41 - 50 of 75 results for: ARCHLGY

Due to the dominance of pottery in the archaeological record for the past 10,000 years, its analysis has attracted a great deal of research attention, making it imperative that all archaeologists have at least a working knowledge of ceramics. This course provides classroom and laboratory perspectives for understanding the information about ancient society, economy, and culture that can be plausibly derived from pottery and the visual, structural, and compositional methods that best help obtain that information.

This course explores many aspects of food in human history from an archaeological perspective. We will discuss how the origins of agriculture helped to transform human society; how food and feasting played a prominent role in the emergence of social hierarchies and the development of civilization; and how various foodways influenced particular cultures. We will also conduct experimental studies to understand how certain methods of food procurement, preparation, and consumption can be recovered archaeologically.

Archaeobotany, also known as paleoethnobotany, is the study of the interrelationships of plants and humans through the archaeological record. Knowledge and understanding of Archaeobotany sufficient to interpret, evaluate, and understand archaeobotanical data. Dominant approaches in the study of archaeobotanical remains: plant macro-remains, pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains in the identification of diet and environmental reconstruction.

Students will open the ¿black box¿ of museums to consider the past and present roles of institutional collections, culminating in a student-curated exhibition. Today, museums assert their relevance as dynamic spaces for debate and learning. Colonialism and restitution, the politics of representation, human/object relationships, and changing frameworks of authority make museum work widely significant and consistently challenging. Through thinking-in-practice, this course reflexively explores ¿museum cultures¿: representations of ¿self¿ and ¿other¿ within museums and institutional cultures of the museum world itself.

Archaeological studies in contemporary East Asia share a common concern, to contribute to building a national narrative and cultural identity. This course focuses on case studies from China, Korea, and Japan, examining the influence of particular social-political contexts, such as nationalism, on the practice of archaeology in modern times.

The post-Soviet story is far from resolved! While national identities and geopolitical alliances are being (re)negotiated across Eurasia, unresolved atrocities continue to reopen old wounds. Within this process the past is skillfully embraced to support and sustain conflicting political discourses. Drawing on a variety of highly topical case studies this course will explore the main dynamics and historically entrenched structures that define how the past plays out in the present since the disintegration of the Soviet Empire.

nnINDEPENDENT STUDY/RESEARCH