TORRINGTON – To gain a better understanding of humanity, people have to gain a better understanding of its origin, development and behavior. The study of archaeology and anthropology helps our society gain that understanding. 

The new archaeology and anthropology program will be officially taking of this spring semester at Eastern Wyoming College (EWC).

“The courses are always interesting,” Dr. Steven Howard, Ph.D., the archaeology and anthropology educator at EWC, told the Telegram. “Most people who take the courses, [even if they don’t plan to become an archaeologist], will tell you they are some of the most interesting courses I’ve taken.”

“I think it’s because you’re learning about [humanity], so it applies directly to you,” he continued.

Archaeology and anthropology are a type of science. Archaeology is the study of human history and prehistory through analyzing excavated artifacts. Anthropology is the study of human societies, cultures and their evolution. 

During the process of excavating artifacts, archaeologists take extreme caution in recording all available data. They observe information about the soil, any patterns and the placement of artifacts found. Through that process, they come up with different conclusions about the people who left the artifacts and their lives. 

Howard said archaeology and anthropology overlap many other fields, including but not limited to, geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, cultural anthropology and musicology.

This archaeology and anthropology program was funded through the Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP). This program is focused on tourism. 

According to www.wip.wyo.gov, “The Wyoming Innovation Partnership is a collaboration to align education and workforce development and support innovation, entrepreneurship and research to help drive Wyoming’s economy. WIP will support economic growth and diversification and build a highly-skilled, ambitious and qualified workforce by linking community goals with the state’s economic strategy.”

EWC’s idea for this program is unique compared to most other colleges’ approaches. Most other colleges created programs directly related to tourism, like tourism outreach and culinary arts.

“Our program is more of an innovative approach,” Howard explained. “We’re looking at the source and connecting the source back to the tourism that draws from that source.”

“Wyoming has a lot of archaeology tourism,” he continued. “There’s a lot of different places that people go to see archaeology, learn about archaeology, or to do actual digs. I’m not exactly sure what the percentage would be, but I would venture to say that archaeology is a pretty good chunk of tourism in Wyoming.”

Instead of creating tourism locations, EWC’s program is building tourism by supporting archaeology itself. After archaeologists excavate sites, most of them become tourist sites. 

Traditionally archaeologists are not involved in the tourism aspects of the field in any way, however, Howard explained the program is being designed to help bridge that gap. By learning more about the tourism side of things, it will allow students to gain a better understanding of the field as a whole, their contribution and how it affects Wyoming’s economy. 

“A big part of archaeology in its essence is just information building and learning about the past, and we want to disseminate that,” Howard said. “Collecting information and then letting people know about it is pretty much the purpose of any archaeologist.”

Tourism provides a venue to share that information. In addition, when people come in to visit a site, they also typically do other tourist related activities, stay in hotels and eat in restaurants.

“Sunrise plays into this because it has the potential to draw in a lot of people and become a very popular tourism site,” Howard said. 

However, he continued saying that the owner of Sunrise would like to limit the amount of people coming into the town throughout the year. As a result, there will only be a window of time, during the field season, where people will be able to come in and visit the archaeological sites and do tours. At this time, the field season will be from June to July.

During this time, there will be a field school course for students, an international volunteer work camp and day digs, along with other programs. 

Even though the program was inspired by the sites in Sunrise, the college is not limited to the town. There will be a field school at Sunrise during the summer, but the students will also be working with different archaeological sites in the surrounding area. This area includes the entire state of Wyoming and at least the western part of Nebraska. 

The program will also incorporate public outreach workshops and academies. Participants will get the chance to explore archaeology and anthropology concepts, like processing and categorizing artifacts and participating in digging. A few of the planned programs include topics on ceramics, stone tools and geoarchaeology.

The first community education program planned will start in February. It will be three Tuesdays in a row from 6 to 7 p.m. The classes will be on identifying pottery, ground stone tools and projectile points. 

Since the program is new, they have not developed an associate degree yet. However, Howard said they are currently working on it and hope for it to be ready in the fall. Currently, the program focuses on its transferability to the University of Wyoming’s bachelor’s degree program. 

After completing a bachelor’s degree, graduates typically go into entry-level archaeology positions in cultural resource management (CRM). These CRM positions can be for local or national environmental companies, the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Services or the National Guard. CRMs typically test areas for potential archaeology sites. 

 “We currently have a shortage of cultural resource management archaeologists,” Howard said. 

CRMs are usually required to have a bachelor’s degree and experience in the field. EWC’s program is unique by providing an opportunity to gain this experience early on, rather than after completing a bachelor’s or master’s degree. This can also help students decide whether the field is right for them.

Howard said in addition to working on an associate degree, they are also working on creating two certificates. One will be a certificate for CRM experience and the other will be for tribal historic preservation. 

The current classes available for the program are biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology and archaeology field school. The classes are all designed to be very hands-on.

Howard recently made the move to Torrington from Austin, Texas.

“I realized that this is something groundbreaking and it needs to be built in that way; it needs to be done big,” Howards said. 

Howard has a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Ohio State and a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Geneseo. Throughout his career, he has worked in New York, Ohio, Surrey, England, Colorado and Texas. Most recently, he was an archaeologist working with the University of Texas and an educator at Austin Community College. 

“I have taught in a community college, I’ve developed programming for community colleges and I’ve worked in the tourism aspect with [other schools],” Howard said. “I developed a nonprofit archaeological program in New York that draws people from all over the world.” 

At this time, Howard said they are working on selecting and purchasing various lab equipment for the upcoming classes, including microscopes and calibers. Eventually, the lab room will also have many displays with artifacts in them. 

There will also be various displays set up in Sunrise specifically for the artifacts found within the town’s area. According to the agreement with the landowner, all artifacts found within Sunrise must stay at the location.

Classes begin in January. To learn more visit ewc.wy.edu.