Stacey Camp is an associate professor of anthropology in the College of Social Science and director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program. This story has been edited and repurposed from her chapter, "Fieldwork and Parenting in Archaeology" in the book "Mothering from the Field."
In the wee hours of a morning in the spring of 2013, I found myself wide awake with the overwhelming and completely irrational fear that this could be the last time I see my children, a fear that follows me with every trip I take.
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My daughter was born in August 2009 in the small town of Moscow, Idaho. The morning after she was born, a nurse came into my hospital room with a local newspaper; it detailed a grant I had been awarded — the first big federal grant of my career. I politely thanked her for the paper and immediately discarded it next to my bed out of sight.
I obsessed over the picture of me in the paper — done up, thin, healthy. It looked nothing like me in that hospital bed.
As the photo and the newspaper incident attested, I could not escape my academic identity in the eyes of others. Less than 16 hours after giving birth to my firstborn, I was forced to confront the unending struggle of reconciling my motherly and scholarly identity.
As an archaeologist, my work life is characterized by mobility and travel. Such professional expectations are the genesis of a discipline historically rooted in international travel and isolation from the outside world, including the neglect of one’s parental, spousal and familial obligations.
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Flash forward to summer 2010: my first attempt to manage the expectations of archaeological field work and motherhood with my now one-year-old daughter. Since she was born, I had been frantically working on publications, grant proposals, new course preps and managing my second year on the tenure-track.
I ran a field project over the weekends and three days of the work week so that my husband could handle care on his days off. I came home on the days we were “off” of work and immediately jumped into my role as full-time mommy.
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It is the fall of 2012. A graduate student and I took a trip to my ongoing archaeological project. My one-year-old son is still nursing and refuses to take a bottle, so he is along for the ride.
As soon as we arrive on site, we quickly jump out of the car and plan to make the survey quick due to air quality. I plunk a pacifier into my son’s mouth and gently place him on my back in a baby carrier.
As soon as the visit is done, my son starts crying out: the pacifier has been lost.
***
A year and a half later, I return to the site, childless, with a team of students, volunteers and staff for four weeks. I fight feelings of helplessness, mother guilt, and worry and focus on the work that has to be done.
On our first day of the project, I follow the same path I took in 2012 with my son on my back. My attention is immediately drawn to a bright blue object sticking halfway out of the dirt.
I pick it up and behold the lost pacifier: a painful reminder of the absences fieldwork involves.
