ArchaeOLogy > Being an Archaeologist: Chuck Spencer

Chuck: I grew up in Panama, where my father worked for the Panama Canal. I was always interested in the old ruins, the Spanish forts, and archaeological sites. I remember really enjoying a museum in Panama that had archaeological exhibits. I also always liked history and science in school.

One summer during college, I volunteered on an archaeological project in Oaxaca, Mexico , with one of my professors. I helped make a map of the site of Monte Alban. That summer was a real turning point for me. After college I spent two years working as an archaeological field assistant in Oaxaca, where I learned more about the people and their ancient cultures. Then I went to graduate school and got my Ph.D. so that I could have a career as an archaeologist.

Twenty years later, I'm still fascinated by archaeology in Oaxaca.

Chuck: Being an archaeologist combines a lot of different skills. First of all, it takes persistence because a lot of the work in archaeology is very slow. You might be out excavating ancient houses or temples. It sounds very glamorous, but you are digging up thousands of little pieces of pottery, stone, bone, and other objects. You have to record and draw everything, and then study each artifact carefully. It can be very hard work.

I think it also helps if you are the type of person who enjoys using the scientific skills of collecting and classifying data. In archaeology, this usually means counting and organizing objects into categories so that you can analyze them.

It also takes imagination. You have to try to put yourself in the position of people who lived long ago, to project yourself back in time . You almost have to come up with a movie in your head of what could have happened to leave behind the remains you are excavating. You have to empathize with people who lived long ago that you will never meet. Sometimes, people who still live in the area can provide valuable clues about the history of the remains.

Chuck: I always co-direct the projects with my wife Elsa Redmond, who is also an archaeologist. She and I have been working together since we were in college.

We usually take four or five graduate students with us to work as excavation team supervisors, and then we hire about 30 workmen who live in the nearby village to do a lot of the actual excavation. Of course, we don't begin working at a site until we've gotten permission from the government, the state, and the town where we want to excavate.

Chuck: We usually get up before dawn and have breakfast. Then we drive to the town in our truck and pick up some of the workmen who need a ride. We keep all our tools in a tent at the site so that we don't have to bring them every day. We divide into teams and start to dig at about 8 a.m.

We usually have about six different operations going on at the same time in different areas. For example, each team of workmen will be excavating in a different area. A graduate student will be mapping where all the objects were found, and making sure everything is bagged and tagged. They also will be keeping a field journal , recording everything that happens in their area, and taking lots of measurements, such as how deep we dig. I'm often taking photographs and consulting with the various excavation teams.

So we'll work like that until lunchtime. After we eat, we dig again until about 4 p.m. Then we take everything we find to the lab and drive home. We are often really exhausted, so we relax and get ready for the next day.

Chuck: Before we begin excavating, we create a grid with string to divide the site into small units. Each unit is called a provenience. As we excavate, we collect all the objects for each provenience in bags. All the things that are the same are bagged together. For example, pottery might go in one bag, shell in another bag, and bone in a third bag.

We write a card for each provenience, and each gets its own catalog number. We record a lot of detailed information for each provenience, like its size, exact location, and how many bags of artifacts we recovered in it. Then we take everything back to the lab, where we can study it more carefully and compare it to other things we found at the site.

Chuck: The palace that we just excavated in Oaxaca was really exciting. The palace was the royal home for a king and his family, and it also had a court and an area that was used for ceremonies.

The palace supports the idea that the site was the capital of an ancient society. It was so large that the king and his family couldn't have built it themselves. He would have needed large work groups to construct it. Only a king could organize the kind of labor needed to build a palace. So this is one kind of evidence that a state society existed in Oaxaca as early as 300 B.C.. It's also important because it is the earliest palace so far discovered in the wide area called Mesoamerica, which includes Mexico, Guatemala , El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize.

Chuck: We have many large and important collections of artifacts from Latin America. They were brought here by archaeologists who conducted research many years ago and helped establish a basic understanding of ancient cultures like the Aztec, the Zapotec, and the Inca.

People come here from all over the world to study our collection. We also use the artifacts to train students in some of the basic techniques of archaeology before they do fieldwork. We have high school and college students, graduate students, and visiting scholars who have worked on the collection. I supervise all the work that gets done on the collection. It's exciting to have so many people interested in what we have here.

The collection provides an important window into the past, but we no longer collect archaeological artifacts. Instead, we contribute to the preservation of the artifacts in the countries where they are found.