Students in the field

Summer research projects run the gamut from archaeology to oil exploration

By Grady Semmens

From the Alberta prairies to Africa, and from the high Arctic to the ruins of ancient Greece, the summer field-school season is underway for University of Calgary students.

Undergraduate and graduate students will be putting their knowledge to work and gaining first-hand experience in their disciplines at home and abroad. For some, these research projects will be the highlight of their university years; for all of them, field schools are a chance to visit new people and places.

“I’m really excited,” says Kari Griffiths, a fourth-year archaeology and history major who will work on a dig in Nicaragua in July and August.

“It’s a great opportunity to get some practical experience in archaeology, as well as a chance for us to help the Nicaraguan people gain a better understanding of their history.”

Griffiths is part of a team of 25 students and researchers led by archaeology professor Geoff McCafferty that will conduct the first comprehensive excavation of a town site dating to approximately AD 800. The town was one of the largest communities in Nicaragua when the Spanish arrived in 1522.

The volunteers will help examine the settlement, which may provide evidence of prehistoric Mexican settlement in the region.

Another student dig will be underway this summer on the Siksika First Nation east of Calgary, where a U of C archaeology field school is unearthing one of Alberta’s most significant sites. Known as the Cluny Fortified Village, the site next to the Bow River is more than 250 years old and is an enigma to archaeologists who say it may have been home to a small band of normally sedentary people from North Dakota.

“The usual dwelling sites in Alberta for thousands of years were tipi camps whose remains are the rings of tipi-anchoring stones left behind after the camps were abandoned,” said Brian Kooyman, head of the U of C’s archaeology department. “This site has no tipi rings; instead it looks most like villages 1,500 kilometres away on the Missouri River in southern North Dakota.”

Leanne Gladstone will be the teaching assistant for the course after taking part in the dig as a fourth-year student last summer.

“I was very interested in this project because I’m Metis and my Blackfoot heritage is what we are studying,” Gladstone said. “In addition to learning how to excavate and collect test samples, I’ve gained a deeper respect for the Blackfoot people through my work and the stories we heard from the elders.”

Ancient communities are also providing learning opportunities for students in the Schulich School of Engineering who are spending this month on the Greek island of Crete, studying the ancient and modern culture of Greece and examining the civil engineering feats of the Minoan civilization and its ancient palace at Knossos.

“The Minoans are of great interest to engineering students because they were among the first people to excel in architecture, water technologies, ship building and mercantilism,” says professor Lynne Cowe Falls.

A group of 23 geomatics engineering students is also heading overseas this month to visit some of the world’s leading mapping and remote sensing organizations in Switzerland. The student-organized trip will give the students a chance to see practical applications of geomatics systems in Zurich and Wabern.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us to learn about techniques and challenges in the international geomatics industry. We are hoping it will become an annual event,” said student organizer Amanda Side.

Later this summer, U of C geoscience students will also get a chance to put their knowledge to work on an oil and gas exploration project, after the university discovered it owns the mineral rights on two sections of land near Lethbridge.

A new field school has been developed to involve students in seismic work to assess the potential of the site for petroleum development that could create a new source of revenue for the university.

“We are in the remarkable position of being able to do a lot of the exploration work ourselves, which is a wonderful way for everybody to learn,” said Department of Geoscience professor Rob Stewart.

Alberta’s energy supplies are also the focus of a summer project for environmental science student Ola Kowalewski, who has received funding from the U of C’s Office of Sustainability and NSERC to produce a 3-D interactive model of Calgary’s electricity demand to help illustrate the impacts of energy consumption.

“I want to try and bring the complex issues surrounding energy and its environmental impacts to life so people can better understand them,” Kowalewski said.

Meanwhile, geography graduate students Chris Fuller and Randy Scharien are spending part of their summer studying sea ice in the Canadian High Arctic while on board the Canadian Coast Guard’s research vessel CCGS Amundsen. Fuller and Scharien are keeping a blog of their experiences in the North on the U of C’s field notes blog site at www.ucalgary.ca/blogs.