer to let me go. Luckily they hired me on at another part of the dealership network were all I did was wash cars after the mechanics fixed them.

Good luck, always remember to make sure you're filling the right buckets. I will probably help to ask for a written outline of the EXACT expectations. You could also just take excellent notes and ask for detailed instructions. Then keep those notes around to periodically refocus your efforts. It can be incredibly frustrating but if you want to have a lifetime of meaningful employment it's a good idea. I intend to eventually find a role or be my own boss where I can focus on what I think is important.

While this may be an error of interpretation, it may be an accurate perception. I may be that he was criticizing particular aspects of what your were saying nonverbally and you were supposed to take that in and rethink your approach based on that. Whenever I get the feeling that there may just possibly be something like this going on, it is almost always because the guy really is telegraphing disapproval very obviously and the situation is worse than I think.

The best thing I have found is to check with third parties. Ask someone else in the group what you have gotten wrong, what the director is so disapproving of and so on. Or ask the director, tactfully, with humility and respect. "I can't help but notice that I have done very badly here, and I think something in my preconceptions or approach must have been wrong, but I am having some difficulty seeing the right approach--I would be grateful for any constructive criticism or suggestions of how I can reevaluate my approach and find a better one."

Some people respond favorably to open appeals for this kind of guidance. If the director is not one of them, best to find someone else who is.

This is great advice.

I don't get it man.

It's been a while but I do have some background in this kind of thing (I've never been a professional archaeologist, but I have an anthropology degree and went through two field schools in the process), and my first thoughts are:

1.) From a technical/procedural standpoint,

from my recollection, that sounds pretty much perfect.

2.) I get where he's coming from, except for the fact that IT'S YOUR OWN PROPERTY! If I'm understanding the situation correctly, if you didn't dig it up, no one would ever know that stuff was there.

Case in point:



If the city was actually going to take control of the property and demolish the house, but in the process found evidence of a valuable historic site, they'd send a crew in to do exactly what you described above and the end result would be basically identical to what you did. Right?


Have you made it 100% clear that all this occurred on your own property, and he doesn't think it's just some property that you weaseled your way into to dig up? That's literally the only disconnect I can see that makes a lick of sense.

I can't recommend this, but I would be so tempted to take this up with the Dean of Faculty/Admin.

He is the one being unprofessional.

You are not at a dig site nor a suspected archeological dig site. You are on common property. If anything, it sounds like what you did would be the FIRST STEP to determine if anything of archeological value was likely to be found there.

As others said, normally this stuff would just be scooped up and dumped in a landfill with no investigation.

I'm not an archaeologist or a professional, but I did stagger through several years in liberal arts and social sciences.

I remember running into a lot of professors who were, basically, d-bags. They had a particular cause, particular pet peeves, and a particular sociopolitical agenda that drove the class every bit as much as learning the material did. Said agenda seemed to be closely tied to how they, personally, thought the world ought to operate and not really tied in any way to the actual reality on the ground 1,000 feet below their personal ivory minaret.

Your prof very well may, in fact, be another preening, self-righteous Aspie perseverating on the black-and-white absolute rightness of his own point of view and refusing to consider the validity of anyone else's, ever, at all, because the cognitive dissonance and uncertainty of change are just too much to handle. It certainly has often been said that higher education is, basically, a sheltered workshop for very high-functioning autistics.

You might-- MIGHT, depending on how many research grants said professor brings in and therefore how good he is in with higher-ups, have some success by appealing the issue to administration. If he brings in a lot of grant money, or a lot of publicity or money for publication, though, they are probably not going to even consider your side.

Personally I think you ARE in the right, and it's a shame that your professor is up on a mile-high soapbox and your classmates are sheeple whose eyes are fixed on agreeing with Authority and Getting The Credit. Unfortunately, quite a lot of the time in college, it's about bleating in harmony with the people in charge so that you can get through and get the credit to get the piece of paper that tells the sheeple that you are someone they should be bleating in harmony with.

I got through my BA by proposing ideas, getting mocked relentlessly for most of them, then penitently asking what they'd like to see me do, choosing what I found most acceptable from that list, and trying to subtly and demurely put a few of my own ideas into the finished product, all the while paying large amounts of token homage to whatever soapbox the prof was standing on.

And then I had a kid, took a good hard look at what a massive ass-kissing orgy graduate school was going to be, and decided to chuck it. The straight-A student with the potential for very high GRE scores became a stay-at-home mother, planted a big garden, and passionately regrets having gone to college instead of trade school.