After everything is sorted, it gets washed and bagged.

Following the dig, artifacts found will head to Juniata College for processing with Dr. Jonathan Burns, who is leading the dig, Owen said. The historical association will likely decide what to do with the artifacts after, as it runs a museum out of the Stroud Mansion.

Owen and her peers typically work at the site from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s cool and fun,” she said. “It’s also exhausting. You’re sore at the end of the day because you’re on your feet carrying stuff around, but it’s part of the job.”

Owen originally had an interest in geoscience, but decided to switch gears into archaeology when she saw it fit her skills better.

“I’ve always just thought it was interesting,” she said. “I like finding stuff. It’s not something that complicated, I guess, my thoughts behind it. It’s always fun screening through stuff and you find something interesting.”

The Stroud Mansion dig is her second field school experience. Last summer, she traveled to Tel Akko, an archaeological site in Israel.

“It was very different because it was in the desert and we were looking at completely different stuff from all the way back to Persian-Roman era,” Owen said.

There, she also spent time working in an archaeological botany lab, as well as with a metallurgy professor.

“It was this big, man made hill basically,” Owen explained of Tel Akko. “It was completely full of pottery among other artifacts. Pottery is what it’s known for.”

While she’s unsure of where she wants to take her archaeological career after college, field school is a helpful means of finding that out, as it exposes her to different historical sites and eras, as well as introduces her to like-minded people.

“This is pretty much the best way to actually learn the methods. You can sit and talk about it all day, but if you don’t go out and do it, you won’t know how to do anything,” Owen said. “If you want to get a job in this field, you have to have the hands on experience. You can’t just sit in the classroom. You have to go to field school.”