Washing my hands with soap in the campsite bathroom, I rinse off the layers of dirt and feel the cuts I’ve accumulated throughout the day. Blisters, scrapes, bruises and mosquito bites cover my sore and cramped hands. After eight hours of leaning into a 1-by-1-meter hole in the forest floor, my body protests every move I attempt to make. For the first time in my adult life, I go to bed before 9:30 p.m. My back aches, I have sand in my hair and there’s dirt in my clothes. I smell of bug spray, campfire and sweat. As I drift off to sleep I think to myself, “Archaeology isn’t a science — it’s a lifestyle.”

Hope, British Columbia is a small town situated on the Fraser River, about an hour and a half east of Vancouver. It was here that I joined 11 other students from around the country, committing every daylight hour — except Sunday — digging in the dirt to figure out why people chose to populate a very small island, called Welqámex (wel-heh-muth), in a bend of the Fraser River.

Although more than a century has passed since those who inhabited the island abandoned their homes, the countryside and the town, it looks as if it’s been untouched for just as long. The lush green forests and towering trees shelter us from the stinging winds that whip through the valley. Mountains reach unimaginable heights in all directions, almost making me feel claustrophobic. We learn each rock formation has a name and a story and lesson to be learned. I finally understand one of the many reasons it is so detrimental to tribes when they get moved off the land they’ve lived on since the beginning of time. It would be like losing all the books that taught us lessons when we were young.

I specifically chose to go to this field school not because of the “exotic” location, but because I sought to further understand the collaborative relationship between archaeologists and the Stó:lō, the First Nations group who have inhabited the Fraser River Valley for thousands of years. As an American Indian studies major, I very much understand the importance of indigenous oral history and culture revitalization, and I view archaeology in North America as something very unique and different than archaeology elsewhere in the world. I think we have the opportunity to learn much from the descendants of those we study, as long as it’s done with respect and cooperation.

For me, it was like a mystery adventure, but not quite in the Indiana-Jones style. Most of our days were pretty monotonous. Our professors paired us up to dig one unit over the course of six weeks. My partner, Mary, and I worked in House Four, a house pit approximately 30 meters in diameter and 4 meters in depth from the highest to the lowest point. Mary and I would often take nap breaks after working for several hours, and occasionally we would take educational walks around the island to see the others’ progress. Really, we were just tired of scraping up millimeters of dirt and needed an excuse to slack off every now and then.

Field archaeology is tough, and many of us got homesick for things like a clean mirror in the bathroom or a bed without a slant to it. But I learned so much more than how to make straight sidewalls on a hill or how to set up a datum point, which we use as a reference for the location of objects.

Working closely with people from various First Nations populations in the area, I got to experience a sweat lodge, participate in a burning ceremony offering goods to the ancestors, taste traditionally cooked salmon and witness land-claim controversy between tribes in both the large-scale, involving the government, and small-scale, involving rights to a fishing site.

We were taught about temelh (tuh-meth), a mixture of red ochre and bear grease — or petroleum jelly in the more modern versions — which we wore on our temples, over our heart, on the back of our hands and the inside of our wrists. If we ever went barefoot in our unit, we also put it on the top and bottom of our feet. We wore temelh so we were visible to the ancestral spirits who inhabited the island; otherwise, we ran the risk of them running into us and giving us spirit sickness. I also got to go to a pig roast in the woods, have the taxi deliver alcohol and pizza to our campground, and drink champagne on the bank of the most massive river I’ve ever seen.

As I drift off to sleep, I realize how much I love digging in the dirt, meticulously removing mere centimeters of deposits at a time, getting excited each time I hear my trowel scrape across another rock. Field archaeology may not be as glamorous as portrayed in the movies, but for those of us who have been digging in a hole for a week, anything that isn’t dirt is just as exciting as finding the Holy Grail — well, almost as exciting.

Reach design chief Colleen Kirsten at features@dailyuw.com.