Third season approaches!

Third season approaches!

The first day of summer semester approaches rapidly and I am gearing up to head back to the cemetery with a new group of students. I’m revising the syllabus and assignments, updating the CourseSpaces (Moodle) site, and looking through my resources to make sure...
Cemetery Crew adventures to the SAAs!

Cemetery Crew adventures to the SAAs!

This past weekend a group of seven past students from the Emanu-El field course took part in the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting in Vancouver BC. As an undergraduate student looking at continuing on to a masters degree, this was a hugely exciting...
Intro to: Going Digital in the Cemetery

Intro to: Going Digital in the Cemetery

Two summers ago I was a student in the first running of the field course (we were awesome Guinea pigs). I was paired with two other students to do fieldwork with, and we decided to do our final project on the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) on...
Community and Memory

Community and Memory

This spring marks my third year of working in the cemetery with Dr. McGuire and this project. I have had the exciting opportunity to get to conduct independent field work, building on the work that I started in 2015 when I participated in the class. Through out this...
Returning to the Community

Returning to the Community

In 2015, I was fortunate enough to be part of the Heritage Archaeology field course with the University of Victoria. Our main focus, at the time, was mapping the Emanu-El Cemetery in Victoria, B.C. while learning about monument assessment and conservation. In the two...

Bringing fieldwork full circle

In all honesty, I had no idea what to expect when I signed on to present my group’s poster at the synagogue recently.  I was delighted with the opportunity to re-visit my group’s work and be a part of the project again, but it’s a bit nerve wracking to present on a...

Erik asks: Are You Prepared for your Time in the Field?

Are You Prepared for your Time in the Field? 3 Things I learned from a Month of Cemetery Field Work. #1: Never Underestimate the Elements: Cemetery work is not like other types of archaeological work where you might be in remote areas and unfamiliar settings with no...

Jill writes: My three weeks at Congregation Emanu-El Cemetery…

Tuesday May 31st was our last day in the field at the Congregation Emanu-el cemetery. It is now the time for my fellow classmates and myself to take to the pen or in this case, to the keyboard to compile our research into reports, presentation posters, blog entries,...

I held a piece of Victoria history

On Thursday, we visited the UVic Archives in the basement of the McPherson Library. Here are Cole’s thoughts from later that same evening. Today we visited the university archives to look for information regarding the cemetery.  We were given a lesson on what...