The list below includes the catalog of all courses ever taught in Archaeology and the Ancient World or in its predecessor, Old World Archaeology. For a listing of courses being offered in the current academic year, please visit "Current Courses". Past courses can be viewed by year, by instructor, or by course title. The alphabetical listing by course title is the fastest way to browse all course websites.
Primarily for Undergraduates
(Jump to For Undergraduates and Graduates or to Primarily for Graduates)
ARCH 0030 Art in Antiquity: An Introduction
What went into the creation of the Parthenon? Who lived in the Tower of Babel? Why do we still care? This course offers an introduction to the art, architecture, and material culture of the ancient world. Things of beauty and of power will be explored, from Egyptian pyramids and Near Eastern palaces, to the 'classical' art of Greece and Rome.
ARCH 0033 Past Forward: Discovering Anthropological Archaeology (ANTH 0500)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0500.
This course offers a broad journey through the human past, from material culture crafted by our evolutionary ancestors to the remnants of the recent historic past. To facilitate this journey, the class explores the methods, concepts, and theories that anthropologists employ in the study of past peoples, places, and things. Case studies stretch across the globe. As a hands-on endeavor, archaeology focuses on tangible evidence. In this course, small-group discussion, laboratory, and field exercises will complement lectures, leading to an understanding of how anthropologists study the past and how that knowledge affects the present.
ARCH 0050 Archaeological Fieldwork
Focuses on the aims, scope, and tools of field archaeology, and the nature of archaeological evidence. Emphasizes interdisciplinary fieldwork techniques and the composition, function, and responsibilities of an excavation staff. Examines systematic versus ad hoc excavations and their respective problems of preservation. Students excavate model sites in a laboratory and present a team report upon completion. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 0100 Field Archaeology in the Ancient World
Always wanted to be Indiana Jones? This course, focusing on the Mediterranean world and its neighbors in antiquity, interprets field archaeology in its broadest sense. In addition to exploring “how to do” archaeology – the techniques of locating, retrieving and analyzing ancient remains – we will consider how the nature of these methodologies affects our understanding of the past.
ARCH 0113 Inequality in the Ancient World (RELS 0021)
Interested students must register for RELS 0021.
This course examines various forms of inequality in the ancient world as well as the range of responses to it by those who resist it and reject it. The axes of inequality we shall investigate vary from culture to culture, but often include the privileging of male/masculine over female/feminine, native over foreign, whole-bodied over “defective” or “blemished,” old over young, ritually pure over polluted, holy over common or profane, rich over poor, free over enslaved, honored over shamed, or the couplings of men and women over same-sex couplings. The course is comparative, with a primary focus on texts and artifacts from ancient Israel and coastal West Asia, Babylon and Assyria, Greece and Rome. Texts we will study include various passages from the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Laws, the Middle Assyrian Laws, the Iliad, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
ARCH 0150 Introduction to Egyptian Archaeology and Art
An introductory survey of the archaeology, art and architecture of ancient Egypt, ranging in time from the prehistoric cultures of the Nile Valley through the period of Roman control. While the course will examine famous features and characters of ancient Egypt (pyramids, mummies, King Tut!), it will also provide a wide-ranging review of the archaeology of this remarkable land.
ARCH 0152 Egyptomania: Mystery of the Sphinx and Other Secrets of Ancient Egypt
The pyramids, tombs, and mummies discovered during the first excavations in Egypt created a colorful but highly romanticized image of this Land of the Pharaohs. More recent archaeological research has unearthed new details about the daily lives of the workers who built those pyramids, or Egypt’s cultural and economic connections throughout the Mediterranean. This course will explore how both early and recent archaeology has enriched our perception of the Gift of the Nile, while still leaving more mysteries yet to solve. FYS.
ARCH 0153 The Pyramids in Context: Archaeology of Life and Religion of Death in Old Kingdom Egypt (EGYT 0500)
Interested students must register for EGYT 0500.
No ancient world monument is more iconic than the Egyptian pyramids of Giza. This course sets out to be a comprehensive analysis of the Old Kingdom (2575-2150 BCE) pyramids and the material, historical and symbolic context that produced them. How and why were the pyramids built? What was inside them? How was everyday life in the pyramid towns? What kind of rituals were performed in their multiple chambers? This course wants to show the real face of the pyramids and the people who worked on and lived by them.
ARCH 0154 Black Pharaohs: Nubian Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt (EGYT 0550)
Interested students must register for EGYT 0550.
This course explores the history of northeastern Africa at a time when ancient Egypt was ruled by its neighbor to the south, Nubia. The Nubian pharaohs from the Kingdom of Kush (present-day Sudan) adopted many Egyptian customs, including hieroglyphic writing, in a period referred to as ancient Egypt’s 25th Dynasty (747–656 BC). Study of this period has suffered from racist and colonialist attitudes towards the Black inhabitants of northeast Africa, ancient and modern, feeding into a racialized modern discourse around the identity and origins of the ancient Egyptians as well. In this course students will: examine recent interpretations of the Nubian dynasty using ancient texts in translation, art, architecture, and artifacts; look critically at modern historians’ blind spots and prejudices; and evaluate the social constructs of race and ethnicity in the study of the great African civilizations of antiquity.
ARCH 0155 'People Without History': Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the Diaspora
Too often 'Western' historical narratives consider Africans and African Diasporans as 'People Without History'. Such a notion also refers to peoples who cultures do not, or possess few formally written histories. This class employs archaeological evidence in order to dismantle the colonial library, exploring local histories that have been erased, silenced and marginalized, investigating histories of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, resistance and black nationalism.
ARCH 0156 Architecture and Urbanism of the African Diaspora (HIAA 0770)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0770.
This lecture course introduces the built environments in and of "Africa," from the earliest known examples to the contemporary moment. Through a consideration of texts and images, we will interrogate "Africa" as both a construct and concrete geographical entity characterized by diverse cultures, contexts, and histories. In addition to exploring the content of various architectural and urban traditions, we will approach our topic from the point of view of the theoretical paradigms that have governed the historiographical interpretation of particular periods, regions, and cultures. Readings will be arranged thematically and according to chronology and geography. Weekly one-hour section required. WRIT
ARCH 0160 Buried History, Hidden Wonders: Discovering East Asian Archaeology
What do Peking Man, human sacrifice, buried armies, lost cities, silk routes and treasure fleets have to do with one another? All are part of the rich and varied legacy of East Asian archaeology, which is today being re-written by spectacular new discoveries little known in the West. Beginning with Asia’s earliest hominid inhabitants, this course will explore the emergence of agriculture, early cities, empires, and world trade, in a colorful palimpsest of archaeological discovery.
ARCH 0161 Arts of Asia (HIAA 0021)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0021.
From sacrificial cauldrons to sunflower seeds, and Roman Buddhas to five-toed dragons, this course introduces the incredible diversity of traditions that collectively constitute the arts of Asia. Organized around a series of case studies of exemplary objects, the course explores the temporal, geographic, material, and thematic range of Asian art through the life stories of individual things. Tracing histories of human ingenuity and value, we will examine the ways these things changed the people who saw them and were themselves changed in the process of being seen. And we will come to know them through the ways they change us. WRIT
ARCH 0162 Introduction to Chinese Art and Culture (HIAA 0040)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0040.
ARCH 0163 Ancient China: Art and Archaeology (HIAA 0110)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0110.
An introduction to Chinese art and culture, focusing on recently excavated evidence of material culture from the Stone Age through the Han Dynasty. Students will learn to use the materials and methods of archaeology, art history, and the history of technology, as well as readings in history, literature, and philosophy to interpret excavated materials. Weekly one-hour conference required.
ARCH 0164 The Art of Enlightenment (HIAA 0022)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0022.
This course surveys the history of Buddhist art-making from the earliest representations of the Buddha to the curatorial practices of modern museums. Ranging from the great mandala of Borobudur in Java to the Zen monasteries of Japan, we will examine the complex ways in which theology and scripture interacted with the particularities of time and place in the long development of Buddhist art. Throughout these inquiries, the sensorial qualities of the art will remain at the forefront of our analysis. Together, we will explore the mechanisms by which artists transformed inert matter into powerful implements of the Buddhist dharma. WRIT
ARCH 0167 Mountains and Waters: A History of Chinese Landscape Painting (HIAA 0422)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0422.
For more than a millennium, painters and poets across East Asia have acclaimed soaring peaks astride expansive rivers as the most sublime of all subjects. Often termed “landscape” in modern English, these images of “mountains and waters” (shanshui) offer fascinating insights into the ways in which what we now call “the environment” was conceptualized in premodern East Asia. This course examines these celebrated monuments of East Asian painting as ecological entities, investigating their relationships with the human and nonhuman beings that participated in their reproduction, and interrogating the moral implications of their enduring appeal.
ARCH 0172 South Asian Art and Architecture (HIAA 0023)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0023.
This course is an introduction to South Asian Art & Architecture, from 2500 BCE until the present, and to Southeast Asian Arts connected to them through religion, trade, or conquest. We will explore a range of media—including architecture, painting, sculpture, textiles, and photography—to ask critical questions about the nature of images and their relationship to emotions, the environment, devotion, politics, performance, and other art forms, like literature, music, and dance. The course will include regular visits to the RISD museum (A)
ARCH 0200 Sport in the Ancient Greek World
Athletics and sports were as popular and significant in the ancient Greek world as they are today, and so offer an excellent introduction to its archaeology and history. This class will discuss the development of Greek athletics, the nature of individual events, the social implications of athletic professionalism, women and athletics, and the role of sport in Greek education.
ARCH 0201 Sport in the Ancient Greek World (CLAS 0210 O)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0210O.
Athletics and sports were as popular and significant in the ancient Greek world as they are today, and so offer an excellent introduction to its archaeology and history. This class will discuss the development of Greek athletics, the nature of individual events, the social implications of athletic professionalism, women and athletics, and the role of sport in Greek education.
ARCH 0201L Who Owns the Classical Past? (CLAS 0210 L)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0210 L.
This course offers a forum for informed discussion of a variety of difficult questions about access to the classical past, and its modern-day ownership and presentation, seen primarily from the perspective of material culture (archaeology, art, museum displays, etc.). Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS.
ARCH 0203 Who Owns the Past? (ANTH 0066D)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0066D.
Examines the role of the past in the present. Using examples from the U.S. and other parts of the world, we will look at how archaeological evidence is implicated in contemporary cultural and political issues. Students will learn that the past is not just the focus of archaeologists' interest and scientific inquiries, but is also a subject romanticized by antiquarians, mobilized in nation-building, marketed for profit, re-enacted as entertainment, consumed by tourists, and glorified in commemoration. Understanding these different and competing valuations, claims, and uses of the archaeological past will provide an introduction to why the past matters in the present and to the future. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS.
ARCH 0204 Museums: The Display of Culture (HIAA 0014)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0014.
In museums and exhibitions, what is chosen for display and how those materials are presented to the public are acts with powerful political and ideological resonances. Major museums are showcases in which nations model their own images and their relationships with the wider world. At the same time, the institutional display of “other” cultures can often tell us as much about the society that frames and consumes the display as it reveals about the culture that is being displayed. This course will investigate some of the most potent presentations of both “self” and “other” in the history of museums and exhibitions and will engage with questions of colonialism and cultural capital, nation-building and self-identity, and the ethnographic and artistic categorization of global cultures.
ARCH 0207 Curators, Hoarders, and Looters: The Long and Curious History of Collecting (HIST 0150K)
Interested students must register for HIST 0150K.
What does it mean to collect? What drives human cultures to amass, hoard, steal, select, separate and display objects? This undergraduate lecture course – at the intersection of anthropology, geography, history, and museum studies – examines forms and practices of collecting from antiquity to the present. We will explore museums, archives, libraries, and other less formal institutions from around the globe, probing in the process the disciplinary boundaries by which scholars have sought to understand the implications of collections in different times and distant territories. We will unpack libraries, visit early modern cabinets of curiosities, and gain insights into Indigenous collections: from Polynesia to Mashantucket. And we will address the fraught yet fascinating relationship between the collection, the catalogue, and the archive – and the gathering, registering, and organizing that constitute them.
ARCH 0220 Fake! History of the Inauthentic
What is a fake? Who gets to decide what is authentic? Greek statues, Chinese bronzes, Maya glyphs. Have fraudulent objects always existed? Galileo’s signature, a centaur’s skeleton, Buddhas bearing swastikas. Are all fakes the same? If not, how are they different? Why do people make forgeries? This course revolves around the history of the inauthentic through a diachronic exploration of objects. WRIT. FYS.
ARCH 0221 Fake: A History of the Inauthentic (HMAN 0900B)
Interested students must register for HMAN 0900B.
