Grinnell Young Archaeologist’s Club engages local youth

This spring, Avajane Lei `28 and Julia Ghorai `27 brought archaeology to life for local middle school children through the launch of the Grinnell Young Archaeologist’s Club. 

Their first event was held on Sunday at the Drake Community Library in partnership with two community partners, the Drake Community Library and Archaeology in Community. 

“Drake Library has been super wonderful, super accommodating about dates and super helpful with supplies,” Ghorai said. 

“We also were really relying on them for getting the word out to the community and they already had stuff in place in terms of infrastructure to sign up. They were superb with that,” she said.

In addition to local collaboration, the event drew from an established national model. 

Archaeology in Community, a non-profit whose programming that Lei participated in as a kid, helped inspire this initiative. 

“This program that I participated in inspired me to become an archaeologist,” Lei said. 

“It is the entire reason why I’m here. Not every kid has to become an archaeologist out of this program, but it’s more of like getting them to understand the value in it,” she said.

Because it was their first time holding an event, Ghorai said they relied on the curriculum provided by Archaeology in Community, including their slides and PDF materials. 

“This was our first program, but it is based off of a very well-established program,” Ghorai said.

At the event, children rotated through stations that encouraged both discovery and interpretation. 

The activities introduced key archaeological concepts to participants, including excavation methods and artifact analysis in an interactive and engaging atmosphere. 

Magnolia Rozendal, 11, said she hadn’t encountered archaeology much before participating in the program. 

“I thought it was really interesting, and I didn’t know there were different types of archaeology,” Rozendal said. “I definitely want to come to more of these events, everyone was really nice.”

The organizers are already looking ahead to expanding and personalizing future programming.

Ghorai said they spent the last 10 minutes of the event talking to the kids about what specific topics they would be interested in exploring for future iterations. 

“Our hope is that next semester, we do three programs,” Ghorai said. “Some of them will be archaeology in the community. Some of them will be ones that we come up with ourselves.” 

The planning process also utilized Archaeology in Community workshops to train their volunteers.

“They actually provide a lot of professional development workshops for people of different experience levels in the field,” said Lei. “We also wanted to take this as a professional development opportunity for our volunteers to get experience teaching, doing community outreach, because all of those are really important.”

Volunteer Sarah Comer `29 said, “It was a lot of fun to engage with the kids and see what sparked their interest, they’re really smart kids.” 

Beyond the events, the initiative is part of a broader effort to connect Grinnell College with the surrounding community.

“I think one of the objectives of this program is to bridge that gap between the Grinnell community and the College through something maybe not so traditional and actually getting kids really excited,” said Lei. “Archaeology is such an incredible tool to get kids interested in something that’s hands-on.”

The organizers also said they see strong potential to integrate classroom learning into future programming, drawing on faculty expertise and local history.

At its core, Lei said that the Young Archaeologist’s Club is about expanding access to a field that is often not introduced early in students’ education.

“This isn’t a subject that’s really taught in schools. Archaeology and anthropology in general are not equally accessible to all people,” said Ghorai. 

“In general, you’re looking at people who maybe have parents who are anthropologists or parents who are in academia, parents who are wealthy.”

Ghorai and Lei said they hope to change that through community-based programming.

“So these community programs are just kind of hoping to get people interested in this thing and showing that it is a real career and a real thing that’s worth it to study,” said Lei. 

The club is looking for more volunteers for the next semester, and people who are interested can get involved by contacting the organizers at archaeology@studentorg.grinnell.edu.