Taking a course at a local community college can be rewarding for high schools students. There’s the benefit of earning college credits, experiencing the college atmosphere and, if your Chelsea Dean, you might also uncover an ancient artifact when you’re on a class assignment.
Last fall, the 18-year-old senior high school student was taking an Introduction to Archaeology class at Norwalk Community College (NCC) in Connecticut—to explore some career interests—when she found a spearhead more than 4,000 years old during a college-sponsored dig at an excavation site in Redding, Conn.
At the site, Dean worked side by side with archaeologists, NCC students and members of the college’s archaeology club. She hit pay dirt just minutes before the group packed up its tools for the close of the fall dig season.
“I found a projectile point that is between 4,000 and 5,000 years old,” she said. “It’s like an arrowhead. The section I was working on had a lot of stuff coming up, but nothing was complete. When the actual projectile point came up, it was the first intact artifact I found.”
Pointed in the right direction
Professor Ernest Wiegand, coordinator of the NCC Archaeology as an Avocation program, said Dean discovered a spearpoint made of white quartz. This type of ancient artifact is known as a Burwell projectile point and was probably used as the tip of a spear.
“It’s the first one of this type found at the Redding site. It dates to somewhere around 2,000 or 1,800 B.C. and maybe even older,” Wiegand said.
The find has helped fuel Dean's interest in archaeology.
“One of the things I learned taking the course is that I want to continue with archaeology, whether it’s a career or recreational,” Dean said. “It can be tedious and tiring working at digs—and you get sore because you are sitting at weird angles—but I think it’s really rewarding.”
The Archaeology as an Avocation certificate program at NCC is designed to train amateur archaeologists. Successful completion of the certificate allows students to participate in archaeological excavations at home or abroad. The program offers a wide variety of courses including physical geology, forensic science, cultural anthropology, world prehistory, Indians of the Americas, historical archaeology, surveying and advanced techniques in archaeology.