Digging in
There was a time when Claire Kerns did not believe she would ever earn a college degree. Now, not only is she graduating from UC Irvine, she’s also heading to one of the world’s top two master’s programs in her field.
Kerns grew up just a few miles south of Irvine, her class of 2020 high school graduation ceremony cancelled by the pandemic. In her first year of virtual classes at nearby Saddleback College, she struggled.
But Kerns found success as a professional drum corps performer. For three summers, she toured with the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps, dancing, spinning flags and tossing sabers before cheering fans in football stadiums across the country. It was a dream come true for Kerns, who had been a die-hard fan of “Bloo” growing up, introduced by her parents who had met in drum corps.
During those years focused on performances and competitions, she continued with community
college courses, eventually taking an archaeology class that captured her imagination.
As a child obsessed with Percy Jackson novels, Indiana Jones, the History Channel
and Tomb Raider, Kerns did not want to just read about history – she wanted to discover
it.
Excavating Irvine history
Kerns transferred to UC Irvine as an anthropology major, and knew she’d made the right decision on her very first day. She stepped into I Dig UCI (Anthro 148), with about a dozen other students all as eager as her to get their hands dirty. The class spends Saturdays on archaeology digs just behind the Anteater Recreation Center, near farm buildings that pre-date the university. At the site, Kerns helped unearth an old bicycle wheel from the 1950s and a decades-old Doritos bag, both of which appeared to be in a ditch long-ago ranchworkers tossed their refuse into. The students document what they find and put some of it on display in the Social and Behavior Sciences Gateway.
“It has been amazing to work with Claire, but she already came to the project and the fieldwork with well-honed leadership skills. It’s every project leader’s hope to have students and research assistants that volunteer, anticipate, and follow through,” says Ian Straughn, UCI anthropology associate professor of teaching. “She also brings fun to the hard work, and an ability to get others on-board and enjoying themselves. And that can be a challenge when the work is slowly digging holes in the dirt, sometimes with not so much shade.”
The Department of Anthropology maintains a collection of materials from the campus site, as well as a number of interesting artifacts from around the world. As a research assistant in the AnthroLab, Kerns helps organize collections that include meteorites, medieval oil lamps from the Levant region, and Guatemalan animal masks.
The collection plays a crucial role in giving students hands-on access to relics they can explore and experiment with as they engage with anthropological research processes. For Kerns, that included being part of a small group independent study project that tried to solve a persistent question in the field: what were spheroconical vessels used for? The 1,000-year-old round earthenware containers with a pointed tip have been found across the Middle East. Researchers guess they may have been used as anything from hand grenades to oil lamps. Kerns and her classmates brainstormed ideas: Could they hold perfume? Could they grow seeds like a Chia Pet? Could they break open like an explosive? The students put their theories to the test. Kerns even threw one of the spheroconical vessels hard and, to her shock, it broke open like a grenade.
“It is so valuable to let us, as undergrads, have a taste of experimental archaeology where you just test random ideas and see if it sparks a reasonable answer,” Kerns says.
Beyond the classroom
To complement her anthropology major, Kerns added an archaeology minor, and the courses in both have been endlessly fascinating – exploring the intersection of science and religion, and how different cultures conceptualize the five (or more) senses.
“I’ve gotten to take in some of the most interesting classes on topics that I never would have thought of,” Kerns says. “Every single professor has such interesting topics of research, and they are always willing to encourage and help you.”
Last summer, Kerns volunteered on an archaeological dig in Belize. Living in the jungle with no cell reception for three weeks, she helped clear brush from the site of an ancient Mayan ceremonial plaza. At night, in the dormitory above the team’s research lab, mosquitos tried to get through the nets around bunk beds, drawn to the flashlight as she wrote in her journal.
“It was intense,” Kerns says. “One of the most extreme versions of archaeology you can do – and I survived it, which really proved to me that this is what I want to do.”
Even in her spare time, Kerns pursues research and archaeology. With the Anthropology Club, which she’s president of this year, she has visited the La Brea Tar Pits, the Getty Villa, and movie screenings related to their classes. Last year, she volunteered her anthropology skills doing digital research for the Clan Buchanan International Society, a group dedicated to studying the reforming the centuries-old Scottish clan which Kerns is a descendant of. Next year, Kerns may have the opportunity to continue her anthropology research in Scottish and Celtic history from much closer to the source – as a student at the University of Oxford.
City of Dreaming Spires
Attending the University of Oxford is a dream come true for Kerns – not only because she’ll finally be able to enter the Radcliffe Camera, an iconic 275-year-old library that’s generally closed to the public.
Kerns’ first glimpse of Oxford was with her family on a trip to Europe in 2019. She fell in love almost instantly with both the university and the city, which are intermingled in buildings hundreds of years old, with student housing situated right above coffee shops and restaurants.
“Getting to walk along the streets that inspired some of my favorite stories from childhood – Narnia and Lord of the Rings – was incredible,” Kerns says. “Getting to see the lamppost that inspired C.S. Lewis, the towers of All Souls College that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, and the pub where Lewis and Tolkien would hang out, was incredibly inspiring. The city is truly a magically inspiring place.”
Kerns returned to the so-called City of Dreaming Spires for several months through her community college’s study abroad program. Although she explored more of the city, even then, she didn’t qualify to study in the famed Radcliffe Camera.
When it came to planning for life after UC Irvine, she had an opportunity to work
on an archaeology site in Hawaii. The only option potentially more appealing would
be to go to Oxford University, which happens to be home to one of the top two archaeology
programs in the world.
“I felt like I was shooting for the moon a little bit. But the worst they could say was ‘no,’ and it’s better to hear that, than to reject myself from my dream school,” Kerns says. “That's kind of a mantra that I take in general: Just ask and try. Don't sell yourself short, because you truly never know.”
Oxford said yes. Kerns was admitted to the Master of Science program with a focus on social archaeology. Her preliminary research proposal involves exploring Scottish artifacts and burials through a feminist lens, which dovetails with her interest in her own family’s Scottish ancestry. She notes that Vikings found buried with axes were once believed to exclusively be men, but researchers later realized that women were also buried with the tools sometimes, casting the ancient burial sites in a new light.
With so much to be proud of as she graduates from UC Irvine and embarks on her next expedition, Kerns is most excited about the event itself: her first-ever commencement ceremony.
“I was at a place, pre-pandemic even, where I didn't think I was ever going to graduate college,” Kerns says. "Just getting to cross the stage and actually have a ceremony is going to be huge.”
-Christine Byrd for UCI Social Sciences
-pictured: Claire Kerns at the end of the summer dig at La Milpa, Belize. Kerns at
the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. Kerns and Straughn doing surface Survey of Bonita
Camp (in the I Dig UCI project). Kerns visiting Tikal, in Guatemala.