Archaeology courses currently using the Cowling Arboretum for an outdoor classroom are: ARCN 222 Experimental Archaeology and ARCN 246 Archaeology Methods.
Students in Professor Alex Knodell’s ARCN246: Archaeology Methods class use the Arboretum for their field labs. The course is an introduction to archaeological practice, including research design, fieldwork, and laboratory analysis. Students have the opportunity to learn the techniques of survey, mapping, documentation, excavation, and artifact identification and analysis in the Arboretum each week.
Each year the course is taught, different fieldwork sites are chosen in the Arboretum. To date, these have included the Carleton Women’s League Cabin (2015), Pine Hill Village (2017), the Waterford Mill (2019) and the Millpond Dike and Quarry (2021).
To learn more about the research and discoveries of the class, check out the Archaeology course website. There you can find weekly blog posts, students’ fieldwork journals, historical information about the sites, and the results of the various fieldwork activities in the form of students’ final projects.