Academic Editors: María Cristina Fernández-Laso, Olaia Fontal- Merillas, Alex Ibañez-Etxeberria and Pablo De Castro Martín Received: 27 June 2025 Revised: 11 July 2025 Accepted: 23 July 2025 Published: 15 August 2025 Citation: van den Dries, M.H.; Tomas, F.C.M. Archaeological Field School Training and Student Well- Being: A Case Study from The Netherlands. Heritage 2025, 8, 333. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage 8080333 Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). Article Archaeological Field School Training and Student Well-Being: A Case Study from The Netherlands Monique H. van den Dries 1, * and Femke C. M. Tomas 2 1 Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands 2 School of Business, Building & Technology, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, 7417 DH Deventer, The Netherlands; f.c.m.tomas@saxion.nl * Correspondence: m.h.van.den.dries@arch.leidenuniv.nl Abstract Participating in archaeological activities is considered to have the potential to improve participants’ social and psychological well-being. Through a case study, we investigated whether this would also be the case with students participating in fieldwork for educational purposes. This question was investigated during the 2021 field school in archaeology for first-year undergraduate students at Leiden University. We asked 170 students to complete a mental well-being questionnaire at the start and end of two weeks of archaeological work. This article discusses the results of the quantitative measurements of subjective mental well-being that we gathered during this survey. The questionnaire was based on the well-being umbrella (University College London); it measured six positive and six negative emotions. The measurements show that the students had, on average, a fairly low level of negative emotions and a rather high level of positive emotions at the start. At the end of the field school, the group demonstrated some significant changes in their ratings for both positive emotions and negative emotions, but individual participants did not react similarly. Keywords: archaeological field school; subjective mental well-being measurements; first- year students; positive and negative emotions; COVID-19 pandemic 1. Introduction In the past decade, there has been an increased interest in safety and well-being in student training in archaeological fieldwork contexts (e.g., [1–5]), particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Training excavations are seen as unique educational settings in which student well-being may potentially erode more easily than in traditional classroom environments [2]. Participants—both students and directors—may be exposed to physical labour, outdoor conditions, social relationships, and local living conditions they are unfamiliar with, which may lead to unexpected physical and mental responses and behaviours. Projects obviously differ from one place to another, but fieldwork conditions can be harsh and have even been experienced as creating “an atmosphere where students do not feel safe or empowered to approach field directors when they witness or experience forms of harassment and assault” [5]. Moreover, it is known that ng adults, in particular, who participate in field research face a risk of mental health challenges [6]. By contrast, there is also evidence of well-being improvements among participants in archaeological activities and excavations (e.g., [1,7,8]). Archaeological fieldwork pro- grammes such as Project Nightingale and Waterloo Uncovered demonstrated, for instance, Heritage 2025, 8, 333 https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8080333