Archaeology field school experience a dream come true for IVCC student

A 1,000-year-old stone knife blade she unearthed this summer ignited Meagan O’Boyle’s passion and rekindled a dream.

Inspired by her archaeology professor Jeff Spanbauer, O’Boyle -- who also works as an admissions assistant at IVCC -- enrolled in a week-long archaeology field school in Southern Illinois, an area occupied by Native Americans during the Late Woodland Period 800 to 1,200 years ago.

Trowel scrape by trowel scrape, campers removed layers of soil, uncovering potshards, animal bones and other evidence of ancient habitation. O'Boyle didn’t let heat, rain or mud dampen her enthusiasm for the work.

The team’s thrilling moment came when O’Boyle’s partner found a hook made from bone. O’Boyle herself found the stone blade on her last day on the dig. The supervising archaeologist identified it as a knife because it was too long and heavy to be an arrowhead, she said.

Both discoveries were amazing – and it was humbling to be the first to touch something that lay untouched since its last use centuries ago, she said. It made her wonder: “What did the last person who held it do? What were they like?” For a second, she was transported to the future, imagining archaeologists uncovering ancient artifacts from our lives in 2024. "What would that be like, touching something of ours?”

The field school attracts enthusiasts of all experience levels from all over. They come to experience the process from beginning to end, from first scrape to curating.

O’Boyle relished being surrounded by people who shared her interests. “When your friends hear you talk about archaeology, they tolerate you, but here you can be around others and they’re not looking at you like you’re weird!”

Heat drove campers to the nearest shade, and a daylong downpour drove them inside, where they performed lab work. Then it was out to the field site to bail out the excavations so they could resume their outdoor tasks. They lost two days of field work in the process, she said.

O’Boyle is grateful for Spanbauer’s advice on dressing and coping with the heat, but he also gave her something more valuable: courage to follow a dream.

“It took going to Jeff Spanbauer’s class to realize I can do things and still give a good life to my kids,” she said, acknowledging her struggle to raise a family, work and go to college.  Support at home and at the field school “has encouraged me to find a way. I’m getting a feel for what life can be! This is something I have wanted to do my whole life, and I hoped I’d fall in love with it!”

She’s determined now to make sure a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity doesn’t come along just once. And she’s looking forward to sharing her summer experience in Spanbauer’s inaugural Introduction to Archaeology class this fall.

If the knife blade and a bone hook she also discovered ever go on display at the Center for American Archaeology field school’s museum, she hopes to visit. They have become a part of her legacy, now. 

At home with her own children, she turns to look back over the centuries.

“I picture what the site looked like when it was occupied, full of families, kids playing in the field.”