The St. Cloud State Archaeology Lab is housed in Stewart Hall on the St. Cloud State University campus in St. Cloud. The lab is directed by Rob Mann, Ph.D., and is comprised of a 1245-square-feet main lab and a 640-square-feed archaeology collections repository. The lab is fully outfitted with standard archaeological field and lab equipment including excavation tools (e.g., shovels, trowels, screens, etc.), digital (Canon S3-IS) and print film (Pentax ZX-M) cameras, copy stands, light tables, and Fisher Scientific stereomicroscopes. More specialized equipment includes a Sokkia 630R reflectorless total station, Carlson Explorer data recorder, Garmin GPS equipment, and long and short-wave ultraviolet fluorescent lights for raw material identification of chipped stone artifacts. The Archaeology Lab currently houses artifact collections from sites in Minnesota as well as a comparative lithic and ceramic collection from various sites throughout North America. The Archaeology Lab and associated collections repository is capable of temporarily housing artifact and faunal collections while objects are being processed during report production. SCSU maintains an active repository agreement with the Minnesota State Historical Society for long term curation of CRM and other archaeological collections.
The Archaeology Lab has both PC and Mac computers that are maintained and updated by SCSU technical support and provide standard desktop publishing capabilities with a color scanner and color laser jet printer. The lab computers also run more specialized applications such as Adobe Acrobat, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), and ArcGIS mapping software. For more complex or especially advanced mapping projects, the Archaeology Lab also has access to the GIS Lab in the Geography Department at SCSU.
The Department of Anthropology also houses a Bioanthropology Lab in Stewart Hall. The Bioanthropology Lab is directed by Matthew Tornow, Ph.D. and is used primarily as a teaching and research facility. The lab houses comparative collections of human skeletal material and a modest faunal skeletal collection. Dr. Tornow regularly teaches a forensic anthropology course at SCSU and occasionally assists local law enforcement in forensic investigations.