What is a fake? Are “fake” and “authentic” absolute and antithetical categories? Who gets to decide what is authentic? Greek statues, Chinese bronzes, Maya glyphs—what gets faked and why? Have fakes always existed? Galileo’s moons, a centaur’s skeleton, Buddhas bearing swastikas—are all fakes the same? If not, how are they different? Why do people make fakes? Who wins? Who loses? This course revolves around the history of the inauthentic through a diachronic exploration of art objects and other forms of material culture. We will range widely in time and space, focusing primarily on the pre-modern. FYS
ARCH 0230 Myriad Mediterraneans: Archaeology, Representation and Decolonization
As debates rage about the Classical roots of Western society, the ancient Mediterranean itself is largely overlooked and continues to be seen in stereotypes. Because the ancient Mediterranean was not just white, male and colonizing, this course will explore the extensive archaeological evidence for cultural, gender, ethnic, economic and other forms of diversity during the first millennium BCE. Can archaeology contribute to current debates about decolonization? Conversely, can contemporary debates about indigenous ways of being shine a fresh light on ancient evidence? FYS.
ARCH 0250 Intimate Stories
Images tell stories that carry us to imaginary worlds other than our own. An arresting story in pictures engages us deeply, opening the doors of fantastic places and times. In antiquity many architectural monuments displayed pictorial narratives that animated public spaces and enthralled broad audiences. This course explores cultural aspects of visual narrative imagery from Western Asian and Mediterranean worlds.
ARCH 0251 Intimate Stories: Narrative in Ancient Visual Culture (ASYR 0400)
Interested students must register for ASYR 0400.
Images tell stories that carry us to imaginary worlds. A story in pictures engages us deeply, opening the doors of fantastic places and times. In antiquity public monuments displayed visual narratives that animated public spaces, enthralled audiences and delivered state ideologies. This course involves reading narrative imagery from the Middle East and East Mediterranean including magical hunt scenes in prehistoric caves, political tales on Mesopotamian relief sculpture, visions of paradise in Egyptian tombs, Aegean frescoes and Assyrian reliefs of exotic landscapes. Using contemporary perspectives on art, we will explore the material power and everyday significance of pictorial representations as intimate spectacles. FYS. WRIT.
ARCH 0253 Monsters & Demons at the Dawn of Civilization (ASYR 0350)
Interested students must register for ASYR 0350.
What exactly do monsters do for us? Why do we create, deploy, and ultimately destroy them? What might they tell us about the peoples among whom they sprang up and roamed? This first year seminar explores the rise of monsters in the visual and literary arts of the first cities in human history, and their development alongside the growing urbanization of the ancient Near East.
ARCH 0255 Monsters
This course probes the origins and histories of creatures such as dragons, centaurs, griffins, sirens, and werewolves, using textual and material evidence drawn primarily from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. We survey the cultural domains in which these and similar monstrous creatures held sway and reflect about their impact on ancient (and modern) ideas about “nature”, “race”, “gender”, “identity”, and what it means to be “human”.
ARCH 0260 Stealing History: Looting, Treasure Hunting and Other Bad Things
How do people get away with it? Who do we blame for it? How do we punish it? "It" is the archaeologists' worst nightmare: looting, treasure hunting, and the other bad things that can happen to the archaeological record - a finite and exhaustible resource. This seminar will consider how objects are looted, sold, and collected, and what mechanisms - legal, moral, military - can be used to prevent such destructive activities.
ARCH 0270 Troy Rocks! Archaeology of an Epic
What do Brad Pitt, Julius Caesar, Dante, Alexander the Great, and countless sports teams have in common? The Trojan War! This course will explore the Trojan War not only through the archaeology, art, and mythology of the Greeks and Romans but also through the popular imaginings of cultures ever since, to figure out what "really" happened when Helen ran off and Achilles got angry and the Greeks came bearing gifts.
ARCH 0293 Postcolonial Matters: Material Culture between Colonialism and Globalization (ANTH 0066T)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0066T.
This course is about things - 'stuff' - as it is about people past and present and their entanglements in and through colonial situations. It explores colonialism past and present through the combined lenses of postcolonial theory and material culture - the emphasis is thus not so much on literary and figurative representations of colonial conflicts and engagements but rather on the material surroundings of people living those colonial worlds. In other words, this course is about what people did and about the things they used to construct their daily lives in colonial situations across the globe and through time. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS
ARCH 0295 Artifacts in Archaeology: Understanding Material Culture and Ancient Technologies
The manufacture of artifacts distinguishes us from all other species. However, archaeologists often struggle with interpreting material culture. This course will use case-studies to examine the artifacts that archaeologists most commonly recover: lithics, pottery and metallurgy, as well as glass, wood and bone. Students will consider the importance of archaeological material culture and the technological processes that produce these artifacts in aiding us to comprehend our human past.
ARCH 0297 Material Culture: Material Nature
Each week this course explores a moment in the human experience: childhood and coming of age, marriage and divorce, home-making and transience, grief, death, and burial. In thinking about the material culture of past societies, we will challenge archaeological concepts of acculturation and cultural appropriation. And, in examining our own everyday objects we will contemplate how style impacts identity - or vice versa. Why do you love your phone? We are living in a material world (Madonna, 1984).
ARCH 0300 13 Things
The course will explore a range of approaches -- material culture studies, science studies, design studies, consumption studies, the sociology of technology, archaeology, phenomenology -- in dealing with 13 things: the wheel, a Neolithic Megalith, an Ancient Greek perfume jar, the castle of Acrocorinth in Greece, a Moroccan watermill, a map, the pocket watch, barbed wire, the light bulb, a surgical blade, the portable radio, a Leica IIIc 35mm camera, and the personal computer. Returning to the etymology of a thing, the course argues that things are best conceived as gatherings of achievements that are neither wholly exclusive to any single era nor any immediate set of relations.
ARCH 0302 Object Histories: The Material Culture of Early America (HIST 0550A)
Interested students must register for HIST 0550A.
History is not just about people; it is also about things! Come explore the world of early America through the lens of objects--boats, dresses, plows, houses, wagons, watches, silver cups, wigs, blankets, land, gardens, hammers, desks--and the cultures that produced and consumed them. As a first year seminar, this course is designed to engagingly introduce students to the basic concepts of historical study. We will take several field trips to local historical sites, both on and off campus. Our primary focus will be specific objects and their contexts and histories. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS WRIT P
ARCH 0303 Tiny: Miniature Might and Meaning
Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, Easter Island heads—colossal artifacts are immediately recognizable as embodiments of power; the diminutive—though less theorized among archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians—is just as potent and alluring. Even across vast stretches of space and time, tiny things enchant and incite wonder. A microscopic Bible, a Renaissance micro-mosaic, a sculpture of hell complete with sinners carved out of a human tooth. This course is a cross-cultural exploration of the power of the miniature, the undersized, the teeny-weeny.
ARCH 0305 Glass from the Past: Glimpses into the History, Technology, and Artistry of Molten Material Culture
Glass is unquestionably a fundamental part of modern life, but what is the story of glass and what makes it special? We will trace the 5000-year history of glass, from its discovery in the third millennium BC to its mass production in the 19th-20th centuries, exploring themes like technology, innovation, and craft. Archaeological and art historical evidence will be combined with anthropological and ethnographic approaches, including discussions with artisans, museum visits, observing glassblowers in action.
ARCH 0307 Gold: The Culture of a “Barbarous Relic” (ANTH 0250)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0250.
An object of obsession for millennia, gold has recently witnessed a polarizing cultural politics. In congressional testimony former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke labeled it a “barbarous relic.” Meanwhile a growing minority clamor for a return to the gold standard. Whether among medieval alchemists or modern financial wizards, whether in the eyes of Egyptian Pharaohs or Indian peasants, gold’s special qualities have shaped cultural practice. This course explores the shiny yellow metal’s cultural history, from its emergence as an object of desire, to the contemporary rejection of its role as the store of wealth resulting in its demotion to just another commodity.
ARCH 0309 Human Evolution (ANTH 0310)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0310.
Examination of theory and evidence on human evolution in the past, present and future. Topics include evolution and adaptation, biocultural adaptation, fossil evidence, behavioral evolution in primates, human genetic variation and contemporary human biological variation.
ARCH 0310 Interactions with the Dead: Past and Present
Eventually, face it, you are going to die. Death is an inevitable, and an inescapable component of life. There are, however, certain moments that bring the living closer to the dead, which this course will explore by analyzing interactions between the dead and the living in a range of contexts -- including religious, cultural, commercial, legal, and ethical. We will survey the diversity of human reactions to death and dead bodies by considering examples from the ancient and modern world.
ARCH 0311 Death and the Afterlife in the Ancient World (RELS 0750)
Interested students must register for RELS 0750.
This course focuses on the evolution of beliefs and rituals related to death in and around the Roman Empire, including Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern cultures. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we combine methodologies from Anthropology, Classics, and Religious Studies. Topics include myths of the afterlife; books of the dead, magic, and death rituals; divinization, heaven, hell, and Last Judgment; and the impact of Christianization on Roman understandings of death.
ARCH 0312 History of Medicine I: Medical Traditions in the Old World Before 1700 (HIST 0286A)
Interested students must register for HIST 0286A.
People have always attempted to promote health and prolong life, and to ameliorate bodily suffering. Those living in parts of Eurasia also developed textual traditions that, together with material remains, allow historians to explore their medical practices and explanations, including changes in their traditions, sometimes caused by interactions with other peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. We'll introduce students to major medical traditions of the Old World to 1700, with emphasis on Europe, and explore some reasons for change. A knowledge of languages and the social and natural sciences is welcome not required. P WRIT
ARCH 0313 Sacred Bodies (RELS 0420)
Interested students must register for RELS 0420.
How did ancient Christians understand physical holiness? What did the bodies of saints demonstrate or reveal? How was bodily sanctity represented in actual practices, and in literary, artistic, or ritual expressions? We will consider three broad categories of saints: desert heroes, holy women, and virtuosos (pillar saints, holy fools).
ARCH 0315 Heritage In and Out of Context
We understand the past in part through a complex blend of artifacts, monuments, and landscapes. Yet each of these categories poses major issues regarding their preservation, conservation and curation, and how we use them to educate and to indoctrinate. This course will not preach any specific line, but encourage students to debate these highly complicated issues. Case studies will include the international diaspora of antiquities from the Enlightenment to the present, the impact of war and revolution, and numerous aspects of museum practice.
ARCH 0317 Heritage in the Metropolis: Remembering and Preserving the Urban Past
Urban heritage – from archaeological sites and historic architecture to longstanding cultural practices – is increasingly threatened by the exponential growth of cities around the globe. Most critically, the complex histories and lived experiences of the diverse communities who have inhabited and shaped cities are often in danger of being erased and forgotten today. This course examines how we might remember and preserve this urban past – and the tangible sites and artifacts that attest to it – in light of the social and political dynamics of cities in the present.
ARCH 0320 Somewhere Back in Time: Archaeology, the Ancient World, and Heavy Metal Music
Iron Maiden’s “Alexander the Great”, Ex Deo’s “The Rise of Hannibal”, Septic Flesh’s “Prometheus” – few musical genres are as interested in history as heavy metal. The sounds, lyrics, images, films, and live performances of many bands from around the world center on stories and mythologies from past cultures. This class examines these phenomena from an archaeological and historical point of view, centering discussion on the music and its stories while contextualizing these modern elements within an archaeologically and historically accurate past.
Previously offered: ARCH 0320 Media in Archaeology, or Archaeology in Media?
Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, the Discovery Channel: media has, to an unprecedented degree, shaped public perceptions of the discipline of archaeology, its practices and its values. This course will build critical awareness of how the media uses archaeology and how archaeologists use the media, for good and ill. Students will create digital narratives from their own research, and become competent ambassadors for presenting archaeological research and work in a scientific and engaging way.
ARCH 0325 "Dead White Guys": Greco-Roman Civilization and American Identity
Why does classical antiquity matter? How did a group defined as white and European come to represent America's ancestors? And by emphasizing this "heritage," who do we exclude? This course looks at film, popular non-fiction, education policy, public art, architecture, and archaeology, to understand how the myth of Greco-Roman origins was adopted by America's founders, and how this affects issues of race and belonging today.
ARCH 0328 Visual Culture of Medieval Women (HIAA 0430)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0430.
The course considers the visual and material culture of women in the Middle Ages. We will examine women as the commissioners, creators and subjects of medieval art, architecture and popular culture. Case studies will be drawn from across medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Islam. Classes will consider: gendered and feminist perspectives in medieval history, art history and archaeology; the imaging of women in medieval art; archaeological approaches to gender and the analysis of gendered spaces; the art and architecture of female spirituality; and the representation of identity through the body and clothing.
ARCH 0330 Archaeology Under the Volcano
The volcano has come to represent a modern western conception of wild nature -- unpredictable and dangerous, ‘red in tooth and claw’ -- in authors from Byron to Freud, Derrida to Dickens. Archaeologists have brought similar attitudes to the study of volcanic eruptions such as Vesuvius and Thera in the Mediterranean world, and Xitle and Popocatepetal in Mexico. This course will begin with these literary and archaeological interpretations of volcanoes, then explore other non-western and indigenous perspectives. Our deeply embedded assumption of a sharp divide between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ will be explored and questioned.
ARCH 0332 Classic Mayan Civilization (ANTH 0520)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0520.
Examines the history, culture, and society of the Classic Maya, with special emphasis on Preclassic precursors, dynasties, environmental adaptation, imagery, architecture, urban form, and the Maya Collapse.
