The Enculturating Environments Project is a field school based on the Wind Wolves Preserve in South-Central Califonia. As the largest private preserve in the American West, it is rich in wildlife and dedicated to the protection and restoration of the native environment. It is a beautiful landscape with sandstone mountain peaks, open oak woodlands, grassland poterors, perennial streams cutting narrow arroyos, and some of the most spectaular rock paintings found anywhere in North America.

These fragile, often mulicoloured pictographs are found on sandstone surfaces; as irreplacable works of art, it is essential that they are properly recorded and researched in controlled and carefull circumstances. Our work aims to educate the need to conserve these vital expressions of the native artisty. Found close to these paintings are complex archaeologial sites with evidence of a range of associated activities.

Our international collaborative project includes rock-art specialists, historical archaeologists, and environmental archaeologists. We are investigating the past context of these enigmatic works of Native art through digital survey techniques, excavation, and geo-archaeology. The prehistory of this landscape is only now beginning to be explored; excavations focus on pigment quarry sites and middens containing abundant material culture such as lithics (i.e. arrow heads and other chert tools and manufacturing debri), groundstone (i.e. mortars, pestles, manos, metates), cooking waste (small mammal, deer, river muscle), and importantly beads (both prehistoric shell and historical trade beads). As an historical landscape, the region itself is famous for Native resistance to Spanish and Mexican incursions, as a refuge for Mission Indians after the coastal revolt of 1824, and later, for its ranchero operations, even as a hideout for outlaw gangs such as the infamous Joaquin Murietta, the 'Mexican Robin Hood' of the 1850s.

Students are invited to apply for places, which are limited. As a six week field school, we will teach you rock-art recording, digital survey, field excavation, geoarchaeological investigation, and laboratory analysis while you learn about environmental conservation and the wildlife of this spetacular habitat.

You also will learn regional archaeological sequences and the historical development of Western landscapes, including the American and Modern periods, with the development of 'big business' agriculture, water manipulation and oil extraction, in one of the most intensely transformed environments ever to be attributed to human impact.

Equally, you will be part of an international expedition, with students and staff from many universities both local and distant, including University of California Los Angeles, Southampton (England), University of Central Lancashire (England), and others. You also will meet and learn from local professional archaeologists, rock-art conservators, preserve personel, and biologists.

As part of the UCLA Fieldschool program, this is an accredited fieldschool with a full summer quarter's allocation of credit.

To sign up for the fieldschool, go to:

http://www.archaeology.ucla.edu/programs/north-america/u.s.-california-windwolves-connecting-rock-art-and-environment

For inquiries, contact Dr. David Robinson (dwrobinson@uclan.ac.uk).

For further information on the project, visit:
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/scitech/forensic_investigative/files/sci_fz_doc_enculturatinglandscapes.pdf

For further information on the Preserve, visit:
http://www.wildlandsconservancy.org/twc_preserve_wind_wolves.html