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Milton High Students Dig Into the Past |
By Elizabeth Hiss Both are participating in the Mary M.B. Wakefield Charitable Trust’s summer archaeological institute at the Wakefield Estate, 1465 Brush Hill Road. The estate is comprised of a mansion, farmhouse, and barn set on 23 acres. Since 2005, the estate has been running various programs for all ages. The archaeological program, designed specifically for high school students, involves the excavation of areas onsite at the estate. In each of the two-week sessions, the participants dig in search of artifacts under the property’s grounds. Graduate students from Boston University who are pursuing Ph.D.s in archaeology guide the participants in their excavation. “The goal of the program is to expose high school students to archaeology, something they only witness on TV or in Indiana Jones movies, and to help them gain a deeper understanding of the site they are working on and the local history,” said Mark Smith, director of the Wakefield Trust. “I hope that through the dig, the participants will put together the pieces of a story to see how people lived in the past.” During the program, participants also spend a day in the Boston University laboratory where they send all the artifacts found on the estate to be analyzed. They keep journals of each day’s findings and at the conclusion of their session, they write up a full report of their activities. Flaherty, who will be a sophomore at Milton High this fall, said he learned about the program through its advertisement in the Milton Times and decided to try it out. “I was interested in archaeology from what I saw on TV, and I thought it would be interesting to learn about it firsthand,” he said. Along with other high school students from the area, Flaherty said he is involved in the digging, sorting and cataloguing of the objects they find, although “my favorite aspect of archaeology is the digging itself because of what you learn about the past from the artifacts you find.” BU graduate student Alex Keim said the program provides opportunities for participants to become involved in the aspect of archaeology they like the most, whether it be digging, curating objects or writing reports of the day’s findings. Flaherty added that archaeology might be something he would like to pursue as a career. Dorilas, a rising senior at Milton High, said archaeology was not his first pick of sciences, but has found it very interesting. “I am really interested in physics but I decided to give archaeology a chance,” said Dorilas, who added that he would also be taking part in the institute’s eight-week internship program for the remainder of the summer. Erica Max, the landscape supervisor and educational coordinator of the trust, said Dorilas was recommended for the internship program because of his intelligence and interest in science. “Each student brings their own unique perspective to the program: They are all so different but collectively they are very powerful,” she said. “The sum of all the parts they bring is extraordinary.” Smith said the program is fulfilling the mission of the organization, which is to promote lifelong participatory learning and to expose the participants to something they have never done before. A third Milton High student participating in the program, freshman-to-be Eddie O’Connor, was unavailable. For more information and an application to register for the 2010 institute, e-mail wakefieldtrust@dogwoodlanefarm.org or call (617) 333-0924. |
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