A Framework for a Sustainable Archaeology Field School in South Florida

Alanna L. Lecher*, Katharine G. Napora, Sara Ayers-Rigsby, Malachi Fenn, Melissa Lehman, Peter De Witt, John Sullivan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Entry into the profession of archaeology generally requires the completion of an archaeological field school, which teaches proper field, laboratory, and curation methodologies. Archaeology as a discipline has been making strides towards integrating cross-disciplinary methods to increase the depth and breadth of the subject and enhancing inclusivity. These efforts have been mirrored in the approaches of some archaeological field schools, but not necessarily in a systematic fashion. This paper presents a cohesive framework for an archaeological field school that integrates cross-disciplinary training and inclusivity by model of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), specifically SDGs 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, 13: Climate Action, 4: Quality Education, and 11: Reduced Inequalities. Both how the framework could be implemented across a variety of archaeology field schools and how it has been implemented in the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) field school held in Jupiter, Florida, are discussed. Furthermore, we present preliminary survey data from field school participants to demonstrate how this field school supports SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number588
Number of pages13
JournalSustainability
Volume17
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 14 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 by the authors.

Article

This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Higher Education: Curriculum Design and Materials Development

Submission received: 17 August 2024 / Revised: 10 December 2024 / Accepted: 10 January 2025 / Published: 14 January 2025

Conceptualization, A.L.L. and S.A.-R.; writing—original draft preparation, A.L.L., K.G.N., S.A.-R. and M.L.; writing—review and editing, P.D.W. and J.S.; visualization, M.F.; project administration, S.A.-R.; funding acquisition, S.A.-R.; formal analysis, M.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)
  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Keywords

  • archaeology
  • sustainable development goals
  • education
  • field school

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