Courses

This class will examine how archaeologists know the past, focusing on North and South America. The course is organized by themes including migration (first peopling of the Americas, trans-Atlantic slave trade), early cities (Caral in South America, Teotihuacan in Central America, Cahokia in North America), and the environment (domestication, over hunting). Remember–the past is not something natural and static that waits to be “discovered.” The past changes depending on who gets to tell the story–it is not neutral! Whose past is legitimate? Which voices get heard or ignored? In this course, you will find out!

What do antebellum plantations, Spanish missions, British colonies in Australia, mining camps in Latin America, and Roman estates all have in common? All are examples of unfair/unfree and forced labor in colonial and imperial settings. This class will review archaeological, archival, and ethnographic cases of past coerced and exploitative labor, and compare them with modern cases such as human trafficking, child slavery, bonded labor, and forced marriage. Case studies include the Andes under Inka and Spanish rule, North American and Caribbean plantations, British colonial Australia, and Dutch colonial Asia.

This course offers an experiential approach to crafts, technologies, and other material practices in premodern societies. Through hands-on activities and collaborations with local craftspeople, farmers, and other experts, this course will examine and test a variety of hypotheses about how people in the past lived their lives. How did prehistoric people produce stone tools, pottery, and metal? How did ancient Greeks and Romans feed and clothe themselves? How did medieval Europeans build their homes and bury their dead? Students will answer these questions and more by actively participating in a range of experimental archaeology and experiential history projects. Lab required.

As a field that is truly interdisciplinary, archaeology uses a wide range of methods to study the past. This course provides a hands-on introduction to the entire archaeological process through classroom, field, and laboratory components. Students will participate in background research concerning local places of historical or archaeological interest; landscape surveying and mapping in GIS; excavation; the recording, analysis, and interpretation of artifacts; and the publication of results. This course involves real archaeological fieldwork, and students will have an opportunity to contribute to the history of the local community while learning archaeological methods applicable all over the world.

Archaeological methodology has been changing at a revolutionary pace throughout the last decade. Today old ways of recording and interpreting archaeological data are being replaced by digital and computational methods, and virtual reality has become a key component of archaeological projects and cultural heritage management alike. The main aim of this course is for the student to develop a comprehensive understanding of the new possibilities offered by the most recent tools and methods in analyzing the past, as well as to acquire a practical skill set, which will be useful in both archaeological fieldwork and cultural heritage management projects.

This seminar course will focus on a wide range of contemporary issues in archaeology, including case studies from many continents and time periods that shed light on archaeological theory and practice. Specific course content varies. The course serves as the capstone seminar for the Archaeology Minor; enrollment is also open to non-minors.