I interned at the Center for Archaeological Studies (CAS) to acquire the valuable hands-on experience I will need to advance my career in archaeology. It is a small institution, but it contains a large collection of artifacts ranging from ceramics to bones and other interesting objects. CAS was founded in 2000 by Dr. Britt Bousman as a research center within the Texas State Anthropology Department, but has grown through compliance based Cultural Resource Management (CRM), and academic research programs. In 2008, CAS was certified by the State of Texas as an Archaeological Curation Facility. CAS houses one of the most extensive libraries pertaining to Texas Archaeology.
The staff at CAS is currently in the process of cataloging several of their collections in order to add them to the new digital cataloging computer system; this will make searching for specific artifacts much simpler. My current studies focus on creating three-dimensional scans of the many artifacts from the Spring Lake excavation housed at CAS. I have been trying to decipher how to operate the scanner and how to edit the scans. I have been fortunate to utilize several different collections and am able to purchase the equipment or programs needed to complete the project. This assignment enhanced my knowledge and contributes to my experience in the field. Additionally, I am responsible for uploading the archaeological images to the CAS website, making them accessible to anyone on the web. The goal of scanning images and exporting them externally provides the opportunity for other anthropologists to study the collections elsewhere. This process will also help to drastically decrease the wear and tear on artifacts in the future and will help preserve these valuable findings.
From this internship I have learned that the world of archaeology is vast and rapidly expanding and new technologies are being used every day. A decade ago, three-dimensional scanning was nothing more than a futuristic idea. I have been fortunate enough to work with and learn from cutting edge equipment and skill that most students and archaeologists do not even know exists. I hope to continue on with three-dimensional scanning after my internship is over. I hope to obtain a paid internship following this one and perhaps gain more knowledge in this field as well as get a chance to do more fieldwork that I unfortunately did not have an opportunity to do in this assignment.
Advice that I would give to students who might be interested in a similar internship would be that CAS is a great place to get “your hands wet” so to speak in a lab, curation and field work. As for three-dimensional scanning, it helps to be very computer literate and knowing how to edit information on websites, write simple computer programs and other things of that nature would greatly benefit another person.