Professor Mark Warner brings archaeology to the people

Source article by Victoria Kingsmore at the Argonaut via https://www.uiargonaut.com/2024/10/04/professor-mark-warner-brings-archaeology-to-the-people/

UI anthropology professor Dr. Mark Warner shares what inspires him, unearthing Idaho history, and why everyone should be an anthropologist

Surrounded by stacks of books, scattered papers and the chaos of everything an anthropology professor needs, you might be able to find Mark Warner in his office when he’s not teaching. If not there, he is usually right down the hall in the archaeology lab, helping grad students with their work on recently unearthed artifacts from around Idaho.

Whatever the case, you find Mark when he finds you and he seems to show up right when you need him.

Dr. Mark Warner is an anthropology professor at the University of Idaho and a historical archaeologist with over 35 years of experience. Originally from Michigan, Warner has been working for Idaho history and archaeology since 2003, starting with an excavation on a farmstead near Troy and most recently excavating near Moscow High School with UI students. 

Warner often questions the social relevance of anthropology and archaeology—what is the value of what he does? When it comes to recent history, like Moscow just 100 years ago, he notes the familiarity of what’s left behind. Why does archaeology in a town like Moscow matter? 

Collaborating with his colleagues Katrina Eichner and Renae Campbell, Warner is a part of Idaho Public Archaeology, a project that sets out to make archaeological excavations forward facing and collaborative with a community.

Take Moscow High School, for example—community members came out to dig alongside Vandals enrolled in the field school throughout the excavation. A point was made, Warner says, to have the dig sites be easily accessible so that anyone could see archaeology happening in real time. 

” We have been doing a lot of small-scale projects that are very oriented towards the public. We try to do it in a place where people can come visit and we try to get people to volunteer, to say this is how archaeology can contribute to Idaho’s history and be a meaningful contribution to the state,” Warner said. “It’s history right there!” 

Though they’re “not even close” to synthesizing everything, what they found at Moscow High School was mostly trash: bottles, containers and animal remains dating from around the founding of Moscow at the turn of the 20th century.

Before the high school was built, a neighborhood stood on that land, inevitably leaving trash behind. 

Trash can tell you a lot about a person, Warner insists. “I can learn a lot more about you from your trash than I can from your social media presence, or if it was thirty years ago, your diaries. You project a curated version of your life, but your trash is going to say the actual reality. It’s stuff you don’t even think about.” 

Warner reported that the high school dig had 35 students working last fall excavating and then later in the spring, the biggest field school in memory, to Warner’s delight. Select students worked for the archaeology lab to do base-level analysis and processing of all they found. Currently, 3 graduate students are working on master’s theses based on those materials. Meanwhile, Warner and his IPA colleagues are writing on the “bigger picture” of field schools and archaeology within communities. 

Not only does Warner facilitate hands-on student teaching with field schools like the high school excavation, but the results filter into his own work and research. Warner’s studies tend to focus on those whose lives are lost to time, making everyday people who may have been invisible become visible again. He is focused on adding to a story of the past so that those today can understand the history of our state. 

“It’s all about showing how history and archaeology can be accessible to communities in Idaho,” he said about the drive behind his work. “[Archaeology and anthropology] are important because we live in a really small world now.” 

Warner somewhat stumbled into his passion for anthropology and archaeology. Attending Beloit College in Wisconsin without a clear goal in mind, he took a low-level anthropology class and found himself intrigued. The summer after graduating, he “packed everything up” and volunteered at an excavation, making it “the best summer of my life”—though he might just be saying that to convince you to be an anthropologist. 

Shortly after participating in the summer excavation, he took on various jobs before ending up with the National Forest Service. All this time being outside pushed him into graduate school, where he eventually realized how much fun anthropology and archaeology could be. He earned an M.A. in Applied Anthropology at the University of Maryland and soon after, a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. 

How did he end up at UI? “I needed a job!” he said, but he did add that UI had a space for historical archaeology, Warner’s specialization. 

Warner makes it clear, though, that it does not matter where the archaeology takes place. Every location, every state and every group of people have stories to tell that can be found again through anthropology. 

“What makes cities distinctive and what gives cities soul is hanging out in their history,” he said. 

When asked about his personal strategy when teaching anthropology, Warner said with a laugh, “I try not to bore them too much, but I also use them and their lives to teach about these concepts, using them as examples.” 

At the end of the day, Warner is an educator for a reason—to encourage others to think about the world in the most human way possible. 

“Anthropology, in its broadest sense, is the study of humans and studying them through a lot of different ways. And there’s a value to understanding people. [Especially] trying to understand the differences between and among people because we’re living in a world that’s getting smaller, not bigger,” Warner said when asked why someone should study anthropology. “In 1820 your world was 50 miles… but that’s not the case today. We live in a global economy; our consumer choices are global in nature and it’s an incredibly complex and diverse world we live in.” 

Victoria Kingsmore can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.edu.