IFR: Peru Field Schools - Arequipa, Lima & more

This program is simultaneously academically rigorous and a ball of fun. There is so much to learn, see, and experience for students who want to fully immerse themselves in new countries. It's best place I've found to be academically challenged, culturally engaged, and constantly inspired! Truly an immersive experience, the Peru-Sondor field school is a great way be exposed to totally different ways of life and learn to think outside of one's "home bubble."

I left feeling so encouraged and motivated and look forward to visiting Peru again!

Firstly, Sondor program is very unique compared to other field schools. From my past experience with other field schools, is you go out to the site, learn the methods of archaeology, do all the research for graduates, and post-graduates, because undergraduates are not allowed to ask or answer their own individual questions. Crazy right! We are meant to think, and ask logical and rational questions as scientist, and develop our own research design. This all starts with context and being in the field. Well, in the Sondor program Dr. Kurin, helped her students develop a research design mix with field experience. That's right. Not only she teaches us about the slices of pie that makes archaeology diverse and practical, she teaches us how to bake that whole delicious pie. Archaeology is about understanding the context of materials at the site until making their way into the lab. Students get a rare chance to recover human remains of the Chanka, and do further analyses on those remains when coming back into the lab. This program helped and encourage me to ask my own questions like "what was the estimated stature of the Chanka population?" and followed by my own individual research on the weekends to try to answer this curious question I had, and now I am presenting my data at the 2018 SAA in Washington D.C. This program not only supports, but encourage students to become the next scholar in Anthropology.

The Peru-Sondor bioarch. field school combined all the more technical aspects (additional osteology practice, handling and cleaning bone, etc.) with the more intangible but no less important cultural aspects of both a site and the community around it. The immersion is really amazing, both from additional lectures and having the freedom to visit places like Lake Pacucha on the weekends. Sondor itself is beautiful, and the field school is worth it just to look up from a trench to see the surrounding valleys and peaks.

The Peru-Sondor program is the best travel experience I’ve ever had. I needed to get a fieldwork credit for my degree, and I picked this one because it was focused in an area that I wanted to learn more about and it was the best price. Lucky for me, a decision that seemed so random ended up being the best possible choice. The location is breathtaking, the people are incredibly kind and welcoming, and the program itself was better than the website described. The program was split into two portions, a fieldwork section and a lab section. The fieldwork section was a crash course in field-based archaeology that was good for beginners and professionals. The lab section consisted of lectures, an ethnography project, and the option for independent projects. Dr. Kurin worked with all of the students on any questions they had and facilitated a number of independent research projects with the majority of us. We had free time on the weekends to visit other cities and sites if we so chose. I’m still in contact with nearly everyone I met while out there. I left the program with a renewed love of archaeology and I recommend the program to anyone with any interest in visiting Peru and its history.

The time I spent in Peru was the best thing to ever happen to me, truly. I laughed every day and discovered my passion. I went in with no knowing what I wanted out of the experience, but I left fulfilled.

The resources for advice was abundant and honest. There were things I got to do that most people can only dream about. I would go back in a heart beat!
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