With support from the Ruth Miller Kuhlman Scholarship Fund, Carl Knaack, a Classical Humanities undergraduate in CANES, spent the summer of 2025 gaining hands-on training in archaeology. Carl participated in the Institute for Field Research’s field school at Cahokia, in southern Illinois, a site that was a major urban center over 1,000 years ago.
During the program, Carl excavated part of an outlying village of the Mississippian Cahokia urban center, uncovering features tentatively identified as house trenches and possible ritual buildings. Beyond excavation, the field school offered weekly classes exploring the rise of urbanism and the role of oral traditions among the Mississippian peoples and their descendant communities.
“These general concepts of detailed excavation with a mindfulness of oral traditions and how they shape our understanding of these sites are directly applicable to work in the Ancient Near East,” Carl explains.
He noted that “the transition of rural populations to urbanism has had a significant impact on the ensuing oral traditions of the Ancient Near East, and being able to study another culture from a different area of the world that underwent similar transformations has helped provide me with a more nuanced understanding of urbanism and orality.”
Carl’s experience allowed him to refine his understanding of excavation techniques, artifact processing, field photography, cataloging, and conservation, providing hands-on processes that strengthen his preparation for future research in Classical and Biblical Archaeology.
Carl’s work at Cahokia also demonstrates the impact of donor support, turning curiosity into hands-on discovery and helping students like him gain the tools to engage deeply with history, culture, and archaeology around the world.
By supporting the Ruth Miller Kuhlman award during Fill the Hill from October 9-10, 2025, donors help fuel transformative student research that carries the ancient world forward.