{"id":34384,"date":"2018-08-31T11:26:37","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T17:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=34384"},"modified":"2022-04-20T14:09:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T20:09:34","slug":"alumni-profile-anna-cordova-uncovering-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=34384","title":{"rendered":"Digging Through The Past, Enlightening The Future | Anna Cordova"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anna<\/a><\/p>\n

Anna Cordova ’06, ’16 meanders through a field in Colorado Springs, searching for the past. She pulls broken porcelain from a creek bed and snaps a photo, documenting yet another artifact here, where she\u2019s made the biggest discovery of her career.<\/p>\n

Cordova, the archaeologist for Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Services and a UCCS alumna, has linked thousands of these artifacts to the city\u2019s early history\u2014and whom they are connected with is why they\u2019re important.<\/p>\n

The first artifact in this recent discovery was uncovered when city workers were doing flood mitigation. For now, she can\u2019t speak publicly about the site in order to protect it. Once it\u2019s excavated, scheduled for this fall, the city plans to notify the community of its significance and possibly offer walking tours of the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a once-in-a-lifetime find,\u201d 35-year-old Cordova said. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very, very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an archaeologist, she learns how people lived long ago by examining the manmade items they used and then left behind.<\/p>\n

\"Shards<\/a> \u201cWe study the material culture of humans. Basically, we look at trash,\u201d Cordova said. \u201cAnd you can tell an awful lot about people\u2019s trash.\u201d<\/p>\n

It reveals their socioeconomic status, what they ate and drank, where they got their goods, and much more. Trash helps archaeologists better understand human habits of a specific time and place, details likely left out of written history.<\/p>\n

Cordova has been curious about the past since she was a girl.<\/h2>\n

Born and raised in Colorado Springs, she loved family trips to places that resembled the Old West.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to know more about the history all the time,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember being in second grade learning about the American Revolution, and even at seven years old I just ate that stuff up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/a>In high school, she thought that being a historian sounded fun, but she wanted to be outdoors. Then her mother told her about archaeology.<\/p>\n

At UCCS, Cordova became hooked, taking junior-level anthropology classes as a freshman. She unearthed her first artifact that summer during a UCCS archaeology field school east of Colorado Springs, finding shards of Plains Woodland pottery that dated back about 2,000 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the inside was the maker\u2019s fingerprints, and that was really cool,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t get more individual and personal than someone\u2019s fingerprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a sophomore, Cordova did archaeological work in Belize at a 19th century Maya village with other students and Minette Church, a UCCS associate professor of anthropology. They also worked together at an 1880s Hispanic homestead in southern Colorado.<\/p>\n

Cordova\u2019s first paying archaeology gig was a work-study position for Church, <\/b>analyzing artifacts from the homestead. She was 19.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had 100 questions for her every day. I was doing it all by myself, and there was a big learning curve. The patience she had to have, and it\u2019s not like I was her only student,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of that is not stuff you learn from a book. You have to have that hands-on experience and that personal communication with people who know what they\u2019re doing. I realize how lucky I was to have the opportunities I did as a student.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, Cordova received a bachelor of arts in anthropology, with an emphasis in archaeology. Then she spent about six years in Hawaii cataloging artifacts and consulting with native communities on construction plans affect<\/span>ing their lands.<\/p>\n

She returned to UCCS for graduate school. In 2016, she received a master of arts in applied geography and environmental studies, with an emphasis in archaeology and indigenous<\/span>geographies<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The city of Colorado Springs hired her a month later as its first and only archaeologist, largely to identify archaeology resources at parks and open spaces. She also meets with American Indians regarding their cultural resources in project areas and helps find ways to preserve them.<\/p>\n

\"Cordova<\/a> It\u2019s a rare position in Colorado. The only other municipality that employs an archaeologist is Boulder, according to the state Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.<\/p>\n

Cordova remains heavily involved with UCCS, where her father, step-mother and fianc<\/span>\u00e9 <\/span>work. She\u2019s taught an archaeology field school and visited another one, given guest lectures, invited students to intern with her, and consults with professors.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had the passion right from the start,\u201d said Church, who taught Cordova\u2019s first anthropology classes and became her mentor. \u201cThis community means a lot to her, and she gives back to it in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordova discovered her oldest artifact, a Folsom spear point, in southern Colorado as an undergrad conducting one of her first professional surveys. The spear point dates back at least 8,000 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about doing archaeology in a place that your ancestors have been, some of them for thousands of years\u201d<\/p>\n

Not knowing what she may find next is part of the draw\u2014and she has personal history with Colorado. She\u2019s known since she was a girl that her family has indigenous ties here.<\/p>\n

While working on the homestead as a sophomore, she learned her grandfather\u2019s relatives are related to the family that had lived there. That gave her a tangible connection she hadn\u2019t felt so deeply before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about doing archaeology in a place that your ancestors have been, some of them for thousands of years,\u201d Cordova said. \u201cThat connection, especially to these landscapes, it\u2019s like my 10 times great-grandfather or great-grandmother could\u2019ve seen this exact site, this exact view.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cordova<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Cordova meanders through a field in Colorado Springs, searching for the past. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":34385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,45],"tags":[53,61,107,86,110,111],"class_list":["post-34384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-arts-and-culture","tag-academic-affairs","tag-advancement","tag-alumni-relations","tag-college-of-letters-arts-and-sciences","tag-department-of-anthropology","tag-department-of-geography-and-environmental-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Anna-Cordova-06-title.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-8WA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34384"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138931,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34384\/revisions\/138931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}