I am entering my final semester at McGill University in Anthropology, with a specialization in Archaeology. Throughout my years at McGill, my interests have narrowed to focus upon household archaeology in Medieval South India and Roman Period Italy. I am drawn to these topics partly because of my frustration towards how little attention peasant households are given in archaeological research. My internship with MAP (Maski Archaeological Project) in Summer 2019 provided an environment where I was encouraged to explore research questions that were outside the box. I joined the internship to get more archaeological experience and to work with professors whose interests and research questions were similar to my own. MAP is an archaeological research project run by Dr. Peter Johansen (McGill University) and Dr. Andrew Bauer (Stanford University) in the Karnataka region of southern India. Their work is centered around long-term dynamics of settlement, politics and environmental history. The project was unlike most other internships, as it was a research project and not working with a business or NGO. This made for a very unique experience working in a small research team where the mission was to analyse the archaeological record in a meaningful way, focussing on dating sites and ceramic analysis, to contextualize the research and challenge assumptions about the region.
As an intern on the project, my responsibilities included coding ceramics, drawing ceramics, data entry, flotation, organizing materials and finds, photographing and geospatially recording rock art. Ceramic coding analyses the diagnostic features of a ceramic fragment, noting its size, colour, treatment, etc. and drawing them. The ceramics we worked on had a large scale of variation in color, thickness, and treatment that will be interesting to see compared to the site dates. Flotation involves sieving soil samples through a water tanks to divide the particles that float from those that sink. These are called the light and heavy fractions; heavy fractions tend to be the silt and sands as well as ceramics or artifacts, while light fractions tend to be organic, such as seeds or charcoal that can be C14 dated. The documentation of rock art was particularly exciting. To do so, a small team would climb the boulders of the inselbergs (a type of rocky hill formation common in south India) and systematically search out the rock art, documenting their description, geospatial location, and photographing them. The art ranged from very elementary to spectacularly executed and showed images of bulls, peacocks, anthropomorphic figures, tigers and at lookout points, pairs of feet. Working with these images was a surreal experience that puts you in contact with the people who created them possibly as early as 4000 years ago.
I am pleased to say that although my internship is done, I will be able to continue working with Professor Johansen throughout the fall semester. My internship is credited and I will be working with Professor Johansen on a research project focussed on the ceramic analysis we did over the summer and peasant households in the Vijayanagara empire. I hope to tie in our ceramic analysis to use practices in the homes of common people. The ceramics will be used to present visual examples of what people were making and using that can potentially show what they preferred to eat, or storage practices.
My internship with MAP has pushed me forward in my academic career in ways I could not have expected. It has helped me narrow my research questions and focus as I move forward and has opened doors to schools and programs I never thought possible before. The people I met and the work I had the opportunity to do have shown me the importance of work in regions like India that do not have as much attention in the academic world.
I could not have taken part in this project without the encouragement of my professor and project director Peter Johansen, the organizational help of AIO and EEO, and Dean Antonia Maioni, and the funds provided to me by the Susan Casey Brown Fund. Unsurprisingly, research work is expensive, and paying for lodging, airfare etc. make it very difficult to take part in research projects as an undergraduate. Thanks to the funding, I was able to take part in an amazing project, gain experiences and meet wonderful people that I hope to work with again in the future.
Thank you very much to Mr. Garvin Brown and the founders of the McGill International Experience Awards, for the opportunity the award has given me. As I imagine is the case for most of the students who are given these awards, I would not have otherwise been able to pursue this internship which is going to be essential for my future academic goals. I hope you know what a difference your gift makes for the lives of students.
