Too often, teenagers decide "what to be when they grow up," only to drift into other fields as they grow older, never to pursue their first true passion. Thanks to parental support, a single-minded quest for knowledge, and her participation in a Crow Canyon High School Field School, Sarah Herr was able to follow her original dream to be an archaeologist—today Dr. Herr is a senior project director at Desert Archaeology, a cultural resources management company with offices in Tucson and Phoenix.
As a teenager in Santa Fe, Sarah read Gods, Graves, and Scholars, a popular book about the history of archaeology written by C. W. Ceram. Then she read the story of Don Johanson and his discovery of the skeletal remains of Lucy, the australopithecine. Noting Sarah's interest in the past, her parents bought her a subscription to Archaeology Magazine, where they found an ad for Crow Canyon's High School Field School. Sarah attended High School Field School in 1986.
"What the Crow Canyon High School Field School did was show me what 'archaeological research' was," Sarah said. "The summer I worked at Duckfoot, Ricky Lightfoot and Carrie Lipe commented that there never seemed to be enough burials to account for all the people who lived in the pueblos. As the educators and archaeologists talked about what they didn't know yet, and how they were going to tackle those questions with their excavations at Duckfoot and Sand Canyon, I was hooked."
Sarah said that, at one level, High School Field School was all about the social awkwardness of teenagers away from their parents. But, for her, the spirit of scientific inquiry made a real impact. "We had lectures, and I remember a field trip to Mesa Verde, analyzing artifacts with Angela in the trailer, and throwing a spear with an atlatl," she recalls. "But it was the day-to-day excavations and the help I got after hours on the required research paper that made the impact."
In addition to field skills, High School Field School provided Sarah the credentials to become a babysitter for Tim Kohler's daughter. Tim Kohler is a longtime Crow Canyon associate, a professor at Washington State University, and a principal investigator for the Village Ecodynamics Project. Those early Southwest archaeology connections were invaluable as Sarah's career progressed.
Sarah graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1991, and obtained her masters degree in 1994—as well as her Ph.D. in 1999—from the University of Arizona. She began work at Desert Archaeology in 1996 as a part-time ceramic analyst during graduate school, and then began full-time there in 1999 directing a project near the area where she did her dissertation fieldwork. Overseeing the now 10-year-old project—working along the Mogollon Rim of east-central Arizona—remains the biggest part of her job. Recently, she also worked on a site called Las Capas, an Early Agricultural period settlement in the Tucson Basin occupied between 1200 and 750 B.C. The results of the fieldwork at Las Capas were identified in Archaeology Magazine as being among the top 10 discoveries of 2009.
In addition to authoring or coauthoring two volumes focused on the archaeology of the Mogollon Rim area, Sarah was recently a guest editor of an issue of Archaeology Southwest. She also coauthored a book with Tim Kohler, Archaeology of Bandelier National Monument. Sarah resides in Tucson with her husband, archaeologist Jeffery Clark, and two rabbits.
| Are you, or is someone you know, a teenager looking for a meaningful—and fun!—experience this summer? Check out Crow Canyon's summer camps for teens. For more information, call 1.800.422.8975, ext. 146. |