ARCH 0334 Introduction to South American Archaeology (ANTH 0505)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0505.
The course examines the development of human cultures in South America, from the first Ice Age settlers to the arrival of the Spanish. Drawing on archaeological and historical evidence, it covers the complex civilizations of the Andex, including the Moche and Tiwanaku polities and the expansionist Inca empire. It also explores the archaeology of foraging societies throughout the continent and of sedentary societies in the Amazon region and northern South America whose complexity has only recently begun to be understood. The course concludes with a study of the Spanish Conquest and the transformation of indigenous societies during the Colonial period.
ARCH 0335 Archaeology of the Andes
This course provides a survey of the archaeology of the Andean region of South America (parts of modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina). From the arrival of the first Americans to the transformation of indigenous societies under Spanish rule, the course will introduce vital 'new World' civilizations such as the Moche and Inka. The course will also explore the politics and practice of archaeological research in the region today.
ARCH 0338 An Archaeology of Native American Art (ANTH 0066U)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0066U.
This seminar is an introduction to the art and material culture of the indigenous peoples of North America. The regional coverage includes the continental United States and Canada, focusing on the peoples of Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, Plains, Pacific Northwest, and the Arctic and Subarctic. Topics addressed include art and artifact, function and symbol, innovation and tradition, and museums and representational practices, ethics and repatriation. Special attention will be given to the changing relations between museums and contemporary Native peoples. The seminar will make extensive use of the archaeological and ethnographic collections of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. FYS
ARCH 0340 Bad Things: Archaeologies of New World Vices
Drinking, smoking, prostitution, gambling, chocolate, and witchcraft – this may sound like a lot of fun, but are these bad things? Since the first European contact in the Americas, colonists were introduced to new substances, practices, and worldviews and brought their own vices to new territories. This course will use material culture to analyze the everyday lives of these New World inhabitants who were so good at being bad – and we will discuss how colonial discourse and histories affect our lives today.
ARCH 0351 Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Interested students must register for ASYR 0800.
This course offers an introduction to the study of the political, social and cultural history of the ancient Near East, from prehistory to the end of the Iron age (ca. 330 BC). Both literary sources and archaeological evidence are examined as relevant. Near East is understood here in its widest geographic extent, including primarily the Mesopotamian lowlands, Iranian and Syro-Anatolian highlands, as well as the Levantine coast. The course not only offers a foundational survey of the historical developments in the region, but also addresses the broader methodological and historiographic problems involved in Near Eastern studies. State formation and the development of complex societies, cult practices and cuneiform literary traditions, art, architecture and material culture, issues of landscape and settlement systems, agricultural production, regional and interregional trade, and craft production will constitute the central issues in the course. WRIT
ARCH 0353 Thunder-gods and Dragon-slayers: Mythology + Cultural Contact - Ancient Mediterranean and Near East (ASYR 0310)
Interested students must register for ASYR 0310.
This course is an exploration of the mythological imagination in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. From cosmic origins to epic battles, mighty queens to baneful monsters, mythological motives and narratives crisscrossed the ancient world, bypassing seemingly rigid geographic and cultural boundaries. Particular attention will be devoted to the study of the dynamic reinterpretation of myths in situations of cultural contact. Primary evidence will include material from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Greece and Rome. The course will span several millennia, from the earliest attestations of the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Christian and Muslim reinterpretation of so-called pagan myths. FYS.
ARCH 0360 East Meets West: Archaeology of Anatolia
The crossroads between East and West in the ancient Mediterranean, Anatolia (modern Turkey) gave rise to the great Hittite Empire, the legendary kings Croesus and Midas, and was the scene of battles between Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks for world supremacy. In this course, we survey the archaeological history of human settlement in Anatolia from the Ice Age to the Middle Ages, tracing changes in art, economy, landscape, and religion.
ARCH 0365 Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul: A City in Deep Time
Istanbul is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world, and the only city straddling two continents. It lies on either bank of the Bosphorus, which has been for millennia a bustling maritime thoroughfare. From a boat on the strait one can see not only rising skyscrapers, but also minarets and church-domes, colossal suspension bridges and ancient city walls. This course will explore the rich and turbulent history and archaeology of this enchanting city from the Neolithic to the present. It will offer an in-depth look at urban topography and a survey of the vibrant literature written about Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul. WRIT.
ARCH 0370 Archaeology of Mesopotamia (Classics 1170)
A cultural and historical survey of Mesopotamia, tracing its origins and developments from prehistory to 6th-century Babylon. Both archaeological sites and literature are examined, as are works of art and sources for social and political history. Prerequisite: AE 3 or equivalent background in archaeology.
ARCH 0372 Sex, Power, Goddess: Imagining the World of Ancient Iraq
Ancient Mesopotamians feared and respected the warlike goddess Ishtar – but how did this translate into attitudes about gender, sexuality, and power in their culture, religion, politics, and daily lives? This class will introduce students to the venerated and significant remains of this lost world, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Cyrus Cylinder. Through these archaeological finds, we will explore thousands of years of Iraq’s culture, power relations, religion, and science, and we will discuss how our own experiences color our understanding of their world.
ARCH 0380 Archaeology of Iran (Anthropology 38)
An archaeological survey of the origins and development of the Iranian civilizations. Analysis of settlements, history, art, architecture, and characteristics of specific archaeological sites and their artifacts ranging from prehistoric to the Hellenistic period.
ARCH 0382 Pre-Islamic Empires of Iran (HIAA 0031)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0031.
Introduction to art and architecture of the Ancient Near Eastern empires that flourished between the 6th century BCE and the Islamic conquests of c. 630 CE. We will consider the material culture of the Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians, and Sasanians, empires that inhabited primarily the areas of Mesopotamia and the Persian plateau, but spread at times as far afield as the Mediterranean coast, Egypt, the Caucasus, and the Indus Valley. Lectures will prioritize close analysis of the most illuminating art and architecture, so that you leave the course knowing not only the material evidence but also current approaches to interpreting it. WRIT
ARCH 0390 Archaeology of Palestine (Anthropology 49)
Traces the prehistory of Palestine (modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan) from its beginnings in the Paleolithic to the end of the Byzantine period. Surveys history of archaeological research in this area, emphasizing significant excavations and their artifacts. Develops an understanding of the art, architecture, and modes of life of humankind from age to age, the changes introduced from one period to another, and causes and effects of those changes.
ARCH 0396 Ancient Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques (JUDS 0050P)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0050P.
In this seminar we will examine the architecture and art of synagogues, churches, and mosques from antiquity through the present. We will learn how different building traditions evolved over time, and how sacred spaces reflect beliefs and practices of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Of interest will be both unique regional and chronological trends—characteristics that are indicative of a specific religious community—but also the parallels and shared features common to all Abrahamic religions. Special attention will be given to questions of gendered space and the role of patriarchy and women’s agency in shaping religious architectures.
ARCH 0398 Arts of the Sacred and the Demonic in the Ancient Mediterranean (RELS 0405)
Interested students must register for RELS 0405.
From rural temple to urban shrine, to elegant synagogue or village church, from household prayer nook to adorned tomb, people in the ancient world honored, encountered, and experienced their gods. They practiced a piety in which human flourishing depended on gestures, rituals, and built articulations of devotion mediated by beauty. But holy powers could also be malevolent, so ancient art served to protect, warn, or ward off evil spirits. This course will explore the art, architecture, and material cultures of ancient Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians between the 6th century BCE and the 6th century CE. We will consider a wide variety of evidence, including texts, sculpture, frescoes, mosaics, architecture, and domestic artifacts, to explore the many ways in which these distinct but connected communities expressed their beliefs through visual representations and material practices.
ARCH 0400 City and Sanctuary in the Ancient World
Examines the physical dimensions of the ancient city and the ancient sanctuary through archaeological evidence with special attention to aesthetic planning, urban planning and management, and the concept of public monumental art as developed in the ancient world.
ARCH 0401 Introduction to Medieval Art and Architecture (HIAA 0140)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0140.
A comparative examination of the three artistic cultures of the medieval Mediterranean: Islam, the Byzantine empire, and the predominantly Christian regions of western Europe. Medieval Jewish art is also treated. Topics include medieval attitudes toward the use of images, the architecture of worship (churches, synagogues, and mosques), royal and domestic art, and instances of contact among all three cultures. Weekly one-hour conference required.
ARCH 0402 Muslims, Jews and Christians in Medieval Iberia (HIAA 0460)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0460.
The cultural diversity of medieval Spain and Portugal is proclaimed by their Christian churches, Islamic mosques and Jewish synagogues. The three distinct cultures that produced these buildings lived together for centuries in medieval Iberia, sometimes in peace, sometimes not. For almost eight centuries (711-1492) writers, scholars and artists emerged from a cultural environment of intellectual borrowing nurtured by uninterrupted contact through marriage, conversion, commerce and travel. This convivencia of Jews, Muslims and Christians will be examined from the perspectives of literature, music, art, architecture, archaeology, and history. WRIT
ARCH 0403 Gothic Art and Architecture (HIAA 0440)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0440.
Examines Gothic art and architecture to explore its sources and "invention" in mid-12th-century France and to trace its varied manifestations in European art to the 16th century. Special attention is given to cathedral architecture and decoration. Weekly one-hour conference required.
ARCH 0404 Cathedrals and Castles (HIAA 0420)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0420.
The course aims to engage critically with the major architectural features of the medieval world: the cathedral and the castle. In addition to examining specific buildings as case studies, we will also interrogate the cultural context and the material culture associated with the construction, use and meanings of these important spaces. The course is arranged thematically rather than chronologically.
ARCH 0405 State of Siege! Walls and Fortifications in the Greek and Roman World
Warfare was endemic in the ancient world, and walls were therefore ubiquitous. This course will examine the most spectacular fortifications of the Graeco-Roman world, from Bronze Age citadels in Greece to the Roman frontiers. We will learn how to build walls and fortresses, how to defend them, and how to breach them by studying some of the best walls and famous sieges of Antiquity.
ARCH 0407 Hadrian’s Wall. Archaeological Skills, Methods, and History on the Northern Roman Frontier
Explore the archaeology of one of Great Britain’s grandest monuments, Hadrian’s Wall, from the beginning of the fortification in 122AD to the present. Students will learn the basics of archaeological excavation, survey, and illustration, through hands-on, in-class labs – to understand the real, tangible ways archaeology can teach us about religion, race, the military, politics, architecture, and the everyday lives of people in Roman Britain. Note: this course can fulfill the archaeological methodology (field archaeology) requirement for Archaeology concentrators.
ARCH 0410 Mediterranean Bronze Age
Snake goddesses and bull leaping, labyrinths and gold masks, Linear B and Homeric heroes: these are only some of the most famous things about the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of Bronze Age Crete and Greece. This class will also explore questions about the historicity of the Trojan War, trade and exchange; ritual landscapes; the origins of writing; death and burial; the eruption of the Theran volcano; and the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces.
ARCH 0412 From Gilgamesh to Hector: Heroes of the Bronze Age
Swift-footed Achilles, god-like Hektor, and Gilgamesh the tall, magnificent, and terrible! They are heroes of the Bronze Age, which produced the world’s first cities, empires, and texts. This class explores the concept of “hero” by placing it within its eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age context, using archaeological evidence alongside contemporary and later textual evidence.
ARCH 0415 Of Chiefs, Princesses and Warriors: Exploring Different Iron Ages
This course is about the Mediterranean Iron Age. It examines indigenous communities of the first millennium BC in order to assess critically conventional and often stereotypical representations of Iron Age societies. Themes to be explored include the ever increasing social complexity of chiefdoms and states, princessly burials and warriors, and urban settlements and monumental architecture that allegedly mark the transfer of 'civilization' from East to West.
ARCH 0420 Archaeologies of the Greek Past
From Bronze Age palaces to the Acropolis in Athens and on the trail of Alexander the Great, this course explores the ancient Greek world through archaeology—using art, architecture, and everyday objects to learn about ancient Greek society, from the mysterious to the mundane. It also considers how we experience ancient Greece today, including questions about archaeological practice, the antiquities trade, and cultural heritage. WRIT.
ARCH 0421 Hellenistic Art (HIAA 0330)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0330.
ARCH 0423 Monuments and Monsters: Greek Literature and Archaeology (COLT 0811H)
Interested students must register for COLT 0811H.
ARCH 0424 Greek Mythology (CLAS 0900)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0900.
“What of these things goes now without disaster?” -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
This course is an introduction to Ancient Greek mythological traditions. Topics include: the Olympian gods; ‘culture heroes’ (e.g. Heracles), Homer and the Trojan Cycle of myths; mythical traditions about the families of Oedipus and Agamemnon; etc. We will conclude with an investigation of ancient mythical scholarship and skeptical views of myth in antiquity. Throughout we will be considering myth’s relationship with literature, visual culture, and religion. The class focuses on the ancient material (texts, images, monuments, rituals and traditions, etc.), with some secondary readings in mythological and cultural theory.
