Our Vision
To allow archaeology students to make the most informed choice about which field school to attend
Our Mission
To provide relevant, transparent and accurate information about archaeology field schools through thoughtful, continuous and relevant peer-reviews and evaluations from participating students
Our Values
- Transparency and honesty in all evaluations
- Unbiased, open understanding of the many archaeological methods and practices, as long as projects deploy scientific methods
- Reverence for fact-based research
- Investigating, interpreting and preserving cultural heritage is central to all that we do
Our Story
This reinvention of the Center for Field Science originated in a 2025 Board of Directors decision to split the original CFS into two separate and independent entities. The Board wished to resolve an inherent conflict of interest – an organization that operates and generates revenue from field schools is conflicted if it also attempts to provide impartial reviews of field schools’ quality. Therefore, the Board created the Anthropocene Research Center to run and manage field school as a separate entity. The new CFS will only engage in reviews of field school and will do so in an open and transparent manner.
We decided that to manage the new CFS, Dr. Ran Boytner will remain as a non-paid Executive Director, and that the Board of Directors will continue to function as a peer-review body. The new CFS works with field school directors to collect relevant documents and to conduct CFS-sanctioned student evaluations at the end of each field school. These reviews are confidential and free of any input by program staff members.
All of these data will be published on each program’s webpage and will be transparent and relevant to all stakeholders engaging with archaeology field schools. To ensure we have adequate resources to maintain the site (web hosting, insurance, etc.), the Board of Directors instituted a policy whereby field schools will pay a nominal fee to become part of our evaluation system (see here). The new CFS began publishing reviews in Sep 2025.