Graduate Spotlight: Curiosity, passion for history fuels Wilson’s drive for archaeology degree
The young archaeologist believes 'the past grounds us and reminds us we are not the center of all things.'
Kim Chaudoin |
New Lipscomb graduate Evie Wilson brushes off a large storage jar during excavation work at the Lanier Center for Archaeology's Burna project in Israel.
Evie Wilson (’23) has an insatiable curiosity about the past.
But merely learning about history from documents does not satisfy Wilson, Lipscomb’s newest Lanier Center for Archaeology graduate. She believes strongly that archaeology is the last frontier of the past and can illuminate and bring to life places that historical accounts cannot do.
“Historical documents are wonderful, but there is only so much you can glean from them. New information cannot be found in ancient documents … not without help,” explains Wilson. “Archaeology is our main source of new, or should I say old, information. Archaeology can illuminate and inform biases in historical records, and it can reach places that histories seldom do: destruction layers, or lack thereof, at sites claimed to be utterly destroyed by a pharaoh; trade relations that underpinned the economics of ancient empires; settlement patterns as regions change from rural, agrarian societies to urban kingdoms; the daily lives of everyday people. Archaeology unveils the stories of individuals, communities, kingdoms and empires, and all those stories are worth discovering and sharing.”
Wison believes this is especially important in relating archaeology to the Bible. “What archaeology does for biblical studies is to ground Scripture in its historical context. Archaeology won't find evidence of a leader named Joshua, but it has found an explosion of settlement sites in the Hill Country in the Late Bronze/Iron Age I. The history of the Bible is what sets it apart,” she says. “As my dad frequently says, ‘He’s a coming down kind of God.’ He has stepped down into history, time and again, to pursue us: with the culmination at the cross, and the conclusion in full restoration with the Father at the end of days. The time and space of the Bible is important. That’s why I’m passionate about archaeology.”
The community you build and the experiences you get to be a part of are unlike anything else I’ve done. The experience is worth every second of the work put in. — Evie Wilson
From the time she was young, Wilson says history — particularly ancient history — has been her favorite subject. An awareness of archaeology was a byproduct of her insatiable curiosity about the past. Though intrigued by archaeology, she never thought of it as an attainable option until college. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history at the College of the Ozarks, she learned that one of her professors had been on an archaeological dig in Israel. Wilson learned about his trip and the summer before her last semester, she signed up for an excavation at Tel Gezer suggested to her by her professor and led by Steve Ortiz, director of Lipscomb’s Lanier Center for Archaeology, housed in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. “After that dig, I knew this was what I wanted,” remembers Wilson.
Following her undergraduate studies, Wilson began work on her master’s degree at Lipscomb. As part of her pursuit of a Master of Arts in archaeology and biblical studies, Wilson has explored the past as part of Lanier Center excavations in Cyprus and Israel. Her first Lanier project was at the Kourion site in Cyprus, led by Lanier Center Associate Director Tom Davis, where the team was excavating in the Late Roman period at an elite residence. They pulled up buckets of marble, finding nails all across one of the buildings, fragments of glass vessels, a mosaic floor and statue fragments. From there, Wilson flew directly to Israel for the Burna project, led by Ortiz, where the team was at a site that dates to the Late Bronze age and working in a potential cultic complex. The team found more than half a dozen large storage jars that they could reconstruct as well as a tabun, animal bones and imported pottery among other artifacts. Wilson says the two experiences were vastly different, but both were “incredibly amazing.”
The past grounds us and reminds us we are not the center of all things. Countless have come before us and countless will come after, but that does not diminish the value of the individual life. — Evie Wilson
“Archaeological excavations are not easy. 4 a.m. is a normal wake up time. You work in the heat and dirt for hours, you wash pottery all afternoon, and you try to get some sleep,” says Wilson. “But the community you build and the experiences you get to be a part of are unlike anything else I’ve done. The experience is worth every second of the work put in.”
As much as Wilson says she enjoys the technical aspect of archaeology, it’s the “‘everyday nobody’ stuff that gets down in your soul.”
“When you reach out and touch a plaster handprint in a 3,000-year-old cistern, you become acutely aware of the unknown individual who occupied that space before you and left a piece of himself there,” she explains. “The humanity of that person demands recognition in that moment. The past grounds us and reminds us we are not the center of all things. Countless have come before us and countless will come after, but that does not diminish the value of the individual life.”
“When I remember that the things we handle are the last material remnants of human lives, the weight of that settles deep in my chest,” continues Wilson. “We’re not just digging up stuff, we're handling someone else’s memory. That is an amazing responsibility that I am privileged to be a part of.”
After a return to the Burna excavation site in Israel this summer, Wilson will begin her Ph.D. studies in archaeology at Lipscomb.