Archaeology professor joins professional digs in Britain, Michigan

Illinois Valley Community College professor Jeff Spanbauer did some time-traveling this summer.

June found him excavating an alleyway of a 4th-century Roman garrison in Britain. In July, he jumped forward a few centuries to a fur-trading fort occupied by French, then British, soldiers in Michigan.

The thrill of uncovering secrets buried for centuries never gets old, and the history/anthropology instructor concedes he “geeks out” over it all. “You are touching something that’s not been touched in 1,800 years! That’s so cool!”

For a second there, the guy who holds master's degrees in American history and anthropology and a doctorate in archaeology almost sounds like that kid who got caught up in the Indiana Jones movie craze of the 1980s. His parents then added fuel to the fire by presenting him with a “wonders of archaeology” book that featured a photo of Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. And he was hooked.

But not by the adventure part. “I wanted to understand why people did the things they did. The finds are neat, but what do they tell us about the people then, and about us?”

When people learn his interests, they’re full of questions. Does he dig up dinosaurs? “That’s a big huge NO! I study the stuff humans have messed with.” What’s the best thing he’s ever found? “Sometimes nothing’s the best thing. Even if you don’t find something, that tells you about the area, that maybe people weren’t using it.”

He's never stumbled over gold or bodies, either, in case you ask. But deep in his Roman alleyway, he scored something finer. “We figured out my alley was a gated alley between two barracks. There are only two documented dated examples of gated barracks in England, and I had just found the second one!”

The Michigan excavation yielded beads, lead shot or ceramics -- things “that tell us what they were using any given day.” Trash pits become archaeologists’ keys to hidden kingdoms, exposing new pages of human occupation soil level by soil level. “They tell time.”

Everyday items reveal the people who used them and how they see themselves and want others to see them. Items uncovered at the Vindolanda excavation in Britain have included hundreds of Roman sandals dating from 300 A.D. and bark tablets on which lonely soldiers wrote home. “They wrote to ask for socks and underwear because it was cold, or to complain they ran out of beer.”

On the Michigan site, Spanbauer can imagine himself on the American frontier. “They’re there to do this job and interact with all the local people they don’t like and are not liked by -- how do they navigate that?”

Archaeology is about more than digging, he says. “Honestly, that’s the smallest investment of your time.” It’s what happens after you dig and start piecing together the past – and wondering.

Spanbauer joins expeditions as a volunteer. It’s worth his time, he says, because “I spend two weeks doing something fun, being part of something meaningful and doing good work.”

Digs bring together enthusiasts of all ages and from many nations, and the ones he’s been on in Britain attract tourists from near and far who stop to chat and admire. “They are interested and eager to learn.”

While he hasn’t faced Indiana Jones’s poisonous snakes or vicious antiquities looters, he had his share of challenges from weather and insects. He dove for shelter from a passing tornado in a World War II ammunition bunker. His biggest battle is usually against himself. "I soon realize the difference between ‘gym strength’ and ‘work strength.’ It’s different pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt and stones for six hours!”

The Roman dig was on his bucket list, but so is a Viking site. He’s always wondered, who were they, really?

He’ll share his travels with students when he returns to his classroom this fall. “When they can touch or see an article, it means more to them than a picture in a book. They’ll see an instructor who can bring real-life experience to a classroom that a textbook can’t!” Spanbauer is scheduled to teach Introduction to Archaeology for the first time this year.

His personal interests span Dr. Who science fiction and Dungeons & Dragons and King Arthur legends, but where would he go if he really could time travel? To the past, of course.