{"id":150971,"date":"2024-06-12T08:55:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T12:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=150971"},"modified":"2025-07-24T16:22:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T20:22:20","slug":"students-in-field-school-in-archaeology-excavate-campus-woods-hoping-to-find-evidence-of-wright-states-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2024\/06\/12\/students-in-field-school-in-archaeology-excavate-campus-woods-hoping-to-find-evidence-of-wright-states-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Students in Field School in Archaeology excavate campus woods hope to find evidence of Wright State\u2019s past"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 225-acre woods surrounding Wright State University\u2019s Dayton Campus is home to 110 species of birds, foxes, deer, salamanders and the rare Indiana Bat. Wright State\u2019s Field School in Archaeology<\/a> hopes to scrape the surface to learn more about the people who lived in the woods before the university was built.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been wanting to do a field school in the woods for a long time,\u201d said Lance Greene, Ph.D., professor of anthropology.<\/p>\n

Since 2016, Greene has taught Anthropology<\/a> 4650, the summer Field School in Archaeology that has uncovered buried artifacts from a Revolutionary War battlefield in Clark County, pottery and cooking supplies from the lost city of Osborn, and the foundation and harvesting tools from an almost 200-year-old family farm in Bellbrook that burned to the ground in 1940.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d said Greene. \u201cThis is probably my favorite class because we are doing archeology.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, the Field School in Archaeology, which trains students to be professional archeologists, doesn\u2019t need to travel far for its dig site. The nine students in the class are exploring the Wright State woods near the green bird blind across from the Creative Art Center entrance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students are learning the language and learning the skills and how to map and excavate,\u201d said Greene.<\/p>\n

The group discovered pottery and uncovered a cluster of stones that was used as a rock oven, where, in prehistoric areas, people cooked their food in the ground with heated rocks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Wright State University anthropology student uses a sifter to search for artifacts in the campus woods. (Photo by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe definitely have found evidence of some campsites and possibly like early era tools,\u201d said Scarlet Coe, a French and anthropology major who worked on a test pit to find artifacts. \u201cWe can definitely see that people were here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students record every artifact they find and map the location with high-tech mapping tools. The recorded artifacts are scrubbed and cleaned in the anthropology lab in Allyn Hall. Then students can recreate where the artifacts were in relation to each other.<\/p>\n

Greene said people have been living in the area that is now Wright State for almost 10,000 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the goals that I have is to actually bring it to people\u2019s attention that this is another important cultural resource in the woods and it should be protected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State\u2019s Field School in Archaeology hopes to scrape the surface to learn more about the people who lived in the woods before the university was built. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":150975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,729,4319,725,727,747,715,18,4855,720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-around-campus","category-field-school-in-archaeology","category-home-news-sidebar","category-homepage-photos-and-video","category-liberal-arts","category-news","category-research","category-social-sciences-and-international-studies","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150971"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160305,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150971\/revisions\/160305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}