ARCH 0425 The Agora: History at the Heart of Athens
Part city hall, part church, part mall, part stadium, part law court, part red light district, the Agora of ancient Athens has seen it all, from Neolithic to modern times. This "marketplace" is most famous for its Classical history, when figures such as Pericles, Socrates, and Demosthenes walked and talked there. This course, however, will consider the long life and impact of this civic space, including its ongoing and often problematic archaeological heritage.
ARCH 0428 War and Society: A Legacy of Ancient Greece? (CLAS 0650)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0650.
21st century society can no longer study the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome acritically. Today’s culture can be very accepting about the “culture of war” that was such a dominant aspect of the apogee of ancient Greek ‘civilization’: the 300 Spartans, the Athenian Empire, and the conquest of Persia, are all moments to which some turn in admiration. The exploitation of the martial culture today is a two-edged sword at least. This course explores the legacy of war, and violence, and its impact on our view of “civilization.” We will look at the key topics including Homer and warfare, Sparta, Persia, Athens’ Empire, Philip II and Alexander, violence in the Greek city, martial culture, exploitation, memory, and of course the 21st century legacy.
ARCH 0440 Archaeologies of the Ancient "Middle East"
To understand the tensions of the modern Middle East, it is necessary to understand the region's past. This course will explore the archaeological history of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, not least the political and religious agendas that scholars brought to the study of these lands. Prehistoric and early historic developments will be emphasized: the earliest human occupation, the “Neolithic Revolution”, and the rise of social inequality and political complexity.
ARCH 0445 Archaeology of the Bible
If all the places where text and material culture meet, the intersection of the Bible and the archaeology of the Holy Land is among the richest, and the most fraught. This class will explore the agreements, tensions and controversies between these two sources of evidence, from the early days of ‘biblical archaeology’ to the present.
ARCH 0446 War and Peace in the Hebrew Bible and its Environment (JUDS 0670)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0670.
An examination of the role of war and peace in the Hebrew Bible and in texts and art of ancient Israel’s neighbors. Topics include divine beings, war and peace-making; peace treaties; explaining defeat and victory; ideologies of warfare; the treatment of prisoners, corpses and captured bones; the warrior as masculine ideal; civil war and coups; treaty obligations; ritual dimensions of war and peace (e.g., mourning, animal sacrifice, child sacrifice, divination, memorializing war); visual representations of war as propaganda; the idea of a future, eschatological war between the forces of good and the forces of evil. No prerequisites.
ARCH 0450 Archaeology of Jerusalem (JUDS 0045)
Examines the archaeology of the city of Jerusalem from David’s conquest in ca. 1000 B.C.E. through the Crusaders’ defeat in 1187 A.D. The contemporary literary sources, as well as the more recent scholarly debates and discoveries, help us understand the material remains of the relevant periods.
ARCH 0451 Jewish Art and Architecture from Antiquity to Modernity (JUDS 0080)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0080.
ARCH 0475 Petra: Ancient Wonder, Modern Challenge
The rose-red city of Petra in southern Jordan is a movie star (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). It is a tourist mega-hit (over half a million visitors annually). It was recently voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. This class will explore the history and archaeology of Petra and debate how best to present and preserve the site, as well as discussing (and planning!) Brown's ongoing fieldwork at this beautiful, but fragile, place.
ARCH 0520 Roman Archaeology and Art
Anyone who has ever watched “Gladiator”, “Spartacus”, “Life of Brian”, or “Bugs Bunny: Roman Legion Hare” has some image of Rome, the Romans and their empire. This course, while exploring and assessing these influential popular preconceptions, introduces a more balanced view of Roman archaeology and art, examining not only the “eternal city” of Rome, but its vast and diverse imperial domain.
ARCH 0521 Roman Art and Architecture: Hadrian to Late Antiquity (HIAA 0380)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0380.
This course examines the surviving environments and artifacts created to suit Roman tastes in the high and late empires. It also provides an introduction to the relationship between Roman art and the art of emerging Christianity. Beginning with a study of Roman art in the high empire, and ending with its demise of Rome as a capital in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., the course focuses on an especially creative and complex period in Roman visual, cultural and religious history.
ARCH 0522 Roman Art and Architecture: Spectacles and Entertainment (HIAA 0320)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0320.
Spectacles offered the Romans innumerable opportunities for self-definition, on the individual level, the community level, and even the imperial level. Performance art cuts across traditional boundaries between media, and we will examine total ensembles as often as possible. Topics will include the amphitheater and the circus, representations of gladiators and charioteers, the architecture of propaganda and theater, and the triumph of victorious individuals as well as its opposite, the literal defacement of imperial portraits. Domestic spectacles will also be considered, including pleasure boats and vacation homes, dining rooms, gardens and sculpture collections.
ARCH 0523 Roman Art and Architecture: Julius Caeser to Hadrian (HIAA 0340)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0340.
An introduction to the major monuments in Roman art at the point when the Empire emerged up to the time of the creation of the Pantheon. No prior background required.
ARCH 0524 Art and Architecture of the Roman Empire (HIAA 0032)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0032.
How did a small city in central Italy grow to become one of the most powerful empires in history? This course explores the art and architecture produced in ancient Rome from its origins in the 6th century BCE to the fourth century CE. It considers a wide variety of media, including reliefs, freestanding sculpture, architectural monuments, mosaics, wall paintings, and daily-life objets. By exploring the role of art and architecture in the formation and expansion of the Empire, considering the experiences of ancient viewers, the course offers a post-colonial reading of ancient Roman history and culture. (A)
ARCH 0525 The Other Side of Rome: Daily Life in the Roman Empire
What did the Romans ever do for us? Toilets, bars, firefighters, and dry cleaning, to name just a few things. Surprisingly, daily life in the Roman empire was not too different from our own. This course will examine numerous aspects of Roman life – including housing, street life, shopping, military, sanitation, and even sex – largely from the perspective of the archaeological evidence, especially from some of the best preserved cities, Rome and Pompeii.
ARCH 0526 Behind Closed Doors? The Archaeology of Domestic Life in the Roman World
This course explores the archaeological remains of domestic life across the Roman world from Pompeii to Britain to Syria and attempts to reconstruct the private lives of Romans, particularly the women, children, servants and slaves who were less visible in more public spheres. We will consider the methodological complexities of interpreting artefact assemblages and reflect on our own houses and notions of private lives both as sources of inspiration and stumbling blocks for understanding Roman domestic life as we open doors and re-people Roman houses.
ARCH 0528 Living on the Edge: Communities of the Roman Frontier
The Roman Empire was surrounded by over 3,100 miles of frontier that marked the end of Roman territory. These regions are often discussed solely from a military standpoint, but soldiers were only a small part of a much larger frontier community that included women and children, locals and foreigners, and Romans and non-Romans. This course explores how these communities, often marked by asymmetrical power relationships between the Roman State and local communities, developed, investigating social structures, religion, art and architecture, and economies in order to understand what it was like to live on the edge of the Roman world.
ARCH 0529 Swords, Sandals, and Saunas: The Roman Army in War and Peace
The Roman legionary is often seen as synonymous with the power of the Roman Empire: heavily armored, spear and shield in hand, marching unrelentingly forward against enemies. But the military was more than a menacing State institution, and this class shifts the focus to the lives of the men who filled the ranks, exploring their languages, religions, clothing, equipment, and fighting styles. We will draw upon evidence of all sorts, including archaeological material from fortifications and battlefields, inscriptions on tombstones and other monuments, and iconographic depictions.
ARCH 0530 Hannibal ad Portas! Fact and Fiction on Carthage and the Punic World
"Hannibal stands at the gates": Roman parents would terrify their children with these words. And many others have been haunted by Hannibal Barca: the Carthaginian general still fascinates the European imagination, not least his epic trek over the Alps with three dozen elephants. This course explores fact and fiction about Hannibal and his world, holding up historical and mythical records against hard archaeological evidence.
ARCH 0535 Labor and Technology in the Roman World
Recent television programs like the History Channel's Engineering an Empire depict the Romans as geniuses pursuing a "remarkably advanced" lifestyle, but who were the people behind these technological accomplishments and what were the implications for the average Roman? This course investigates the implications of Roman technology on daily life and labor. Topics include transportation and trade, agriculture, crafts production, mining, sanitation, and warfare. We will also explore issues concerning ancient and modern perspectives on Roman technology and labor. WRIT.
ARCH 0537 Making and Unmaking Rome: The Impact of Empire and Its Aftermath
The Romans built a world of their own: they constructed infrastructure that spanned the empire, built cities, roads, aqueducts, and monuments in deserts and forests alike, and even reshaped the natural environment itself -- often at great cost. By looking at the impact of this imperial project on the built environment and the natural world, this course highlights the costs of building an empire and the aftermath it leaves behind. We will learn about how these features were built, what they became after the fall of the empire, how they changed the world for the better...or worse.
ARCH 0540 Art, Archaeology and Civic Life from the End of the Republic through the Early Empire, 40 BCE-140 CE
This survey course will familiarize students with the art, architecture and literature of Rome during the early Imperial era (ca. 40 BC - AD 140), through investigation of significant sites, monuments and museum collections in Rome and southern Italy.
ARCH 0542 The Visual Culture of Early Modern Rome (HIAA 0560)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0560.
ARCH 0550 Late Roman and Early Christian Art and Architecture
An introduction to the relationship between Roman art and the art of emerging Christianity. The course begins with the Pantheon and ends with the Hagia Sophia.
ARCH 0563 Toward a Global Late Antiquity: 200-800 CE (HIAA 0321)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0321.
Competing empires, the division of the eastern and western halves of Roman territory; long distance trade, the rise of monotheism, the spread of Buddhism: how did these factors affect the art and architecture associated with the Roman west, Constantinople, Ctesiphon, Alexandria, the Han Dynasty capitals, and Gandhara? This course takes an expanded view of Late Antiquity, extending beyond typical that associate the period with the post-classical west, to explore the dynamic creativity and intercultural connectivity of an era once considered a "Dark Age" in a world history. WRIT
ARCH 0600 Introduction to Islamic Archaeology
Muslim societies are built upon a rich archaeological heritage of architecture, artifacts, and sites that stretches more than a millennium and spans a region from Spain to China. This course explores that heritage across time and space for what it can tell us about the various societies that make up the Muslim world of the past. Through examination of various sites as well as hands-on work with a collection of artifacts, this course examines the social worlds of this important religious and cultural tradition.
ARCH 0643 The Architectures of Islam (HIAA 0041)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0041.
Through selected case study examples, the course examines the varied manifestations of Islamic architectures. The course spans fourteen centuries and three continents, and examines religious as well as secular buildings. We will trace the sources and 'invention' of Islamic architecture in the Umayyad dynasty of the seventh and eighth centuries, and will explore its varied manifestations up to the contemporary period. By examining cross-cultural and trans-regional interactions, we will also investigate the relationship between Islamic and non-Islamic architectural traditions. A WRIT
ARCH 0650 Islamic Civilizations
This introduction to ancient Islamic civilization will examine the interrelationship between the Islamic religion and development of Islamic culture. Students will use archaeology, political events, Islamic visual arts, and socioeconomic changes to explore the evolution and institutionalization of Islam, as well as looking at changing political and cultural attitudes and social structure.
ARCH 666 Cult Archaeology: Fantastic Frauds and Meaningful Myths of the Past
The pyramids and Stonehenge built by aliens? The power of the Mummy’s Curse? These myths couldn’t be true… or could they? Cult Archaeology examines popular and fantastic interpretations of archaeological remains presented in the press and popular media. This course finds the logical flaws in pseudoscientific explanations and the biases that underlie them. Discover the “truth” about archaeology!
ARCH 0676 Pirates of the Caribbean: Scalawags, Sailors, and Slaves
Avast ye maties! Study the legendary bandits, mischievous scalawags, and barbarous buccaneers that roved the high seas of the Caribbean from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Through archaeological and historical scholarship, we will explore pirates’ everyday belongings, the goods they plundered, the hideaways they called home, the havoc they caused, and the legends they left behind -- including Blackbeard, Captain Morgan, and even Captain Jack Sparrow. We will also investigate the economics behind the rise of piracy, with an emphasis on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
ARCH 0677 Pirates! Archaeologies of Piracy in the Atlantic World (ANTH 0515)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0515.
The figure of the pirate is an all-time favorite in Western imagination. It has inspired some of the most popular narratives of the past, solidly grounded in classic literature and contemporary visual culture. Focusing on the mid-17th century, the golden age of piracy in the Atlantic World, this course will use historical and archaeological date to investigate the way in which the image of the pirate has been constructed in the West, as an embodiment of cultural, legal, moral and sexual transgression, and as an object of both fascination and fear which is still current in the contemporary, global world.
ARCH 0678 Underwater in the Mediterranean: An Introduction to Maritime Archaeology
Shipwrecks, sunken cargoes, coastal ports: all contribute to our understanding of the maritime world of the past, not least that of the Mediterranean Sea. This course will explore the Mediterranean’s ancient seafaring heritage over time, in particular by studying ancient ships and harbors as remarkable examples of social and technological innovation and enterprise. The methodological challenges faced by archaeologists working on underwater and coastal ‘sites’ will also be examined.
