Kristina Jackson: OUR NEIGHBORS | Archaeology professor digs into history of Kanza people, their homeland

Aug. 31—Lauren Ritterbush was hiking in her home state of North Dakota when she looked out at the landscape and asked herself a question.

"I knew I lived there, but I also knew people lived there before me," she said.

Ritterbush, a professor of archaeology at K-State, studies historical sites and documents to learn about the past. Since arriving at K-State more than 20 years ago, Ritterbush has spent much of her time studying the Kanza people. She assists in excavating Kanza villages, reads documents written about them and works with members of the modern-day Kaw Nation. Ritterbush says that by looking at the past, we can connect to people, places and the future.

"You have to put all these different clues and look at the context in which they're found to come up with some credible interpretation of what their lives were like," she said.

Ritterbush went to graduate school at the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at K-State. Her interest in the field of archaeology and ethnohistory, which is anthropology covering culture, began when she was a kid growing up near Bismarck, North Dakota.

She said the area was steeped in a lot of history, from the Mandan people to Lewis and Clark's journey west. She visited a Mandan earth lodge and imagined how that life was different from her own.

"I could go inside an earth lodge and it was like, 'Wow, what would it be like in here?'" she said.

Ritterbush said she is a detail-oriented person who loves exploring the smallest details of an area. One of her favorite activities is hiking, experiencing the land and its inhabitants.

"I could sit and look at a square yard of grass for probably 30, 40 minutes to be able to look at all the different grasses and the insects," she said.

Upon moving to Kansas, Ritterbush learned the state was named after a group of people and started noticing various things named after the Kanza, but with little explanation of who they were or how they lived.

As a new resident of an area, Ritterbush said learning about the people who lived there before can help someone connect to that place.

"If I could understand that, I could understand something about this place," she said. "Just by knowing that it feels less foreign."

One of her first projects involving the Kanza was a virtual tour of the Kansas River. She worked with members of the Kaw Nation, the descendants of the Kanza who now have their headquarters in Oklahoma, to create a virtual tour using a Google tool. She worked with a Kaw linguist to outline what they called several locations along the river. She also assisted in an archaeological dig on the east side of Manhattan where the Kanza had a village.

Ritterbush said an archaeologist works primarily in uncovering material objects and artifacts, while an ethnohistorian works with primary documents from the period. Much of her work involves reading things written about the Kanza and trying to determine how other people viewed them and why.

"I have to tease out their biases and why do they describe the people like this," she said.

She said it's important to understand that how others might have painted the Kanza might not have been the whole picture.

"If they're writing this as a report to the federal government, they want to make themselves look like they're doing their job really well, which may not always be a reflection of what is truly going on with the Kanza people."

Ritterbush said when people imagine archaeology, they imagine the thrill of discovery or a version of Indiana Jones, but the reality isn't so flashy. The research process can take years of preparation, reading and planning before actually getting to a dig site. Ritterbush said they only move to excavation if they can't find information without it and must think ahead to all the information they might need.

"We have to be especially cautious because once we dig into a site we're actually destroying that site," she said. "We have to think of all the different kinds of raw data we can extract from the ground even if it's not the first thing we would be thinking of."

Before entering the field, an archaeologist digs through existing data to develop a hypothesis and determine what they want to learn from further research. They then carefully gather information at a site and analyze whether their assumptions were correct.

Ritterbush said her research has connected her with the Kaw Nation, and she tries to listen to what they want to learn when deciding topics she might research moving forward. The virtual tour came about because Kaw people told her there was an interest in learning about the language and about the place their predecessors had lived.

"We're trying to help the tribe build a connection to their homeland through modern media," she said. "This is still their homeland. This is still very much part of their heart and soul."

As someone who is not Kaw, she finds it important to get that input from people with a deeper knowledge of the history and culture.

"To really understand you need to talk to somebody who doesn't look at it from an outside perspective," she said.

Ritterbush said exploring these histories can help people today solve problems. Gathering information from several cultures, places and times gives a toolbox for addressing recurring problems that we might still address today.

"That allows us to bring together diverse ideas and be able to apply knowledge from different societies past and present to address issues that are still with us today," she said. "Having those clues there allows us to hopefully come up with better solutions."