REU SITE: The Lower Cacaulapa Valley Project, NW Honduras: A Program for Undergraduate Research in Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology

Kenyon College, Gambier OH

Investigators

Abstract

This program is designed to give highly motivated undergraduates, especially women and minorities, the chance to develop their skills as anthropological field scientists while working within the context of the Lower Cacaulapa Project in NW Honduras. The curriculum will center on student conduct of a significant independent field investigation, from enunciation of a hypothesis to final write-up of results, supported by in-field class instruction and a living and working situation in which interaction among students and PIs is as easy as it is intense. Participants will take a common core of seminars that will introduce them to archaeological and ethnographic method and theory and sensitize them to the political, cultural, and economic context in which they will be living and working. Intensive training in archaeological and ethnographic field procedures will set the stage for definition and pursuit of the independent research project. These investigations will be significant explorations of modern and ancient cultural processes, previous students having contributed significantly to understandings of local prehistory and contemporary behavior patterns. This course of study will be founded on the directors' considerable experience in collaborating with and teaching undergraduates within field settings in the past, most particularly on NSF REU Site projects that they directed in the Naco Valley, Honduras, during 1988, 1990, 1992, 1995, and 1996. The ultimate goal of the project is to help students grow from neophyte research assistants to junior colleagues who are confident in their abilities to make independent decisions and contribute to scientific knowledge. The 1988-1996 efforts, which form the model for the program, accomplished these objectives very successfully and led to the decision to extend the project to 2000.