By William Lineberry
Honors College

Jenna Hallinger is happiest when she is outside – preferably covered in dirt and digging in a hole.

Hallinger, a Virginia Commonwealth University Honors College student, graduates this spring with a degree in history and anthropology from the College of Humanities and Sciences. Those disciplines reflect her longtime fascination with physical artifacts, and they helped steer her to a professional path – through archaeology – that will let her pursue the past in a modern landscape.

Though Hallinger arrived at VCU with a strong interest in history, it was a course in a related field that helped her truly get her hands around the subject: Introduction to Archaeology, taught by Bernard Means, Ph.D., of the School of World Studies.

“I was just like, this is what I want to do,” Hallinger said. “This is the tactile version of history, and being able to see that as a course-learning thing at first was really cool.”

She also benefited from experiential learning outside the classroom. Through the Federal Work Study program, Hallinger spent a semester as an art conservationist intern with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. She worked as a lab assistant for the conservationist team, receiving items from archaeologists that would be queued for inclusion in the museum.     

“I was able to weigh Roman coins and I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool. These are third-century Roman coins that I am getting to handle,’” Hallinger said. “It let me see tactical and applied history outside of my courses.”

After her VMFA experience, she spent a summer in Romania at an archeological field school. It was there that she took hands-on learning to a new level, participating in actual digs and uncovering artifacts.  

“That’s where I was literally able to get in the dirt,” said Hallinger, who relished “four weeks of digging every day, all day. … One, it’s just so much fun because it’s like a sandbox. And two, anytime I find something I can be like, ‘Whoa – I found that!’ This is history right here in the dirt.”

While exploring and narrowing down her potential career paths, Hallinger was finding another way to spend her time outdoors: serving as a student leader for VCU’s Outdoor Adventure Program, taking groups of students on excursions in and around the Richmond area.

“Being in a leadership role like this and working with large groups of people has really helped me cement my leadership skills and affirm that I want to spend my time working outside,” she said.

After graduation, Hallinger will work as an archaeologist for the Timmons Group in Richmond, an engineering, design and technology company. She hopes to keep unearthing history in responsible ways.

“I want my work going forward to go toward more sustainability in archaeology,” she said. “There is an inherent destructiveness in archaeology, so while doing it, you have to acknowledge that there is destruction that I am causing to the earth right now. But there are other ways to cut down on the impact of that. I want to see how we can lessen that impact and make sure the outdoors remain open and accessible space for people. It is a really big thing for me.”

Hallinger noted that those commitments, with their modern sensibility, are inextricably linked to historic preservation.

“Part of accessibility,” she said, “is people being able to see how that cultural landscape interacts with them – and see how things that come from the earth actually impact them and are part of their past history.”