Shining A Light On The Past: The Path to Florida’s Most Accessible Field School

In 2023, the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN)'s Southeast region and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began a 12-week archaeological field school hosted on Mondays from January through April at the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area, a multicomponent site which boasts 6,000 years of human activity, completely free of cost. Accredited by the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA) and funded by the BLM, the Shining a Light on the Past field school has now operated for two field seasons. Combining local knowledge of South Florida's tourism economy, intense income disparity, and grueling traffic patterns with institutional knowledge of the BLM and FPAN Southeast's host institution, Florida Atlantic University, Shining a Light on the Past is meeting a need for affordable and accessible early career development for archaeologists as the cost of living skyrockets nationwide. In this paper, we will outline the process of developing a free field school designed to address the challenges presented by a specific region.