GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Archaeology involves a lot of walking and looking and digging, and much examining and documenting; but in the end, if you're lucky, a little piece of the past is revealed and you solve a small piece of the puzzle about how we got to this point in history.
Sunday morning, more than a dozen Boy Scouts from Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas gathered in a meeting room on the Stuhr Museum grounds here to learn enough about archaeology to earn merit badges.
The archaeology course was part of the annual Overland Trails Council Merit Badge University. Friday through Sunday, 635 boys were registered for up to three merit badge sessions each. The sessions are taught by local experts and touch on topics such as astronomy, aviation, sports, coin collection, drafting, robotics, landscaping, metalworking, woodcarving and rifle shooting.
Teaching the archaeology merit badge course was Brad Schada of Grand Island, an archaeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Schada is a Brule, Neb., native who earned a degree in archaeology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The 3½-hour merit badge course was divided into two sections. First, in a classroom setting, Schada gave the Scouts a brief overview of what archaeology is and why it is important.
Then Schada took the Scouts on a hike to an archaeological site on the Stuhr Museum grounds, where he had seven stations set up so they could get a little hands-on experience by digging in the dirt for artifacts the same way Schada does it in the field.
This was the third year Schada taught the archaeology merit badge course.
A lifelong love of history is what got him involved in archaeology.
Working for the Bureau of Reclamation, he oversees archaeological projects on 15 dams and reservoirs, in Nebraska and surrounding states, that are managed by the bureau. Schada said he jumped at the chance to be the instructor for the archaeology merit badge quest, as his son is in Boy Scouts.
"We teach the kids the importance of archaeology from what they are looking at to what they can find, and how to report things so that information is not lost," he said.
Being an archaeologist is somewhat like being a detective — finding clues about the past and then trying to piece them together like a puzzle. Schada had a few examples to show the Scouts of artifacts he has found on various digs, such as a piece of broken glass with a purple tint to it.
From just that small piece of broken glass, Schada told the Scouts, one can immediately start to draw a picture about the artifact and the people involved with it.
In this case, the purple tint was caused by a chemical used in the manufacture of the glass. The chemical was imported from Germany, but those imports were halted when the United States entered World War I.
Shada wants the Scouts to come away from the merit badge course with this:
"We all have to take care of our past. We have to take care of the archaeological sites and protect them so our children and grandchildren can actually see what we have seen and to learn about the past civilizations."
And what Shada also wants the Scouts to gain from the course is the same thing that draws him to archaeology:
"Just the discovery — as you never know what you are going to find."
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