Anthropology: a field trip to prehistoric times

April 15, 2015

As the America writer Napoleon Hill once put it: skills can only be developed with practice, not while reading instructions. All faculty members from the Anthropology Department adhere to the same principle when it comes to teaching. This education method helps better understand theory and program. That is why anthropologist students in AUCA can regularly be spotted on research fields and at various events organized by their own Department.

From 7^th to 10^th April 2015, students attending the Archeology and Physical anthropology courses visited the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic with their professor Aida Abdykanova. There, they learned how to identify the sex and age of humans studying prehistoric human skulls.  That particular training session provoked a hail of enthusiastic reactions amongst students. The excitement was mixed with fear, but students performed their task as real professionals. Now, they can boast that they can identify the age and sex of humans who lived 1000 years ago. Most importantly, these skills were not just acquired by anthropologist students, but also by students from other departments.

One day later, on 11^th of April, students of the Eurasian Rock Art and Archeology courses visited the Örnök rock art monuments located on the north shore of Ysyk-Köl lake. For many, especially international students, this trip was their first trip outside the city. Their first mission was to identify rock paintings and petroglyphs. All were running the research field looking for the archeological wonders. It almost felt as if ancient and precious treasures were about to be discovered. Everyone was eager to find these paintings left by the people who lived here about 1500 years ago.

The second mission of students was to properly describe, photograph, date, and localize paintings on the map with a GPS-navigator. This led to a lot of discussions and hypothesis: what exactly and why people wanted to represent in this paintings? On one of the boulders, there was the painting of a deer of about one meter high. The tail of the animal was, however, unusual for a deer. Its ring shape was more that of a tiger or a snow leopard: “So, was it really a deer?” and if not “What about antlers?”… That was a rewarding and fruitful field trip. Not only the students experienced the basics of documenting rock paintings, but they also gain confidence in actual field works.

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