ARCH 0679 The Ocean in Global History (HIST 0150J)
Interested students must register for HIST 0150J
This course plumbs the depths of the ocean's past to investigate how the planetary hydrosphere and its creatures have imprinted themselves upon the social, political, and cultural character of diverse human communities as sources of sustenance and power, cosmology and knowledge, conveyance and death. Topics to be considered include Austronesian seafaring traditions in the ancient Indo-Pacific; maritime empires, piracy and human trafficking in the age of sail; industrial fisheries and the establishment of oceanography as a scholarly discipline; and the political ecology of a warming ocean in the era of climate crisis.
ARCH 0680 Water, Culture, & Power
Water is the source of life. In the midst of global climate change, environmental crises over water resources, and increasingly ubiquitous political debates over water, we are beginning to recognize humans' complete dependence on water. This course investigates our long-term attachment and engagement with water using archaeology, environmental history, and visual, literary and historical sources. From sacred spaces around springs to ancient cities by the sea, we will explore the cultural and political aspects of water beginning with the Last Ice Age and ending with late antiquity.
ARCH 0682 Powering the Past: Environmental Histories of Energy Use and Social Change (ENVS 0710)
Interested students must register for ENVS 0710.
From wood, water, and muscles, to coal, oil, and nuclear power, humans have a long history of reshaping their environments to access energy. The nature of these energy sources also influences the form and distribution of political and economic power. Using environmental history methods, this course examines the ties between energy, power, environmental change, and inequality, from before the agricultural revolution to the present. Readings and lectures link the United States and Europe to the rest of the globe, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each class combines lecture and discussion. No prerequisites.
ARCH 0683 From Fire Wielders to Empire Builders: Human Impact on the Global Environment before 1492 (HIST 0270A)
Interested students must register for HIST 0270A.
This is a new lecture course intended to introduce the field of environmental history to students with no previous experience in it. The study of prehistoric, ancient and medieval environments is a heavily interdisciplinary research field, and the course will emphasize the variety of sources available for studying it. We will combine textbook readings with primary source readings from scientific and archaeological reports and, especially, contemporary texts.
ARCH 0717 Architecture of the House Through Space and Time (HIAA 0081)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0081.
This undergraduate lecture course focuses on one building type, the house, through time in Mesopotamia, China, Japan, the Islamic world, the African diaspora, India, Britain, Rhode Island, and Germany and France. Houses can be minute or monumental, vernacular or high art, provide minimal shelter or afford the material and psychic satisfaction of home. By studying houses, we can bypass some of architectural history’s biases, and explore some of the major debates in the discipline: What is architecture? Who determines what is included/excluded in this category? And on what basis do they make these claims? WRIT A
ARCH 0720 Pilgrimage and Travel in the Ancient World
From Canterbury to Mecca, Rome to Lake Titicaca, throughout history people have traveled far and wide, often under difficult conditions, to visit sacred places. But who were these people, where and why did they go, and how did they get there? This course will explore the practice and pragmatics of pilgrimage, relying on material and literary evidence from modern and ancient case studies around the world. WRIT.
ARCH 0725 Great Migrations: Mobility, Displacement and Material Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean
Migrations are the stuff that (pre)history was made of. This course will track some of the largest and most momentous displacements and movements around the Mediterranean, from earliest prehistory to the Middle Ages. Not all migrations consisted of marauding hordes, so this course will run the gamut from pastoral mobility to island colonization.
ARCH 0730 The Secrets of Ancient Bones: Discovering Ancient DNA
New analyses of ancient DNA preserved for millennia in bones and soils have revolutionized the field of archaeology. Suddenly, archaeologists have gained new insight into human origins and migrations, diseases, agriculture, and even the slave trade. Recent genetic case studies will provide a lens for learning about the archaeology of diverse world regions and time periods, from Oceania to Mesoamerica and from the Paleolithic through recent history. Topics will include: genetic relationships between humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans; the peopling of the globe; diasporas; extinction and de-extinction; and plant and animal domestication.
ARCH 0740 Revolutions & Evolution in Archaeology
Humankind has had a revolutionary past -- or so archaeology would lead us to believe. The earliest evidence for language, ritual, and the arts -- dating back to the extinction of the Neanderthals -- is branded the "Human Revolution". The time when hunter-gatherers became farmers is known as the "Neolithic Revolution". And when they started living in cities, it was hailed as the "Urban Revolution". This course will explore the historical reasons for labeling "revolutions" in the literature, and consider these revolutions as gradual processes (evolution). WRIT.
ARCH 0750 Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Women represent half of humanity, but they have been greatly underrepresented in studies of past cultures. This course examines not only what women of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome actually did and did not do, but also how they were perceived in society. Focusing on material and visual cultures, but also incorporating historical and literary evidence, we will investigate the complexities of women’s lives in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as the roots of modern conceptions and perceptions of women.
ARCH 0755 Engineering and Technology in the Ancient World
Enter the world of Greek and Roman engineers whose monumental works and technologies impressed audiences, both ancient and modern. Explore the technologies of art and construction that led to some of the most extensive building programs undertaken by pre-modern states. Through case studies ranging from particular structural elements and technologies (e.g. columns, domes, cranes, catapults) to overall structural systems (palatial complexes, temples, infrastructure), this class investigates the history of materials, methods, and knowledge behind ancient innovations, and the role of art, architecture, and engineering in shaping socio-cultural and political identity.
ARCH 0760 Palaces: Built to Impress
Ancient palaces capture the imagination as grand, breathtaking manifestations of power and wealth. These were the residences of kings, queens, and courtiers, built to impress with their echoing halls, exquisite paintings and statuary, fragrant gardens, and sumptuous reception rooms. This course explores the palaces of ancient Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Greece, and beyond, delving into how these monumental structures manipulated the senses, the body, behavior, and the mind. We also visit “palaces” in and around Providence, exploring firsthand how such architecture is designed to inspire awe, respect, and subservience.
ARCH 0763 The Private Life of the Privy: A Secret History of Toilets
It’s usually unspoken, but we all know the truth: everybody poops. This class starts with some basic questions: what is poo; what are toilets, cesspits, and latrines; and how have these changed over time. But where we go, what "equipment" we use, what goes into the loo, and the morals and ideals imbued in that act vary vastly between cultures – touching on complex questions of gender, religion, disease, technology, and science. Combining advanced scientific approaches with material and cultural analyses, this course will demonstrate that even a seemingly simple biological act can reveal a culture’s most fundamental secrets.
ARCH 0770 Food and Drink in Classical Antiquity
Everybody eats - but patterns of eating (and drinking) vary dramatically from culture to culture. This course traces the mechanics of food production and consumption in the ancient Mediterranean world, considers how diet marked symbolic boundaries and gender differences, and in general explores the extent to which the ancient Greeks and Romans "were what they ate."
ARCH 0771 An Anthropology of Food (ANTH 0680)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0680.
An exploration of the human experience of food and nutrition from evolutionary, archaeological, and cross-cultural perspectives. The course will review the various approaches employed by anthropologists and archaeologists to understand diet and subsistence in the past and present. Starting with the evolutionary roots of the human diet in Plio-Pleistocene Africa, we will trace patterns of human subsistence to the present, including the social and health implications of the agricultural revolution. We will then explore modern foodways in cross-cultural perspective, focusing on the interplay of ecology, politics, technology, and cultural beliefs.
ARCH 0772 Food and Art in the Early Modern World (HIAA 0063)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0063.
“Taste” is the sensory perception of flavor and the act of judging aesthetic quality. This class asks how the taste for food and for art relate in the early modern world. From the movement of spices, scents, chocolate, and sugar to the vessels that were invented to contain them, we will investigate the trade and circulation of foods and objects across the globe. We will then turn to cities that flourished in the wake of such consumption and their rituals of feasting and fasting. Finally, we will consider the transmission of knowledge about food and eating through recipes, culinary ephemera, a set table, and dinner parties.
ARCH 0775 Farm to Table: Foodways and Gastro-Politics in the Ancient Near East
This course provides an introduction to the culture, economy, and politics of food in the ancient Near East. We will not only investigate the day-to-day mechanics of food production, cooking, and consumption; we will also develop an appreciation for changing food fashions, for the etiquette of eating and drinking, and for the complex world of gastro-politics. We will even explore the ancient kitchen using our own hands, mouths, and stomachs as a guide.
ARCH 0785 Of Dice and Men: Games in Human Societies Past and Present
From ancient dice games, marathons, and gladiator battles to virtual worldbuilding and mobile phone games, students in this course will explore the roles of competition and play in cultures. But, equally importantly, students will play games! We will consider games through the lenses of anthropology, archaeology, psychology, and philosophy. And by playing games, both ancient and modern, students will question how games are a distinctly human phenomenon and play essential parts in human lives, in ways that are not entirely obvious or expected.
ARCH 0800 Alexander the Great and the Alexander Tradition
This course focuses on a single historical figure, Alexander the Great, using him as a point of departure for exploring a wide range of problems and approaches that typify the field of Classical Studies. How knowledge of Alexander has been used and abused provides a fascinating case study in the formation and continuous reinterpretation of the western Classical tradition.
ARCH 0801 Alexander the Great and the Alexander Tradition (CLAS 0810A)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0810A.
This course focuses on a single historical figure, Alexander the Great, using him as a point of departure for exploring a wide range of problems and approaches that typify the field of Classical Studies. How knowledge of Alexander has been used and abused provides a fascinating case study in the formation and continuous reinterpretation of the western Classical tradition.
For Undergraduates and Graduates
(Jump to Primarily for Undergraduates and Graduates or to Primarily for Graduates)
ARCH 1010 Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets
Admit it -- you wanted to be an archaeologist when you grew up... This course builds on that enthusiasm, while radically expanding your notions about just what archaeology is and just what archaeologists do. This class is a hands-on introduction to the often-fraught process of doing archaeology, and a hands-on collaborative workshop to develop one of Brown's three pilot on-line classes for Coursera, offered free to the world in summer 2013.
ARCH 1025 Greece-Egypt-Anatolia-Mesopotamia: Transcultural Interactions in the Ancient World
The ancient Mediterranean and Near East were intensely interconnected: myth, art, materials, technologies, and political institutions flowed between Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Greece, and beyond. For as long as those flows have existed, there have also been complex and protracted reflections about their directions, causes, and consequences. This class takes a long-term, cross-cultural perspective to study both ancient (e.g, Herodotus, Manetho, Berossus) and modern discourses (e.g., Bernal, Burkert, Broodbank) about the dynamics of such transcultural interactions and the changing political stakes of the debate.
ARCH 1049 Settler-Colonial Placemaking: From Vikings to the Homestead Act (HIAA 1626)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1626.
The term “settler colonialism” has become popular in recent years to define a spatialized structure of inequality between settler societies and Indigenous peoples. What exactly defines a “settler” in this context? What motivates the movement of people to “new” lands? What forms of violence do settlers enact on Indigenous land? And how has the contemporary landscape been shaped by settlement? To answer these questions, this course examines material and ideological transformations of space, architecture, infrastructure, and landscape that comprise the built environments of European settlements in the North Atlantic World. How might Colonial homesteads, plantations, fields and fences, mines and factories, mills and suburbs, capitals and museums, pipelines and railroads be considered built environments of settler colonialism and capitalism? How do these places come about, and what kinds of relations do they attempt to impose on Indigenous land?
ARCH 1050 Old World and New World Perspectives in Archaeology
This course examines how archaeologists working on different sides of the world study the past. Archaeology in the Old World and New World has developed on parallel, but separate trajectories. While these approaches share methods and theories, they often interpret archaeological data in contradictory or alienating ways. In this course we will view archaeological topics from both perspectives, using examples from the Mediterranean and Mesoamerica, to try to better understand, and perhaps bridge the gap between some of our differences. Prerequisite: An introductory course in archaeology, either through the Joukowsky Institute or the Anthropology Department.
ARCH 1051 Archaeology of Settler Colonialism (ANTH 1622)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1622.
The course uses settler colonialism as a framework for understanding how European colonists attempted to displace and eliminate Indigenous peoples beginning in the 15th century and its historical implications for structural inequalities of race and gender. We will look at how settler colonialism is different from colonialism, and more importantly, at resistances challenging its ambitions. Case studies from North America mostly, but also Australia, South Africa, and other settler colonial societies will focus on historical archaeology’s contributions to illuminating settler colonialist strategies for establishing and maintaining settler sovereignty in light of concerns for decolonizing archaeological practices. We will give special attention to the insights gained about the experiences of dispossessed, enslaved, and marginalized peoples and their descendants, and the many ways their actions critiqued settler colonialism and imagined different futures.
ARCH 1052 Global Historical Archaeology (ANTH 1620)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1620.
The course examines historical archaeology as a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the historic past. Draws in recent research from different parts of the world, including North America, South Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, and South America, to illustrate historical archaeology's contributions to interpreting peoples' everyday lives and the diversity of their experiences in the post-1500 era.
ARCH 1053 Global Origins of Plant and Animal Domestication (ANTH 1670)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1670.
A seminar providing the basic information on the prehistory of the Circum Artic of Northern Fenno Scandinavia, Russia, and North America. Not open to first year students.
ARCH 1054 Indians, Colonists, and Africans in New England (ANTH 1624)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1624.
The course explores the colonial and capitalist transformation of New England's social and cultural landscapes following European contact. Using archaeology as critical evidence, we will examine claims about conquest, Indian Extinction, and class, gender and race relations by studying the daily lives and interactions of the area's diverse Native American, African American, and European peoples.
ARCH 1056 Indigenous Archaeologies (ANTH 1125)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1125.
This course is an introduction to Indigenous archaeology, sometimes defined as archaeology "by, for and with Indigenous peoples." These approaches combine the study of the past with contemporary social justice concerns. However, they are more than this. In addition to seeking to make archaeology more inclusive of and responsible to Indigenous peoples, they seek to contribute a more accurate understanding of archaeological record. They thus do not reject science, but attempt to broaden it through a consideration of Indigenous epistemologies. This course covers topics as the history of anthropological archaeology, Indigenous knowledge and science, decolonizing methodologies, representational practices and NAGPRA.
ARCH 1057 Southwestern Archaeology (ANTH 1692)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1692.
This course is an introduction to the archaeology of the native peoples of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. It discusses the history of the field and examines how it is currently re-engaging with contemporary native peoples. It emphasizes past and present cultural diversity and traces out long-term continuities in beliefs and practices. Special attention is given to comparing and contrasting three formative cultural systems - Chaco, Hohokam, and Paquimé - that linked the Southwest into a series of broad social, political, and ideological networks. Students will be introduced to the Southwestern collections of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
ARCH 1100 Archaeology in the Age of Augustus
Rome's first Emperor, Gaius Octavian Augustus, ruled an empire stretching from Spain to Syria, from Britain to Egypt. Students will explore the social, artistic, and political successes and failures of this "golden age" of Rome's past. The course will assess a broad range of topics -- such as the creation of empire, art as propaganda, or the role of women -- within the context of Augustan ideology and history.
ARCH 1101 Age of Augustus: Topography, Architecture, and Politics (CLAS 1120T)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120T.
Augustus Caesar boasted that he had found Rome a city in brick, but left it in marble. This course explores the transformation of Rome from an unadorned village to the capital of an empire. Was Rome's first emperor trying to fashion himself a Hellenistic monarch on the model of Alexander and his successors? Was he simply operating within republican traditions, which had been established through centuries of aristocratic competition at Rome? Our source materials will include ancient works of art and architecture, literary accounts, maps, and critical urban theory.
ARCH 1105 The Face of Power: Representing Roman Emperors
The infallible Augustus; Nero fiddling as Rome burns; Constantine the Christian emperor: the roster of Roman rulers includes some of ancient history’s most beloved and notorious characters. Meet the men (and women!) who ran the Roman state, discover how art and architecture were used to craft a public impression of imperial power, and learn how material and literary sources have shaped emperors’ post-classical reputations. This course will give special attention to how emperors attempted to appeal to diverse factions at home, while ensuring their power was legible to enemy competitors abroad.
ARCH 1107 Spectacle! Games, Gladiators, Performance, and Ceremony in the Roman World (HIAA 1304)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1304.
Theaters, amphitheaters, baths, circuses, and imperial residences pepper the former territory of the Roman Empire. Modern films conjure the fantastic, yet ephemeral, events of days long past, amplifying the fascination of these ubiquitous ruins. For the Romans, however, spectacle was not only about fun and games. What really took place in these spaces, and why? Learn to separate fact from fiction as we consider artistic, architectural, and archaeological evidence to understand how and why spectacles were fundamental to Roman daily life. WRIT
ARCH 1108 Politics and Spectacle in the Arts of Ancient Rome (HIAA 1307)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1307.
This seminar investigates the intersection of politics and spectacles in the artistic production of ancient Rome. We will explore a variety of public monuments to reveal how they codify essential aspects of Roman culture. Topics include the architecture of entertainment spaces such as theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses, as well as the social functions of spectacles such as gladiatorial games and triumphal processions. We will look at expressions of imperial propaganda in monuments such as tombs and honorific arches. The class also considers how these ideas entered the private realm in the form of domestic wall paintings, mosaics, and sculpture gardens. A
ARCH 1109 Games and Spectacles of Ancient Greece and Rome (CLAS 1120N)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120N.
Will examine games and spectacles of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, from the early Olympic contests to the popular chariot races of late antiquity. By using a variety of sources, including archaeological evidence, we will explore not only the historical development of sports in the classical world, but also its ongoing political, social and cultural importance. By seeking to understand both participants and spectators, we also hope to connect the significance of games to other facets of Greco-Roman society, including women and religion. We will not only discuss the limitations of the primary sources, but also make relevant comparisons to the role of sports in contemporary society.
ARCH 1120 Pompeii
Pompeii is a dead city. Or is it? This course will explore what we can learn from Pompeii, and the neighboring communities also destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. We will look at art, architecture (public and domestic), and all the many remains of ‘daily life’ so uniquely preserved in these buried, but not forgotten, places.
ARCH 1120L Archaeology of Feasting (CLAS 1120L)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120L.
ARCH 1121 Pompeii: Art, Architecture, and Archaeology in the Lost City (HIAA 1303)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1303.
Buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, Pompeii stands as a time capsule of city life in the Roman Empire of the 1st century. Exploring the city’s grand public baths, theaters, and amphitheaters, its seedy bars and businesses, its temples for Roman and foreign gods, and its lavishly decorated townhomes and villas, this seminar will reconstruct a panoramic view of Roman daily life and consider the Vesuvian region’s modern reception since its rediscovery in the 18th century. WRIT
ARCH 1122 Pompeii: Life and Death in the Shadow of Vesuvius (CLAS 1750S)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1750S.
On a late August(?) day in 79 CE, hot ash and lightning rained down on the cities southeast of Vesuvius for more than 12 hours before waves of rock and gases, traveling well over 100 mph, flattened everything in their path. The volcanic eruption was cataclysmic. Death was violent. Whole cities were engulfed, buried, and lost—until the mid-18th century. This course explores the daily life and sudden death of Pompeii and its residents. Topics may include decorative arts, housing, urban design and planning, water management, diet and physical health (using osteology), political life (using graffiti), religion, and urban prostitution.
ARCH 1125 Building an Empire: The Sacred and Civic Architecture of Ancient Rome
The Colosseum, Pantheon, and imperial palaces loom large in our impression of Roman civilization. Roman architecture set the standard for some of the most iconic buildings in the West. This course will examine the rise and development of Roman architectural principles and analyze how they were employed to create such a lasting image of empire. We will consider technological advancements and territorial expansion, as well as the shifting political and religious dynamics that shaped Rome’s buildings.
ARCH 1127 Arts of Memory in Ancient Rome (HIAA 1308)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1308.
In ancient Rome, art and architecture were important vehicles for preserving memories, both individual and collective. Works of art such as reliefs, stelae, paintings, and monumental tombs, perpetuated the memory of historical events and honored the legacies of notable individuals. This seminar will explore the multiple forms of commemoration in ancient Roman art and architecture, considering a variety of media including burials and cenotaphs, triumphal arches, honorific columns and statues, among others. We will analyze the monuments built by and for members of the Roman elite, as well as private memorials dedicated by ordinary citizens.
ARCH 1128 The Long Fall of the Roman Empire (HIST 1205)
Interested students must register for HIST 1205.
Once thought of as the "Dark Ages," this period of western European history should instead be seen as a fascinating time in which late Roman culture fused with that of the Germanic tribes, a mixture tempered by a new religion, Christianity. Issues of particular concern include the symbolic construction of political authority, the role of religion, the nature of social loyalties, and gender roles.
ARCH 1130 A Burglar's Guide to Rome
The Roman city, epitome of order or a burglar’s delight? On the surface we see grid-planned cities with demarcated city centers governed by endless rules: who was allowed in a space, what time one could use the baths, drive down main streets, and on and on. What if we take a different view? This course explores Roman cities through the eyes of those who broke the rules and lived off the grid. From sneaking in to steal a trinket to sacking an entire city, the burglars of the ancient world show how cities functioned and where they broke down.
ARCH 1140 The Death of the Ancient City? Roman Cities After the Fall of Rome
As in our own increasingly urban-based world, cities were the engines driving the political and economic success of the Roman empire. But what happened to such places after the empire disintegrated and "fell"? This course will explore the varied fate of Roman cities in Late Antiquity (4th-7th centuries C.E.), a period witnessing numerous changes — from political fragmentation and "barbarian" invasion to "Christianization" — that directly impacted both the roles of cities and the organization of urban space.
ARCH 1143 Experiencing the Roman Empire: Life in the Roman Provinces (CLAS 1120P)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120P.
This course explores the experiences of people living in the Roman Empire through archaeological and textual evidence, seeking to understand how Roman imperialism shaped the daily life of its residents, from Spain to Mesopotamia and from Scotland to Egypt. We will address themes such as imperialism, identity, globalization, and Romanization as we investigate provincial urbanism, economies, rural settlements, the military, art, and religion from a number of different case studies in order to understand how the Roman Empire both shaped and was shaped by those living within its territory.
ARCH 1144 Provincial Perspectives: Peopling the Roman Empire (CLAS 1331)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1331.
This course explores the experiences of people living in the Roman Empire through archaeological and textual evidence, seeking to understand how Roman imperialism shaped the daily life of its residents, from Spain to Mesopotamia and from Scotland to Egypt. We will address themes such as imperialism, identity, globalization, and Romanization as we investigate provincial urbanism, economies, rural settlements, the military, art, and religion from a number of different case studies in order to understand how the Roman Empire both shaped and was shaped by those living within its territory.
ARCH 1150 Cities and Urban Space in the Ancient World
This course investigates ancient cities from a comparative perspective. Using contemporary approaches to cities and the production of urban space, we will explore the cities of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire with comparisons drawn from regions such as Mesoamerica and China. How were the cities planned in the past and their monumental architecture shaped? How did urban landscapes become layered over time and saturated with shared cultural memories? Enrollment limited to 20. WRIT.
ARCH 1151 Provisioning Cities
Urbanism goes hand-in-hand with increased population and demand for provisions, so how did cities feed their residents? This course explores subsistence strategies used by residents of ancient urban areas through case studies that span the Old and New Worlds. We explore topics such as sustainable food raising, the role of markets in cities, water management, trash disposal, cuisine as environmental adaptation, and diet as identity. We will also investigate cities as multispecies biomes, in which urban dwellers shared their space with the animals and plants that eventually landed on their plates.
ARCH 1152 Bandits and Barbarians: Exploring Subaltern Resilience and State Power (ANTH 1145)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1145.
In the imaginations of ancient Greeks and Romans, the urban centers of ‘civilization’ were surrounded by wild lands where barbarians roamed. Even now, mountains, marshes, forests, and deserts are the realms of bandits, primitive tribes, warlords, and terrorists. From ‘shepherd-bandits’ in highland Sardinia and ‘red-faced Gauls’ in Roman France to ‘marginal tribes’ in the Kabyle mountains and the ‘wild people’ of the Ethiopian borderlands, this course explores peripheral lands through time and across the globe. We will critically examine such stereotypical representations, to understand how their inhabitants carved out their own spaces in the interstices of ancient and modern states.
ARCH 1153 Cities by the Sea: An Economic, Structural, and Social Examination of Mediterranean Ports
Athens, Alexandria, Carthage, Ostia. Ports circled the ancient Mediterranean, and the sea infused these cities’ hierarchies, structures, and daily patterns. This course will analyze the architecture and economy of key harbor cities of the Roman Empire by discussing their genesis or antecedents, their dynamics, and their role in the imperial era. To contextualize urban maritime landscapes across both time and space, we will consider issues pertaining to urbanism, trade, production, infrastructure, epigraphy, and iconography. Students will evaluate the traditional “port model” and other theoretical approaches, to reach a more complex understanding of these cities by the sea.
ARCH 1155 Cities, Colonies and Global Networks in the Western Mediterranean
How did cities develop? This course will explore the connections between colonialism and urbanism In the West Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE. Should we see the profound changes in Iron Age societies of the western Mediterranean primarily as a response to external contacts and colonial interference or did they represent long-term indigenous developments? How can we understand regions, where urban development was much more limited or absent?
ARCH 1160 The World of Museums: Logistics, Laws, and Loans
This course will examine critically the collection of ancient objects. Through functional, historical, material and aesthetic lenses an analysis of the relationships between the cultural contexts of objects will be examined. Case studies, guest lectures and site visits (virtual and real) will be used to demonstrate evolving theory, practice, law and ethical implications of collecting archaeological objects.
ARCH 1161 Museum Collecting and Collections (PHUM 1904U-S02)
Interested students must register for PHUM 1904U-S02.
This course will examine critically the collection of ancient objects. Through functional, historical, material and aesthetic lenses an analysis of the relationships between the cultural contexts of objects will be examined. Case studies, guest lectures and site visits (virtual and real) will be used to demonstrate evolving theory, practice, law and ethical implications of collecting archaeological objects.
ARCH 1162 Anthropology in/of the Museum (ANTH 1901)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1901.
This course will provide an introduction to the history, purposes, transformations, and internal workings of museums from an anthropological perspective. Students will learn about museums that focus on natural and cultural history related to anthropological studies of archaeology, human evolution, and world ethnography. It will cover the relevance of anthropological training to careers in the museum field, as well as the importance of conducting anthropological investigations in the museum environment. Enrollment limited to 20.
ARCH 1163 The Art of Curating (MCM 1700R)
Interested students must register for MCM 1700R.
It is sometimes said in contemporary art circles that curators are the new artists. Curating involves a wide range of activities, including research, selection, commissioning, collaboration with artists, presentation, interpretation, and critical writing. This production seminar considers curatorial practice as a form of cultural production, paying particular attention to questions of audience, ethical responsibility, and institutional context. Students give presentations, develop exhibition proposals, and curate exhibitions. Visiting curators present case-studies on recent projects. Readings include Douglas Crimp, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Nicholas Bourriaud. Enrollment limited to 40.
ARCH 1164 Methods in Public Humanities (AMCV 1550)
Interested students must register for AMCV 1550.
A survey of the skills required for public humanities work. Presentations from local and national practitioners in a diverse range of public humanities topics: historic preservation, oral history, exhibition development, archival and curatorial skills, radio and television documentaries, public art, local history, and more. Enrollment limited to 50.
ARCH 1167 Museum Histories (AMCV 1903I)
Interested students must register for AMCV 1903I.
Museums collect and display art and artifacts not only to preserve culture heritage, but also to educate, engage, and entertain. This course examines the history of museums– of art, history, anthropology, natural history, science and technology– to understand their changing goals and their changing place in American society. It also considers the changes within museums, in the work of curation, conservation, education, and social engagement. Students will read museum history and theory, engage with museum archives and other primary sources, and produce a research paper or a digital or public project.
ARCH 1168 Decolonization, History, Art, Museums and Curation (AFRI 1045)
Interested students must register for AFRI 1045
Over the past few years there have been calls for decolonization of art and museums. But what do these calls mean? There are now claims for reparations of art objects and in ethnographic museums human remains. The decolonization call has foregrounded the colonial origins of many of the world’s leading museums and called into question curatorial practices. It asks us to think about art and exhibition histories and the present narratives about the making of the modern museum. This course will examine these issues as well as attempts to reimagine museums. Issues of curatorial practices of historical and art exhibitions will be reviewed. Curators and artists from Africa, Europe and USA will deliver in class lectures and lead discussions. Undergraduate seminar. Graduate students are welcome.
ARCH 1170 Community Archaeology in Providence and Beyond
Modern archaeology is about far more than just digging in the dirt. During this seminar, we will discuss how archaeologists can engage with the public—including collaborations with indigenous and local communities, increased multivocality in interpretations, the mass media, museums, educational outreach programs, and the use and abuse of the past by governments and others in power. The second half of this course will involve a hands-on project in the Providence public school system.
ARCH 1175 Archaeology Matters! Past Perspectives on Modern Problems
This is not the first era to face many of today’s global problems — rising temperatures, sea-level change, sustainability, pollution, fire, water scarcity, urban blight, social violence, and more. Archaeology is more than the understanding of peoples long ago and far away, but a discipline whose long-term perspective could offer potential solutions to current crises. Through case studies and discussion of key issues, this class asks how archaeology – and archaeologists – might just change the world.
ARCH 1176 Old News: Antiquity and Current Events (HMAN 1972H)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1972H.
Antiquity is often invoked to manipulate how we view current events. This course will investigate examples of this phenomenon, including the ‘spectacles of destruction’ of antiquities in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the couching of the Greek economic crisis in references to Greece’s classical past. We will interrogate questions of “who owns the past?,” and of how we reckon antiquity’s value; we will also investigate how scholars (archaeologists, classicists, et al.) have reacted to these contemporary events. Their stances raise important questions about the past’s ‘relevance’ in the present, but also about the intersections between humanities and the social sciences.
ARCH 1177 Occupy Archaeology! Interrogating Inequality, Past and Present
We are the 99%! Black Lives Matter! These rallying cries bring inequality to the front-and-center of western political and media discourses. Yet a social system dividing the haves and have-nots is hardly a modern phenomenon. This course considers injustice diachronically and on a global scale, examining ways in which the material world studied by archaeologists creates — and is created by — social divisions, and critiquing the ways that archaeology as a discipline is a part of the problem.
ARCH 1178 Archaeology and Social Justice: Un-disciplining the Past, Changing the Present
The contemporary world is at a breaking point. Deepening social inequality, environmental crises, and neo-colonialism exacerbate global injustices. The stories that archaeologists tell about the past, more often than not, contribute to these injustices. In this course, we will use global case studies to explore the possibilities for other, decolonial archaeologies which can liberate the material past from its colonial/racial disciplinary straightjacket, and at the same time provide essential tools for the necessary struggles for social justice today.
ARCH 1200 Topics in Old World Archaeology and Art
ARCH 1200A Early Italy
Focuses on the Bronze Age background to the emergence of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Italy in the Iron Age. Emphasizes the results of recent excavations, the problems of contact between the Aegean and Tyrrhenian areas in the Bronze Age, Greek colonization, and the urban development of the Etruscan/Latian region.
ARCH 1200B Pompeii (History of Art and Architecture 1200D, Urban Studies 1210)
Pompeii and its neighboring towns are the best examples for studying the life, art, and architecture of a Roman town. This seminar covers the works of art and the life in the town as reflected in the monuments excavated over the past 250 years.
ARCH 1200C Roman Iberia (Classics 1930, History of Art and Architecture 1200)
The archeology, art, and architecture of Iberia during the Roman presence from the Punic Wars to the beginning of the Arab conquest. The artifacts and monuments discussed will not only represent artistic production from Roman administrative expressions, but also a mixture of styles between indigenous art (such as Celtic) or expressions of syncretism or other cultural symbioses. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1200D The Portrait (History of Art and Architecture 1200, Classics 1930)
Roman Crafts: The Study of Jewelry, Gems, Coins, Glass, and Silverplate
ARCH 1200E Topography and Monuments of Rome
Rome has been the scene of notable recent discoveries. This course will concentrate on the evidence for the so-called "regal period" but other topics, among them commemorative arches, the topography of the Campus Martius, and Christian basillicas, will also be taken up. A reading knowledge of Italian is highly recommended.
ARCH 1200F City and the Festival: Cult Practices and Architectural Production in the Ancient Near East (History of Art and Architecture 1200)
This course will explore urbanization, formation of urban space, and architectural projects in relation to cult practices and commemorative ceremonies in the Ancient Near East. Investigating case studies from early cities of fourth millenium BC Mesopotamia to Iron Age Syria and Anatolia, we will study processes of the making of urban and extra-urban landscapes in the socio-religious context of festivals. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1200G Arabia and the Arabs: The Making of an Ethnos (Anthropology 1650)
This course will survey the archaeology and history of the Arabs and Arabia from before their emergence in the historical record to the modern period. Our particular focus concerns their relationship with the rise of Islam as well as the imperial politics of the pre-Islamic Near East. A major issue that frames these inquires is the concept of ethnicity and its projection into the past. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1200H Islamic Landscapes: Cities, Frontiers, and Monuments (Anthropology 1660, History of Art and Architecture 1200, Religious Studies 1880)
This course will examine the built environments of the Islamic Period Middle East through the growing archaeological and historical record of its cities, frontiers, and monuments. How has the landscape of this region become transformed under by its relationship with a dynamic Islamic tradition? Key issues examined are the notion of the “Islamic city”, sacred space, and the spatiality of Muslim/non-Muslim relations. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1200I Material Worlds: Art and Agency in the Near East and Africa
This course investigates technological processes of artifact production in the material culture of ancient and contemporary Near East and Africa. Archaeological and ethnographic case studies will be explored to understand the social relations behind skilled craftsmanship in architecture and “art”. Circulation of craft knowledge, cultural biography of artifacts, constitution of cultural identities and memory through material processes will be central topics. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1201 Roman Art/Arch Mosaics (HIAA 1200C)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1200C.
Mosaics survive in huge quantities from nearly every corner of the Roman Empire. Despite their prevalence and their often excellent state of preservation, however, mosaics are only beginning to attract the volume of scholarly attention lavished on other media, such as sculpture, architecture and paintings. We will study floor mosaics, wall mosaics and ensembles of opus sectile from across the Mediterranean, considering questions of narrative and contextual display as well as abstraction and medium specificity. Discussions of Medieval, Renaissance and contemporary mosaic art are also welcome.
ARCH 1202 Hellenistic Art: From Alexander to Cleopatra (HIAA 1200)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1200I.
ARCH 1209 The Visual Culture of Medieval Women (HIAA 1430A)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1430A.
Considers women as patrons and producers of medieval art and architecture, and examines the imaging of women in medieval works of art. Topics include: feminist perspectives in medieval history and art history, patronage by royal and aristocratic women, costume and textile production, and the art and architecture of female monastic communities. Optional FLAC French conference offered.
ARCH 1211 The Body in Medieval Art (HIAA 1440E)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1440E.
The seminar considers the contradictory aspects of embodiment in the visual and material culture of the Middle Ages. We will examine the veneration of holy bodies through living holy individuals, and through body parts (relics) and the Eucharist enshrined in sumptuous containers. We will look at the iconography of death and resurrection, the representation of the body in painting and sculpture, attitudes toward sexuality, the performance of identity through clothing, and the sumptuary laws that governed clothing and behavior. We will investigate funerary rituals and burial, and the movement of living bodies in dance and in civic and religious processions.
ARCH 1212 Charlemagne: Conquest, Empire, and the Making of the Middle Ages (HIST 1976Z)
Interested students must register for HIST 1976Z.
The age of Charlemagne sits at the nexus of antiquity and the middle ages. For two hundred years Charlemagne's family, the Carolingians, welded together fragments of the splintered Roman imperial tradition and elements from the Germanic world to forge a new, medieval European civilization. This seminar examines that process by exposing students to the primary sources, archaeological evidence, and modern scholarly debates surrounding the Carolingian age. Topics include the Carolingians' rise to power; Charlemagne's imperial coronation; interactions with the Islamic and Byzantine worlds; the revival of classical learning; the Church; warfare; the economy; Vikings; and the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first year students.
ARCH 1213 The Medieval Monastery (HIAA 1440B)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1440B.
The seminar examines the medieval and early modern monastery as a research problem. The course examines the development of the monastery, and investigates the religious and functional aspects of monastic architecture. We will explore historical, art historical and archaeological approaches to monasticism. Instructor permission required.
ARCH 1214 The Viking Age (HIST 1210A)
Interested students must register for HIST 1210A.
For two centuries, Viking marauders struck terror into the hearts of European Christians. Feared as raiders, Norsemen were also traders and explorers who maintained a network of connections that stretched from North America to Baghdad and who developed a complex civilization that was deeply concerned with power and its abuses, the role of law in society, and the corrosive power of violence. This class examines the tensions and transformations within Norse society between AD 750 and 1100 and how people living in the Viking world sought to devise solutions to the challenges that confronted them as their world expanded and changed.
ARCH 1220 Byzantine Archaeology and Art - Material Stories of a Christian Empire
The world of Byzantium is often considered as a dark age separating the glories of Rome and the Renaissance. Yet Byzantium was among the longest living empires in world history, with an artistic and cultural impact felt far beyond its borders. The course will introduce students to a series of art works, architectural masterpieces, and archaeological discoveries that illuminate our understanding of the much underestimated, and much misunderstood, Byzantine Empire.
ARCH 1231 Kings, Courts and Aristocracy (ANTH 1231)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1231.
Explores the nature and variety of kingship, royal courts, and aristocracy through comparative evidence, with strong emphasis on historical data, architecture, and archaeology. Test cases will be examined in Mesoamerica, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
ARCH 1232 The City, the Maroon and the Mass Grave (ANTH 1630)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1630.
How has archaeology contributed to our understanding of the past in the former Spanish colonies? How has this knowledge been presented and made socially relevant in present-day Latin America? This course proposes a critical insight into the achievements and future challenges of historical archaeology in Spanish speaking America, exploring the diverging trajectories that the discipline has had in different countries of the region, and the way in which archaeological knowledge about the colonial, republican, and contemporary periods has been either ignored or assimilated into the development of specific politics of cultural heritage at the local level.
ARCH 1233 Ancient Maya Writing (ANTH 1650)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1650.
Nature and content of Mayan hieroglyphic writing, from 100 to 1600 CE. Methods of decipherment, introduction to textual study, and application to interpretations of Mayan language, imagery, world view, and society. Literacy and Mesoamerican background of script.
ARCH 1234 Lost Languages (ANTH 1820)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1820.
Humans make many marks, but it is writing that records, in tangible form, the sounds and meanings of language. Creating scripts is momentous; writing facilitates complex society and is a crucial means of cultural expression. This course addresses the nature of writing in past times. Topics include: the technology of script; its precursors and parallel notations; its emergence, use, and "death"; its change over time, especially in moments of cultural contact and colonialism; writing as a physical object or thing; code-breaking and decipherment, including scripts not yet deciphered; and the nature of non-writing or pseudo- or crypto-scripts.
