Why Review by CFS

Since the inception of archaeology field schools in the U.S., students have had no reliable information to evaluate the quality of education they will get attending one. In the information age and considering the high cost of field schools and their proliferation, it is crucial for students and other stakeholders (parents, faculty, study abroad advisors) to get quality data so they can make an informed decision and select the field school that best suits their needs. This is why we created this website, and we hope to have you join us.

To allow for reliable and actionable data, we present two types of reviews: (1) Peer-review by our Board of Directors; (2) Student reviews extracted from student evaluations run at the end of a field school. We present these data separately and allow students to explore the historic trends of each field school. We review each field school annually and publish the results.

Only parts of the evaluations process are shared with the public. We collect field school director CV’s, and publication records, and we ask for an annual report, reflecting on research and pedagogy. These documents are shared with our Board of Directors and support the annual peer-review process.

If you run your field school as a profit center, we are likely not a good partner. But if you care about archaeological training and education and hope to use peer-reviews and students input to improve, consider joining our system. Yes, it does cost money (see costs here). While we are all volunteers – no one is being paid at the CFS – we need to ensure we can pay for web hosting and insurance. A nominal fee is, therefore, assessed annually, one that should not be a burden to any field school budget.

Being transparent and allowing the public to know about your program will increase its profile, likely bringing more and better students to your field school. While the process is involved, it allows us together to improve archaeology and make it more and better available to the public.