What Anthropology Students Did Last Summer

Ask most UC students what they did last summer, and you’ll probably hear responses like “I took summer classes” or “I worked.” Maybe you’ll get the occasional, “I went on vacation.” You wouldn’t expect to hear “I survived swarms of killer bees in Belize.” But if you ask a student who spent the summer on an anthropological assignment, that’s exactly the kind of thing you would hear.

Unusual summers spent all over the world were the focus of presentations by seven students at a recent department of anthropology meeting. They included:

Nick Molen “A Pompeian Store Front”, Sarah Stoutamire “Archaeology at Lofkend, Albania”, Carmen McCane McCormick “You Better Belize It”, Jayme Csonka “Geologic and Tectonic Hazards of High Altitude Habitation in the Greater Himalaya of Northern India”, Sheli Delaney “Cuatro Cuentitos: Migrant Families in Oaxaca, Mexico”, and Michelle Anderson “Kampsville or Bust”.

While their classmates were working or soaking up the Ohio sun, these students were crossing flooded portions of the Himalayas in baskets and finding centuries-old burials. Although they had few comforts along the way and some even had discomforts like amoebic dysentery, they all look forward to continuing their work.

As Nick Molen put it, “It was like, eureka! All the things I’d learned in anthropology classes finally made sense.”