Undergraduate Laura Layne is very much of-the-moment--and in-tune with the past.

The junior from Mansfield, Ohio who has a double-major in history and anthropology, was one of four students fortunate to accompany OSU Isthmia Excavations Director Tim Gregory to Greece for part of Spring Quarter 2010.

“It was a very educational trip, “she said. “We traveled to local sites, analyzed the architecture, and learned about the history of the country.

“We were looking at the past—and taking it back with us. Everything we saw can be applied to other areas.”

Laura and her fellow students were schooled in basic archaeological methods, such as considering elevation levels and which artifacts might be expected to belong in each level of soil, and which did not. “It’s like taking apart a layered cake—you can see what happens in each part.”

It didn’t take them long to acquire the ability to consider and analyze what they saw. Looking at the texture of a pottery shard and determining what it was made of gave them a good idea of both its purpose and its probable historic period.

Objects made of African redslip; for example, were common during the Roman occupation. Since the glazing of pottery came much later, those objects more likely date to the Medieval period.

“It is handy to have that training that only comes by eye and touch.”

Layne has been an undergraduate student intern at the Museum of Classical Archaeology (MoCA) since Winter Quarter 2011. Her tasks there--cataloguing, describing, and measuring objects, then entering them into a database--are a bit more mundane than digging in Greece, but equally important.

“I also check each object once a week to make sure it’s okay and free from molding, crystallizing, or decay; then dust each one before I place it back on the shelves behind its glass ‘shield’,” she said. “I actually enjoy doing it because it is such a rare opportunity to help take care of this priceless collection.”

Whether digging at Isthmia or cataloguing at MoCA, Layne said, “It’s a unique experience to be handling someone else’ property from thousands of years ago. You realize it belonged to someone you can never know, who lived in a completely different and long-gone civilization. It’s mysterious and wonderful.”

For the future, “I want a career in history; I enjoy archaeology a lot; I plan to continue working on projects like Isthmia.”