Students explore a career in anthropology and archaeology as they investigate the last ice age

September 24, 2024 by Chris Sasaki - A&S News

Tens of thousands of years ago, during the late Pleistocene epoch in what we today call Austria, our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in tents, wore animal-fur clothing and cooked over fires. They used tools made of bone, stone and antlers; and hunted wooly mammoths, wooly rhinos and reindeer.

This summer, students had an opportunity to explore this fascinating period of human prehistory when they spent five weeks visiting the archaeological excavation sites in a region of Austria known as Grub Kranawetberg, not far from Vienna.

The trip was made possible through the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Research Excursions Program (REP). REP’s provide students with opportunities to travel off-campus during the summer term to take part in an instructor’s research project.

“Grub Kranawetberg is a very interesting site because the excavations span a time period — between some 30,000 and 20,000 years ago — during which you have relative rapid fluctuations in climate,” says trip-leader Associate Professor Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist in the Department of Anthropology.

Paré sitting inside a dug out cube of stone.
Madeline Paré, a member of Victoria College who is starting the third year of an archaeology program, was impressed by her experience at Grub Kranawetberg. Photo courtesy of Madeline Paré.

“Temperatures were trending colder and the climate drier — and what’s interesting is that we can see how people at that time were adapting to these changes,” says Viola. “We can see how the range of these hunter-gatherers changed over time and we’re trying to figure out how this correlates with the changing climate.”

As with other REPs, the trip to Austria was an opportunity for students to experience what it would be like to be a researcher working in the field and to decide whether they were on the right career path.

“The way you learn archaeology is somewhat abstract,” says Viola. “Of course, you work with artifacts in class — but actual fieldwork requires a certain mindset. You need to be okay with being dirty, hot, sweaty, sunburned, working and living with the same people for weeks at a time. You have to see whether you like it or not.”

Victoria College student Kailey Marandola is in the third year of a double major in archeology and evolutionary anthropology. She signed up for the REP to gain field experience and further her research interests — and was not disappointed.

“I'm very interested in Professor Viola's work because his research is in human evolution — for example, how early humans like Denisovans and Neanderthals interacted. So this REP really aligned with my academic career goals.”

Marandola standing in front of the Wein Museum in Vienna.
Kailey Marandola, pictured here at the Wein Museum in Vienna, signed up for the REP to gain field experience and further her research interests — and was not disappointed. Photo courtesy of Kailey Marandola.

As promised, Marandola and the other students got firsthand experience digging, finding and handling artifacts, and using all the practices and tools of the trade to document and map their work.

Says Marandola, “I have experience at colonial sites in Canada but this was a very different kind of archeology — Paleolithic central European archeology — so I got valuable exposure to different methods.”

Madeline Paré, a member of Victoria College who is starting the third year of an archaeology program, was equally impressed by the experience.

“It was amazing,” she says. “This was the first time I actually worked in the field and it very much solidified in my mind that this is what I want to do. I want to be in the field. I want to do research.”

In addition to the field work, Paré also appreciated the extracurricular opportunities the trip provided.

“We stayed in Vienna, visited museums and saw behind the scenes in museums where Professor Viola had colleagues,” she says. “Students from Austria we met during the REP showed us around the city. Plus, other students and I visited Slovakia and Budapest. It was amazing.”

Claire Ferreira is a member of University College in her fourth year of an evolutionary anthropology and archeology double major. Like Marandola and Paré, she gained valuable insight into her future career.

“I have a much better understanding of what it means to do research in the field,” says Ferreira. “From beginning to end. I definitely see myself pursuing this work in the future. The REP’s been a great building block for me.

“Being in the trench while excavating, finding that first artifact by yourself — it's an amazing moment,” she says. “Holding something that hasn't been touched by another human for over 10,000 years? That’s just, wow! It's a moment that’s bigger than you. It's really incredible.”