I am putting out the next edition of the ShovelBums Field School Directory tomorrow (Wed, April 15, 2015). If you have already submitted your field school to ShovelBums (or are going to by tonight) and are short on reaching the target number of students you need, or you just want to wave your project flag, and would like your school featured in this edition of the ShovelBums field school newsletter, drop me a note with:
- The title of your field school
- How many positions you have left
- Deadline for application
- Any scholarship or tuition subsidies your program offers
- An introductory gee-whiz paragraph to get the students attention (see example below)
- Up to two pages of more in-depth text that extolls the virtues of why your program rocks
- ~1-5 photos
Please send the information in just plain text. I will format it to fit my content. You can contact me using the site contact form here or by emailing me a rjoe @ this sites domain.
Example introductory paragraph
13th annual Plaquemines Parish Raw Sewage Garbology Field School
Building on Rathje’s monumental work summarized in Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage; French archaeologist Dr. Ivanna Crepe a’Lotte has opened the backdoor into the heretofore unexplored nether regions of comparative archaeology between self reported consumables and what is actually delivered in the form of raw sewage. Students will be provided their own lightly used hazmat suits, donated by Ivanna’s colleagues at the University of Fukushima. Students will have the opportunity to inspect samples and understand the processual aspect of pre-midden formation. Students will also learn how to determine caloric value per-liter of slurry midden fill. After wet screening all samples students will be taught the fine art of how to distinguish bone from rock, which can seem very similar to the untrained eye! Tent camping on the grounds will be provided for all students. The study area is an easy walk from the base camp and all meals will be served at camp, except lunch, which we will enjoy in the processing room which has a lovely view of project inlet pond with a friendly hairless deer population and a unique population of two headed frogs. On the last two days of the field school students will enjoy the annual rite of sampling the previous years students samples collected and stored in the affectionately named “Blue Lagoon”. Students will use their summarized knowledge from the season doing a comparative analysis on self-reported consumables. And one lucky student will find the special “soiled trowel” that is traditionally left in the sample by the preceding years class and be allowed to inscribe their name on it and have their picture taken with it before passing it onto the next years sample after the final nights locally caught Crawfish and Nutria bake-n-boil bonfire feast.