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 Each morning, five days a week in the summer of 2001, Sarah Gatza woke up, wrapped her red hair in a bandanna and headed for the past.
The University of Delaware anthropology major was on an archaeological dig in Sibudu, a cave in Tongaat, South Africa. She and other students involved in the field study through the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg were looking for the remnants of a prehistoric civilization dating as far back as 120,000 years.
“I’m interested in the evolution of humans throughout the archaeological record, and evolution began in Africa,” she said.
Gatza, a junior, had studied archaeology and been on one-day digs, but she had never experienced a field school where she’d be digging for weeks. Although, she was beginning to think archaeology, or examining past cultures, might be what she wanted to do, she said she was still interested in social cultural anthropology, where you research a culture by living with it.
Since she was going to be a senior and would soon be applying to graduate schools, Gatza had to decide whether to continue in anthropology or do her graduate work in archaeology. In order to make an informed decision, Gatza said, she felt compelled to experience a dig.
She surfed the web for a university offering a summer field study program and found the University of Witwatersrand. Not only did it have the kind of program she was looking for, but, it also offered a site where archaeologists were finding artifacts from the Iron Age, the era she’s interested in.
She applied and was accepted.
On July 27, Gatza flew to Cape Town then to Durban, a resort city on the Indian Ocean, 60 miles south of the dig site. From Durban, she drove to Balitto, the city she where she would live while helping to excavate Sibudu.
For the four weeks, students spent their nights in Balitto and days in Tongaat. Each morning, they would drive to the cave, carry their lunches, water bottles and personal belongings to a steep incline where they’d climb to the mouth of the cave, and then spend the day digging or sorting unearthed materials.
 The cave was filled with yellow tags that marked a change in soil color. The varied colors of the soil indicate changes in human and environmental activity during the various time periods. It was like a signal from the past that something different had taken place within this culture, she said.
To preserve the integrity of the site, she said, they were never allowed to walk where they were excavating. They moved around the cave on wooden planks held down by sand bags.
Gatza found pieces of what they believed to be a 1,000-year-old grass mat that Iron Age locals had used as mattresses.
At the end of the day, Gatza and her colleagues returned to Balitto, had dinner and studied the course materials they were expected to know or went to a club or to the movies.
They had one day a week off.
“We spent some of our time off on the beach, but we also visited a Zulu village and went on safari in the Umfolozi Game Reserve,” Gatza said. “I went to Africa to see what I’d actually be doing if I’m going to do this every day of my life. The experience was exactly what I wanted. I learned how to do archaeology, how to recognize parts of a bone as opposed to a tooth, to tell the relative ages of various artifacts and soil levels. 
“Between the people on the dig, there was a sense of common purpose. When you are on a dig, the only people you really see are those who are on the team with you. They are like a family. There’s a sense of closeness that I am not sure anyone would be able to understand unless they were actually part of an excavation team. I finally made my decision when I realized the days went by so fast. I didn’t want to leave when the day was over. I just knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
When she returned to the U.S. on Aug. 27, she began preparing for her future, applying to graduate schools of archaeology and anticipating life after college.
Story by Barbara Garrison
March 25, 2002
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