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Archaeology
SFU Archaeology students tackle international conservation research in Caribbean field school
How do students in SFU’s Department of Archaeology spend their summers? Getting their hands dirty in field schools, of course.
This summer, a cohort of students tested their skills — and picked up some news ones! — in an environmental archaeological field school abroad in Curaçao, where they participated in an interdisciplinary research initiative called the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project (CCLP).
Archaeology professor Christina Giovas leads the field school, which is embedded within the CCLP, a research program she co-directs with an international team from the Max Plank Institute of Geoanthropology, the University of Queensland, InTerris Registries and National Archaeological Memory Management (NAAM). She explains that project collaborators aim to inform conservation on Curaçao by determining how human land-use and the changing environment have intersected and influenced biodiversity.
They do this by reconstructing the landscape over time using multiple lines of evidence. In a study published in 2024, for example, the team placed human occupation on the island up to 850 years earlier than previously believed after radiocarbon dating charcoal collected from one of the archaeological sites.
Giovas says that, in addition to standard techniques in excavation and survey, students on the field school learn a cross-section of methods, including zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology and geophysical survey. “Students were conducting ground penetrating radar survey, for example, and magnetic susceptibility, and they also got experience with coring lagoon sediments for palaeoecological sampling.”
After attending her first field school locally in North Vancouver and Squamish, archaeology student Julia Faria was eager to see how archaeology is practiced in a different culture and context. “And to experience first-hand the unique sites and materials you can only find there,” she adds.
Faria says that her experience in Curaçao this summer showed her how things like landscape and ecology directly shape fieldwork and reinforced the importance of adapting your methods to the conditions. For instance, she explains, the environment in Curaçao was often thorny and dense with vegetation, which meant that they needed to make use of tools like LiDAR for mapping and planning their excavation units.
During her time in Curaçao, Faria says she got to do a little bit of everything, whether it was identifying potential sites, to excavating, to processing faunal remains in the lab.
“Every day felt different,” she says. “[It was] one of the things I loved most about the experience.”
At the end of the field season, students gathered with the community and local research groups at a public open house event hosted by NAAM to share their work and discoveries.
“That part of the work made the experience feel even more meaningful, because archaeology was not just about research, it was about connecting the past to the people who live there today,” Faria reflects.
This year, students presented a new assignment that tasked them with selecting and researching a species of cultural or ecological importance to the island, then creating an infographic poster with their findings. “It personalized the connection for them,” Giovas says, “and gave them an inroad into engaging with the local culture a little bit more deeply.”
Faria researched the poisonous manchineel tree.
“Every part of this tree is poisonous, from the bark to the leaves to the fruit it bears. In fact, when it rains, the rainwater mixes with the sap it secretes and if that lands on you, it is still toxic, so you can’t even use the tree as shelter from the rain,” she shares.
But the coolest fact she learned about the manchineel tree is how it propagates, she says. “Though it is toxic to humans, some animals, like iguanas, feast on the manchineel fruit, and they disperse the seeds.”
When it was time to go home, students left with new skills to add to their toolbox and the knowledge that they have contributed meaningfully to the project’s research objectives.
“There’s a sense that you’re working collectively towards a greater whole,” Giovas says. “And students know that when they come back to SFU, there are going to be opportunities in the lab to help with the materials they excavated. It’s nice to have that continuity and feel like you’re part of that bigger picture.”
Of course, they leave with plenty of good memories with each other, too.
“There was the impromptu outdoor swim when the largest tropical downpour I have ever seen hit us, the victory of managing to make a charcuterie board in a foreign country, and the award ceremony on our last day where someone actually got an award for always falling asleep in the van on the way to site,” Faria recalls fondly. “Those goofy moments made the experience unforgettable.”
To learn more about the CCLP and Curaçao archaeology visit: