Over the past few years I’ve played around with this blog as a way to express myself…usually through poetry, but occasionally in other ways. Last summer I attempted (‘                                                        ry poorly) to chronicle my experience at a summer archaeological field school. I’m about to again embark for the American Southwest (this time as an archaeological field tech intern at Lake Mead National Recreation Area) and wanted to try once more to chronicle the summer’s events.

Ill start out with a description of the program for those of you who are interested. From the Internship website: 

The Cultural Resources Diversity Internship Program provides a career exploration opportunity for diverse undergraduate and graduate students in historic preservation/cultural resources work. The program places interns with National Park Service park units and administrative offices, other federal agencies, state historic preservation offices, local governments, and private organizations. Intern sponsors provide work experiences that assist interns with building their resumes in this field.

This program serves two purposes:

(1) Diverse undergraduate and graduate students gain exposure to and experience in the historic preservation/cultural resources field.

(2) National Park Service and partnership organizations have the opportunity to meet promising young people who might choose to work in the field.

Internships are offered during the summer (10 weeks). Projects include editing publications, planning exhibits, participating in archeological excavations, preparing research reports, cataloguing park and museum collections, providing interpretive programs on historical topics, developing community outreach, and writing lesson plans based on historical themes.

 

For my specific internship I’ll be working at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. In addition to working as a general field tech, I’ll also have a specific project. I believe my project involves identifying threats to specific archaeological sites and strategizing ways to mitigate these threats. I’ll update this as I go along though.

 

So Far i’ve been packing up for the trip and getting various stuff I need but don’t have. We leave about 12:00 pm on Tuesday, and our first stop is just west on St. Louis. Keep checking back here for updates. I’ll try my best to keep this going about every week, but I probably wont have much access to internet during my time out there.

Ryan