Key Pages:
Archaeologies of Place | Home
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Course Description and Objectives
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Course Requirements and Grading
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Weekly Schedule
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Commentaries and Discussion
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Projects
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Resources and Links
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
This wiki is created for the course to be used for discussions, posting of readings, announcements, assignments, and the like. Every student will have access to editing the wiki. Please familiarize yourself with the wiki, and make sure to check the site regularly, at least before each class meeting. You will be asked to post some of your written work on the wiki. All are expected to do weekly readings regularly and comprehensively, and contribute to seminar discussions. Participation, active involvement in the discussions, developing good note-taking habits as well as the contribution to the wiki are the most vital aspects of this course.
Everyone will be occasionally asked to volunteer for short presentations in class on selected case studies of place, to be referred here as "place reports"- this may involve presenting to class specific articles, topics or a specific body of archaeological/textual material. In the first half of the semester, the written tasks will involve a series of brief commentaries and discussion pieces in relation to our theoretical discussions during the seminars. In the second half, students will focus on their research project. There will be no exams. Yay!
Place reports: are designed as exercises on the variety of ways we go about understanding and deciphering everyday spatial practices. How does one go about documenting and representing what a place is all about? These documentary and representational tools may range from archaeological methods of cutting, ethnographic interviews, Geographical Informations Systsems (the infamous GIS- always with capital letters to respect the dignity of "scientific" methods), mapping, sketching, photographing, video-recording, sound-recording but perhaps most importantly verbalizing, describing, visualizing. It will also allow us to think through theoretical problems with real places in mind.
Research project: Every student will choose a place-related research topic in collaboration with Ömür and turn it into a final project. Collaborations with others in the seminar are always encouraged. The project should involve the theoretical concepts/issues relating to place, space, landscape and its application to an archaeological or ethnographic case study, relevant to our seminar discussions. The research project’s presentations will include a 15-20 min class presentation of the project, a 8-10 page draft (to be submitted on the day of the presentation) and a 20-25 page final paper (for graduate students- maybe shorter for undergraduates).
Grading: