Imagine walking through a field and finding prehistoric projectile points (or arrowheads), fish hooks, a knife, animal remains, a scraper and pottery shards. That is what Wright State student Tyler Heneghan found through his school field work at the Fort Ancient Earthworks, along with learning experimental archaeology through his internship at the Dayton Society of Natural History and his time at Sun Watch Indian Village.
“There are artifacts everywhere,” Heneghan said as he walked around a farmer’s field as part of Wright State’s Field School in Archaeology and found projectile points and flakes, detailed indents in rocks from tools used in the past. Heneghan, in a white shirt with brightly splattered abstract flowers and shark tooth studs in each ear, described anthropology as the study of humans that is the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences. Similarly, archaeology is the scientific study of the physical evidence of past human societies recovered through collection, artifact analysis and excavation. Archaeology is a subgroup of anthropology.
Heneghan is a double major in anthropology and biological sciences, with a minor in earth sciences. He came to Wright State pursuing a career in pediatric dentistry but changed his mind and added anthropology as a major when he took an Introduction to Archaeology course. He will continue as a supplemental instructor and teaching assistant for Introduction to Biological Anthropology next semester.
He recently went on an expedition in Kentucky to study micropaleontology with one of his courses at Wright State. He investigated the possibility of correlating two separate locations using the microfossils within the samples he collected. He found shark teeth in a quarry where the fossils were embedded in limestone and in a road cut. Heneghan has gained much experience and knowledge through his internship and field study. “I’ve learned how to be an attractive applicant to graduate schools. … I’ve received a lot of mentoring and have learned what an archaeologist does at the museum as well as experimental archaeology,” Heneghan said. “The internship helped me see what archaeology is like in a professional setting, something that can’t be learned in a classroom.”
Excerpted from WSU Newsroom, read the full article.
