On an idyllic green block of downtown Boise, archaeology students were hard at work. The students from the University of Idaho, Boise State University and College of Western Idaho wielded their tools alongside volunteers in front of the State Historic Preservation Office building, carefully unearthing two rectangular hot tub-sized patches of dirt in the well-manicured lawn to uncover artifacts from Boise’s buried past .
The work was led by the University of Idaho during the first two weeks of June as an archaeological field school, a program students who want to practice archaeology must complete to gain real-world experience, similar to a residency after medical school.
This dig has been a year in the making. In the summer of 2024, construction workers were digging across the SHPO lawn on Main Street to install fiber-optic cables at the office when they encountered gold rush-era artifacts just below the surface. SHPO officials knew they needed to extend the dig and sought students’ help to continue the work, said Dan Everhart, SHPO outreach historian.
“We knew as we uncovered those items that, of course, they extended far beyond our trench, but we didn’t have the time or the resources then to continue that investigation further,” Everhart told the Idaho Statesman. “That’s how we ended up coordinating the field school project with the University of Idaho.”…