Anthropology Spain: Discovering Ancient Mediterranean Spain: Landscape Archaeology in Mallorca

Spain’s Mediterranean islands of Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza, collectively referred to as the Balearic Islands, have been a pivotal node in the history of the region. Spanning the last six thousand years, from the Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and the Historic period (including Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Moors, etc), groups from around the Mediterranean have come and gone from the Balearics, interacting with local people and leaving important traces of their presence, both culturally and materially. This program offers students the opportunity to participate in the recovery of these traces through the science and practice of archaeology.

In this program, students will join a team of American and Spanish archaeologists in order to learn various techniques of archaeological fieldwork (excavation and surveying) and laboratory analysis as part of the ongoing Landscape, Encounters, and Identity Archaeology Project. Students will live in the town of Son Servera on the island of Mallorca and participate in nearby archaeological fieldwork for four weeks. During these weeks, students will learn the ins and outs of archaeological excavation including stratigraphy, profile plan drawing, field photography, total station mapping, and recording, archaeological surveying (i.e., systematically walking through the countryside while collecting and recording traces of past human behavior using GPS equipment). Students will also learn basic laboratory procedures for cleaning, processing, labeling, and recording artifacts that they collected in the field.