An interest in history leads to a promising future
Elizabeth Bews ’15 signed up for St. Olaf College’s summer Archaeological Methods course three years ago thinking that it would be a fun way to fill a general education requirement.
The five-week program, based in Antiochia ad Cragum in southern Turkey, introduces students to Mediterranean archaeological field techniques and methods. It’s taught by St. Olaf Associate Professor of History Timothy Howe, an associate director of the Antiochia ad Cragum Archaeological Project.
But the course quickly became more than just “fun” for Bews — it helped her discover a passion for ancient history and a potential career path.
Bews will return this July for her third summer in Antiochia, where she has participated as both a student and teaching assistant.
She will also serve on staff at the American Research Center in Sofia, a Bulgarian archaeological field school whose mission is to bring together North American and Southeast European scholars and institutes.
She says these experiences — combined with those at St. Olaf, where she majored in history, French, and Russian area studies — have given her an excellent foundation for a future in archaeology.
“After working in both Bulgaria and Turkey, I discovered that archaeology fused all my interests in a way that I had never dreamed possible,” Bews says. “The combination of independent coursework at St. Olaf based on my applied fieldwork abroad provided me with invaluable insight into what a career in archaeology would entail.”
Returning to Turkey
This year Bews will return to Turkey as the St. Olaf program’s head teaching assistant.
“One of the most enjoyable parts of being a TA is to watch your students go from enthusiastic observers to skilled archaeologists who can perform complex excavations, enjoy their work, and answer questions about what they are doing in an informed way,” says Bews.
Last summer, in addition to serving as a TA, Bews conducted an independent research project that focused on how residents of Antiochia articulated their unique identity while living under Roman occupation.
Bews’ search for evidence involved climbing through bushes and up mountains to access remote ruins, sometimes on cloudless days when the temperature reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The research required patience, creativity, and a lot of critical thinking.
“When you run into something you’ve never seen before, there are a lot of little calls every day that influence your research,” says Bews. “You use your academic background, but you also have to come up with answers on the fly. You’ll find a pile of rocks and you have to ask yourself, ‘Is it significant? Or is it just a pile of rocks?’”
Bews says it requires knowledge in numerous disciplines — ancient history, geography, textual analysis, geology, soil typography, and modern and ancient languages — to uncover the answer. A liberal arts education enabled her to study all of those things and more, she says.
“St. Olaf allowed me to constantly work to apply my major coursework in a vocational setting, making my lessons in the classroom that much more meaningful,” she says.
Bews plans to study archaeology in graduate school. Her archaeological areas of interest are Roman Thrace (located on the present-day borders of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey) and Roman Anatolia (present-day western Turkey).
In the future, she would like to spend part of each year working in academia and the other part running an archaeological field school.