Museum After Dark - ASU Field School Presentation

Get ready for the last installment of this season's ✨Thursday evening✨ programming, 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘂𝗺 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝗿𝗸! Join us on May 8, 2025, at 6pm for a very special presentation with Dr. Matt Peeples.

𝗔𝗻 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗦𝗨 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗮𝘁 𝗦'𝗲𝗱𝗮𝘃 𝗩𝗮'𝗮𝗸𝗶

Beginning in Spring 2023 Arizona State University held a field school in archaeological site assessment, designed in collaboration with the City of Phoenix, focused on S’eḏav Va’aki and the nearby the Park of the Four Waters. This field program is designed as a local and relatively low-cost opportunity for students providing broad training in field and lab methods, tribal consultation, the cultural resource management sector, relevant legal and ethical frameworks, permitting, curation, archival research and long-term preservation planning. This work has documented in detail portions of the S’eḏav Va’aki complex that have previously been less studied including an Ancestral O’odham trash mound extending back to about 600 CE, as well as historical features associated with houses and industrial use of the area dating to the early 20th century. In this presentation, we provide an overview of both the design of the field school program and interesting new findings regarding the history of land use, chronology, and cultural and historical continuity in the S’eḏav Va’aki area.

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𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘄 𝗣𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 joined Arizona State University and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in 2015. He also serves as Director for the ASU Center for Archaeology and Society. Peeples is an archaeologist by training but works to integrate archaeological data with methods and models from the broader social sciences to address questions revolving around the nature and dynamics of human social networks and group identities.