By Darla Martin Tucker

“What’s this? …Oh guys, it may be a part of something,” sixth grader Kalena Brown exclaimed to her excavation partners. Tristan Delgadillo and Gabriel Irby gazed at a small object Brown had uncovered in their one-square-meter area of dirt roped off by pink and white string.

The three youngsters, along with their 18 sixth grade classmates, were participating in a simulated archaeological dig in a field at La Sierra University. They arrived at the campus about 9 a.m. on May 21 from Mesa Grande Academy in Calimesa. They first toured the school’s Middle Eastern artifacts collection before arriving at a sloping field near Sierra Towers dormitory for the excavation. Later in the day, the students visited La Sierra’s Stahl Center Museum of Culture and World Museum of Natural History.

The daylong field trip kicks off a biannual program that La Sierra’s School of Religion plans to offer each fall and spring to local schools. The religion school will provide the field trips and simulated digs in cooperation with the Heritage Education Program in Redlands. Robert Bates, La Sierra assistant professor of archaeology and history of antiquity, is spearheading the project and planning a brochure to market the program. A minimal charge provides for the artifacts and the college students who work with the school kids.

“This provides an opportunity for students to learn about the principles of archaeology with real archaeologists. Students gain hands-on experience in excavation techniques, artifact analysis and critical thinking skills. It also fulfills certain curriculum requirements as well. It is a great enrichment activity,” Bates said.

“La Sierra University is in a unique position to reach out to the community through archaeology,” he said. “There are four field archaeologists on staff with a number of others who have worked on excavations.”

During the May 21 field trip, Heritage Education’s programs director Craig Lesh provided a lecture on the meaning of archaeology. The students, seated on a grassy, shaded embankment, listened and answered questions.
For lecture props, Lesh used a few rust-covered, antiquated metal containers, including an old Log Cabin maple syrup container shaped like a log cabin, an old condensed milk can and a pearl oil container for old oil burning stoves. The San Bernardino County Museum provided Lesh with the roughly 80-to-100-year-old items.

“In addition to looking at artifacts, we’re looking at history,” and at what can be learned about the people connected with the artifacts, Lesh told the students. “Archaeology is not about stuff. It’s not about what we find. It’s about what we find out,” he said.

After the presentations, the students walked down the hill to a 10-meter-by-10-meter excavation site. Lesh, in preparation for the dig, had crisscrossed the pit with string to form a grid. As they approached the square, one-meter-deep pit, some students expressed their youthful excitement; “Whoa!” said one. “Awesome!” said another. Lesh assigned student teams to excavate individual square areas.

The sixth graders used small shovels, brushes and work gloves to gently search for simulated and genuine artifacts that Lesh and La Sierra students Aaron Davis and Eli Te had seeded into the pit. A San Diego archaeology company provided artifacts that ranged in age from about 60 years to more than a century. Riverside Community College students Amanda Marquez, Christa Watson and Faith Smith worked with La Sierra students to help prepare the site. The college and university students will join a La Sierra excavation this summer in the Middle East.

The sixth graders placed scoops of potentially treasure-laden sandy soil in buckets, carried the buckets out of the pit and poured the contents through large, square wooden sifters.

The students uncovered bones, bricks, old glass bottles, a stray green marble and other items. Using measuring tape and other tools, the students mapped, or noted on excavation forms the exact location of the pieces, their sizes and other attributes. They noted the color of the soil using charts with variously hued and coded brown squares.

La Sierra archaeology students Jessica Logan and Daniel Evans helped students identify items and sift soil.

Classroom lectures and videos on archaeology prior to the field trip “gives [students] a whole new level of interest,” said Cynthia Logan, Mesa Grande’s sixth grade teacher. Last year her daughter, La Sierra student Jessica Logan, gave an archaeological presentation about her participation in La Sierra’s excavation in Jordan. This year’s class has been watching “The Naked Archaeologist” documentary series, Cynthia Logan said.

Back in the pit, sixth grader Kalena Brown and her team found five bricks. “We stuck our shovel in and they’re stacked,” she said. Her partners believed the bricks might be a chimney, Brown said. When asked whether she was having fun, she gave an emphatic “Yesss!”

Austin Thomson had fun “finding a whole bunch of bones, little pieces of wood and sifting. Doing all the mapping stuff isn’t my favorite part, but making finds is fun,” he said.

Jesse Noble said he’d found bones. “It’s really fun. It’s great to get to dig in the dirt to find things.”

The university has plans to finish a second excavation field by the end of the summer embedded with genuine and simulated Iron Age artifacts, La Sierra’s Bates said. Given its archaeological experiences and resources, the university has an obligation to teach “the importance of controlled excavation, preservation and conservation,” he said.
“Since we had one of the largest collections of artifacts from the biblical world donated to La Sierra University, and we currently excavate at three different sites in the Middle East, we have a responsibility to reach out to the community.”

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)