Field School Experiences

By Meredith Anderson

This summer I am spending six weeks as a Teaching Assistant for Boston University’s Field School in Menorca, Spain. As many AIA members are either interested in participating in a field school, have attended a field school, or run field schools we thought it would be interesting to share the experiences of one field school through the eyes of its participants. In the next few weeks you will see articles on all different aspects of BU’s Field School in Menorca from the students and staff.

Boston University’s Field School in Menorca started ten years ago and runs for six weeks from May through July every summer. For the last eight years they have been excavating at the site of Torre d’en Galmès—the largest prehistoric settlement on the island.


To give you a little background, any introduction to the archaeology of Menorca must include a discussion of Talayots and Taulas. Menorca and the neighboring larger island in the Mediterranean, Mallorca, are known for the unique prehistoric Talayotic culture that inhabited both islands (beginning around 1000BC). They were named for the watchtower-like megalithic structures scattered among their settlements. In Menorca the Talayotic people also built large T-shaped monuments called Taulas that, in conjunction with their surrounding horseshoe shaped buildings, are thought to have a religious function.

Menorca, with its strategic location in the Western Mediterranean and natural deep harbors, has been a strategic center for millennia and saw early trade relations with groups on the Iberian Peninsula, Greeks, and Carthaginians and was later controlled by the Romans, Muslims, Spaniards, British, French, and finally the Spaniards. The Talayotic house that BU is excavating at the site of Torre d’en Galmès was built by the Talayotic people shows clear Carthaginian and Roman influence, and after a period of abandonment was partially reoccupied when the Menorcan population surged in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries as Islamic control on the Iberian Peninsula waned. This year, BU is finishing up excavation at the Talayotic house and hopes to move on to a new area at the same site in Menorca next year.

I hope you enjoy the next set of articles—whether you are learning about field school life for the first time or reliving your own experiences. Menorca—with its varying and yet tangible landscape, relatively limited development (Menorca is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve), and rich history—is a wonderful place to have a field school and I am glad to have the opportunity to share it with you.

Meredith is the AIA's Site Preservation Program Coordinator.