WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (WAVY) — Digging into the past to get a glimpse of what life could look like in the future, high school students from Hampton Roads and beyond are getting the chance to get their hands dirty at a site in Colonial Williamsburg during a week-long camp through the Colonial Williamsburg Public Archaeology Institute.
High school students from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and even as far as California, are getting the chance to dig in the dirt as they look for pieces of the past.
Between the chance to make lifelong friends and the opportunity to sift for puzzle pieces of the past, students get to step into a life that once was.
“It just really tells you how the people that long ago lived and what they did,” said Ocean Lakes High School senior Camille Graninger.
Graninger found a piece of a ceramic on the site already and said opportunities like this are just exciting.
“A lot of different things that have happened here and like, a lot of presidents have been here and it’s just very historical,” Graninger said.
Graninger is one of 20 students chosen for the free camp based on an essay written about why they want to be here. They wrote essays about what interests them about history and why they want to be a part of the discovery process.
The students are working on a four-acre property owned from 1717 to 1749 by John Custis IV. They’re following along what’s believed to be a fence line that was part of a large garden landscape.
“They’re learning how to read every part of the story, and that may go back thousands of years and it might be from two years ago,” Castleberry said.
Castleberry said students learn to dig systematically through different layers of soil — or strata — to reverse-engineer the story of a site.
The camp has been happening for four years now, and several students have gone on to study archaeology in the future.
Senior Sadie Castner of Matthews, N.C. has been to the camp twice now and is serving as one of the student leaders. She wants continue to pursue a degree in archaeology in the future, all thanks to this camp.
“I found glass, I found bones, some coins, stuff like that, and it really makes you excited,” Castner said. “You have to think like it’s really cool to discover history in your own hands.”
She said it gives students a look at what they could be doing with a future career in archaeology.
Castleberry said following this camp several students have gone on to pursue archaeology in the future and Castner said she knows she wants to follow in those foot steps, thanks to the lessons learned here beneath the surface.
“We work on an actual real site, not just a random-like lot in the middle of nowhere,” Castner said. “There’s actual history here and it’s really immersive and it gives you a real outlook into what your life could be like.”
“The students in this session are juniors and seniors, and so they’re looking at college programs pretty actively right now,” Castleberry said. “Of course, we always hope we’re making new archeologists, but if we’re making good stewards of history instead, or along the way, that’s great, too.”
Colonial Williamsburg camp information
Colonial Williamsburg will post information about next year’s camp in January. There’s two sessions, one for ninth and 10th-grade students, and the other for juniors and seniors. To learn more information about the program and stay up to date for information on next year’s camp, click here.