“A Perspective on “the field” and “fieldwork” - By Erin Blankenship-Sefczek

Field. Fieldwork. By the time we get handed our diploma, all of us graduate students will have gone through the experience of going to the field and conducting fieldwork. Until last spring the idea of “the field” was troubling to me. The expression “going to the field” seemed to me to convey the importance of a journey in order to collect information not accessible near by. But, where is the field? How far away do you have to go to get “to the field”? Does it then mean that collected data is only valid if you go wherever the “field” is to get it? What if the information you seek is accessible in your own city?

My husband conducted his fieldwork in Madagascar for five months. Over the course of his trip, he encountered much of what I had envisioned as the typical “fieldwork experience.” Therefore, this was the knowledge I possessed on the subject upon my entry to graduate school. I am a bioarchaeologist. Going on digs to find material is certainly part of the job, but a majority of my field is located within a lab, after everything is removed from the site. Journeying to a lab does not always necessitate a plane ride, it is not always necessary to complete an IRB, or acclimatize to a new environment or culture. I don’t encounter new foods (other than eating at a different restaurant every night because the time and effort to cook is all but absent at the end of the day), or a different language (unless deciphering skeletal biology terms counts). Working in a lab does not necessarily mean sleeping in a tent, on the ground, or in a gracious host’s house for months at a time. Most labs my colleagues had worked in were housed in US major cities. Because of the absence of typical experiences and encounters in lab work, I continually asked myself “how do I deal with the concept of ‘the field’?” Is there a difference in merit for traveling a thousand miles or five miles to collect data?

Reading for my first seminar in graduate school included the book Anthropological Locations. The authors deal with the troubling concept of the field and what constitutes acceptable fieldwork. Some authors argue in favor of not qualifying what “the field” has to be, saying a definition limits what work can be done, while others discuss the exoticized notion of the field and the elevated importance of data collected there. For me, salvage anthropology comes to mind at the mention of the later point. The unspoken (or maybe not so unspoken) notion that the only valuable data comes from far off places with cultures “untouched” by the rest of the world. Words like savage, primitive, and remote being used like currency for publishing quintessential anthropological research. In all actuality, with a more recent history such as this, “the field” has taken on an identity of it’s own. Accruing validity from specific guidelines set down by who exactly? Anthropological Locations suggests that perhaps the time has come to re-evaluate what “the field” really is. One major question has stuck with me because of its relevance in my own work; Is it still considered the field when the researcher stays within their own city to collect data? Though I am now in a place to express my opinion, at the time I could discuss these topics at length in theory, but I couldn’t handle these questions on a personal level. After all, I hadn’t experienced any of it for my self, so how could I make a reliable judgment? Therefore, I stored the notion of “the field” in the middle of my brain (middle because it was never quite gone, but wasn’t always present) for the next few semesters. During this time, I watched several colleagues board planes to foreign countries and remain gone for a few months to conduct their research. I watched them leave, and return filled with stories and pictures from their time abroad. My conflicting notion of the field remained unresolved. Whether I studied in San Diego, or traveled elsewhere in the States for research, my “field” would not be the same as theirs. I wasn’t so much concerned about missed experiences as I was worried about the validity of research done in a different setting. This may all sound unfounded, but my goal is to become an active bioarchaeologist, and everything I do now impacts that future (and, apparently when you are a graduate student, the stress messes with your judgment).

I should have known all that theoretical concern was for not. Last Fall I was offered the extraordinary opportunity to study a Maya skeletal collection from Belize for my master’s thesis. The remains are curated at SDSU’s Maya Archaeology Lab located right here in San Diego. I can’t express the amount of excitement that wells up in side me every morning in the lab. It is unlike anything I have experienced before. I fall asleep recounting what I analyzed and what it means for the people whose stories I am beginning to tell. I am willing to bet that the feelings I possess are the same for those people who journeyed a thousand miles to research what they love. The information they seek just happens to be located farther away.

Those theoretical issues on the validity of “the field” don’t seem to matter anymore. I work in a lab and that is my field. I know now, it is not the location of the research, but the dedication behind it that counts. It doesn’t matter that I return to my house at the end of the day instead of a tent, a hotel room, or a cot on the floor in some far off place. The fieldwork I am doing right here in my own city is worth just as much.