ARCH 1235 Vertical Civilization: South American Archaeology from Monte Verde to the Inkas (ANTH 1505)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1505.
This course offers an introduction to the archaeology of indigenous south American Civilizations, from the peopling of the continent around 13,000 years ago, to the Spanish Invasion of the 16th Century C.E. Throughout, we seek to understand the often unique solutions that South America indigenous peoples developed to deal with risk and to make sense of the world around them. Course lectures and discussions focus on recent research and major debates. Weekly sections draw on viewings of artifacts and manuscripts from the Haffenreffer Museum and the John Carter Brown Library. .
ARCH 1236 Maize Gods and Feathered Serpents: Mexico and Central America in Antiquity (ANTH 1640)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1640.
Mexico and Central America are the cradles of one of the world's most enduring cultural traditions. The modern identity of the region was forged in these ancient traditions and their influence is apparent the world over, particularly in the area of agricultural domesticates (corn, chocolate, and chilies). Their cities (Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Chichen Itza, etc.) rank among the greatest of the ancient world. This course offers a survey of Pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America, from the early monumental centers of the Olmec to the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, and explores how anthropologists and archaeologists investigate Middle America's indigenous past.
ARCH 1237 Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture: A World That Matters (ANTH 1030)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1030.
Survey of ancient art and building in ancient America, with a focus on Mexico, Central America, and the Andes. Underlying concepts include: meaning and method, cosmos and kingship, narrative and symbol, personality and authorship, empire and royal court. Rich collections of the Haffenreffer museum will form the focus of work in the class.
ARCH 1238 Classic Mayan Civilization (ANTH 1031)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1031.
Examines the history, culture, and society of the Classic Maya, with special emphasis on Preclassic precursors, dynasties, environmental adaptation, imagery, architecture, urban form, and the Maya Collapse.
ARCH 1239 1493: The Spanish Invasion and Its Indigenous Responses in the Americas (ANTH 1491)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1491.
Drawing on historical sources from the John Carter Brown Library and objects from the Haffenreffer Museum, this course re-examines the history of Ibero-American cultural encounters between 1492 and 1700 AD. Students learn to interpret the different perspectives offered by archaeological and historical evidence to create more nuanced accounts of indigenous social history before and after the Spanish invasion. Topics addressed include cultural (mis)communication, disease and ecological change, roles played by people of African descent, and the legacies of conquest in the present. Special emphasis is placed on the Taíno, Mexica, Inka, Maya and Pueblo cultures.
ARCH 1242 Amazonia from the Prehuman to the Present (HIST 1360)
Interested students must register for HIST 1360.
This course merging lecture and discussions will examine the fascinating and contested history of one of the world’s most complex fluvial ecosystems: Amazonia, in equatorial South America, from its pre-human history to the present day. The course will include readings and discussions on the region’s ecological origins; the social history of its diverse Indigenous and immigrant populations, including African-descended peoples; exploration myths and European colonial projects; and more recent efforts to exploit and protect Amazonia’s extraordinary natural and human resources. The course will use tools and resources from archaeology, anthropology, biology, and social and cultural history, and will also examine popular representations of the Amazon through novels, newspapers, podcasts, and film.
ARCH 1250 Minoans and Myceneans: Greece in the Bronze Age
This class offers an introduction to the archaeology and art of mainland Greece, Crete, and the Aegean in the third and (especially) the second millennium B.C. The principal emphasis is on when, how, and why the Minoan and Mycenaean palace-based states first arose in this area, with consideration also of their sociopolitical and economic organization, and their interactions with neighboring cultures.
ARCH 1282 Mediterranean Culture Wars: Archaic Greek History, c. 1200 to 479 BC (CLAS 1210)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1210.
From the end of the Bronze Age to the end of the Persian Wars is a period of considerable change in the Mediterranean and beyond. The Greek polis challenges the powers of the ancient Near East. Over seven centuries we meet Greek writing, Homeric epic, and the first historian (Herodotus). But the Greek world lay on the edges of the Ancient Near East and this course tries to offer a more balanced approach than the typically Hellenocentric perspective of the standard textbooks. CLAS 1210 addresses political, social and economic history. Literary, epigraphical and archaeological cultures provide the evidence. WRIT
ARCH 1283 The Fragility of Life in Ancient Greece (CLAS 1130)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1130.
This interdisciplinary course explores the fragility of life in the Ancient Greek city-state form multiple perspectives: those of state-building, the population stress in the city, the capacity for the family to maintain and sustain itself, to those of the individual: man, woman, and child, whose life experiences left them vulnerable to disease and economic hardship. This course explores Ancient Greek socio-economic history addressing health, disease, fertility and childbirth, migration, mobility, and population and family ‘management’ as well as topics fundamental to historical demography (mortality, birth rates, and growth) over the longue durée approach (Archaic through Roman Imperial eras).
ARCH 1287 Holy Places and Sacred Spaces in Ancient Greece (CLAS 1750R)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1750R.
For thousands of years, travelers have been astonished at the physical beauty of Ancient Greek sites such as Olympia, Delphi, and Delos. For anyone who visits these numinous sites, it's easy to see why the Greeks believed that the gods loved them, too. In this course we will be exploring the notion of sacred space in Greek, with emphasis on sanctuaries, topography, archaeological phenomenology, and pilgrimage. We will research and discuss sites and sanctuaries from literary, archaeological, and other material and theoretical perspectives; we will also ask what about certain spaces and places leads us to regard them as 'sacred'. WRIT
ARCH 1300 Greek Architecture
This course will trace the history of Greek Architecture from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period. Emphasis is placed on the Archaic and Classical Periods and on the formation and implementation of the three major Greek orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian). Importance is placed on understanding construction techniques and the intricate relationship between form and function of the Greek orders.
ARCH 1305 Myth and Narrative in Greek Art
From Homeric epics to Athenian tragedies, masterpieces of mythological narrative form the backbone of Greek literature. But myth and storytelling were also powerful forces in Greek art—from vase painting to monumental sculpture. This class asks how myth in art responded to social realities or political developments, and what was the role or agency of the artist as a creator of content? How did myths evolve over time or take on new meanings in different contexts? Our class will look at many mythological stories in art and learn to “read” Greek visual narrative within its artistic, social, economic, and political setting.
ARCH 1310 Ancient Painting†
Examines selected topics in ancient painting with emphasis on the remains of ancient fresco decoration. Topics are Palaeolithic Painting, Aegean Bronze Painting, Etruscan Painting, Greek Painting of the Fifth and Fourth Centuries (text evidence), Roman Painting, Roman Painting as reflected in Mosaic.
ARCH 1425 Archaeology, Materiality, and National Imagination in Israel and Greece: A Comparative Approach
Israel and Greece have had very different histories and yet in both cases their constitution as nation states is intricately linked to conceptions of antiquity and the practices of archaeology. In this course we will examine prominent figures and central projects in Greece, Palestine and Israel from the 19th to the 21st c. and ask questions such as: What were the foundational genealogical myths in each case? How important is religion and how is it interwoven with antiquity and archaeology? How does colonialism intersect with nationalism in this relationship, and what are the colonizing effects of archaeology itself?
ARCH 1430 The Philistines
The Philistines were long considered to be trouble-makers and uncultured; however, recently their true character has been revealed. The origin, culture, social organization, political affiliations, religion, artwork, and technology of the Philistines, who inhabited Palestine during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-734 B.C.E.), will be elucidated through the examination of archaeological data and some textual evidence and pictorial representations.
ARCH 1434 Jerusalem: Jews, Christians, Muslims (UNIV 1003)
Interested students must register for UNIV 1003.
In this course, we will examine how competing heritage narratives of the city of Jerusalem have been shaped by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim histories and beliefs, as well as by Israeli, Palestinian, and international views and interests. We will explore the impact of media portrayal, educational platforms, and archaeological explorations in the contexts of social, religious, and political debates from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. At the focus will be the question of the city’s indivisible heritage and boundaries that divide the city and its communities.
ARCH 1436 The Archaeology of Jerusalem (JUDS 1610)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1610.
Jerusalem constitutes one of the most important archaeological sites connected to the origins of Judaism, Christianity and Early Islam. In this class we will explore the material remains of the city beginning with David's conquest in ca. 1000 BC through the end of the Ottoman Period in 1917. The contemporary literary sources as well as the more recent scholarly debates and discoveries help us understand the material remains of the relevant periods.
ARCH 1437 The Archaeology of Palestine (JUDS 1615)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1615.
Traces the prehistory of Palestine (modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan) from its beginnings in the Paleolithic to the end of the Byzantine period. Surveys history of archaeological research in this area, emphasizing significant excavations and their artifacts. Develops an understanding of the art, architecture, and modes of life of humankind from age to age, the changes introduced from one period to another, and causes and effects of those changes.
ARCH 1438 Jerusalem since 1850: Religion, Politics, Cultural Heritage (JUDS 1620)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1620.
This seminar surveys the history of archaeological exploration, discovery, and interpretation in the contexts of social, political, and religious debates from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1967 period. It examines the legal settings and ethical precepts of archaeological activity and the developing discourse of cultural heritage. It analyzes the ongoing struggle to discover and define the city's past, to expose its physical legacy, and to advance claims of scientific validity and objectivity against the challenges of religious zeal and political partisanship, the latter both intimately related though not necessarily limited to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ARCH 1439 Jerusalem Divided: Politics and Cultural Heritage (URBN 1870K)
Interested students must register for URBN 1870K.
“The heritage of Jerusalem is indivisible, and each of its communities has a right to the explicit recognition of their history and relationship with the city. To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim traditions, undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.” These are the words of Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO, spoken in 2016. While the indivisible heritage referred to in this context reflects the reality of Jerusalem’s Old City’s intertwined historical, cultural, and religious legacies, it does not address the geopolitical conflict, in which ideological and territorial claims produce diverging heritage narratives. In this seminar, we will examine how competing heritage narratives have been shaped by Israeli, Palestinian, and international views and interests. We will explore the history of archaeological exploration, discovery, and interpretation in Jerusalem in the contexts of social, political, and religious debates from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on its urban landscape.
ARCH 1440 Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques
Reviews the discoveries and related scholarship of ancient synagogues, churches, and mosques in ancient Palestine. Focuses on their architectural and decorational as well as their spiritual and religious characteristics, and examines how those institutions influenced each other throughout their history of development.
ARCH 1441 Ancient Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques in Palestine (JUDS 1670)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1670.
Reviews the discoveries and related scholarship of ancient synagogues, churches, and mosques in ancient Palestine. Focuses on their architectural and decorational as well as their spiritual and religious characteristics, and examines how those institutions influenced each other throughout their history of development.
ARCH 1443 Pilgrimage and Sacred Travel in the Lands of Islam (RELS 1520)
Interested students must register for RELS 1520.
ARCH 1444 What is Islamic Art (HIAA 1410C)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1410C.
Is there such a thing as modern Islamic Art? This course draws on Brown's Minassian collection of Islamic Art to help clarify these complex questions. Focusing on 3 forms from the collection -manuscripts, painting, and pottery- the course introduces students to key concepts in Islamic Art History.
ARCH 1448 Digging for the Bible: Science, Religion, and Politics (JUDS 1974)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1974.
Archaeological exploration in the “Holy Land” began in the mid-19th century and was motivated by the quest to discover the biblical sites. This region features among the most important visual and material remains connected to the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This seminar will explore the relevant material remains from the Bronze Age through the end of the Ottoman period, and examine how these finds and their interpretations were shaped by religious and political motivations from the earliest endeavors to the present day.
ARCH 1450 The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Qumran is one of the most prominent archaeological sites in the world. Its fame derives from its proximity to a series of caves in which some 800 ancient scrolls were found. Scholars have debated the relevance of this site to the histories of Judaism and Christianity. This seminar will examine the debates regarding the character of Qumran through the material finds from old and new excavations conducted at the site itself and in the Dead Sea region. The lectures and readings are intended to stimulate a discussion about how to use texts and material culture for reconstructing the past.
ARCH 1475 Petra: Ancient Wonder, Modern Challenge
The rose-red city of Petra in southern Jordan is a movie star (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). It is a tourist mega-hit (over half a million visitors annually). It was recently voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. This class will explore the history and archaeology of Petra and debate how best to present and preserve the site, as well as discussing (and planning!) Brown's ongoing fieldwork at this beautiful, but fragile, place.
ARCH 1481 The Silk Roads, Past and Present (HIST 1974A)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1974A.
The Silk Road has historically been the crossroad of Eurasia; since the third-century BCE it has linked the societies of Asia—East, Central, and South—and Europe and the Middle East. The exchange of goods, ideas, and peoples that the Silk Road facilitated has significantly shaped the polities, economies, belief systems, and cultures of many modern nations: China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and India. This course explores the long history (and the mythologies or imaginations) of the Silk Road in order to understand how the long and complex pasts of the regions it touches are important in the age of globalization. P WRIT
ARCH 1482 Power, Profit, and Pillage: The Rise and Fall of Trading Kingdoms in Asia (ANTH 1540)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1540.
A course survey of the pre- and protohistoric archaeology of the eastern half of Asia. Topics include the origins and evolution of agricultural societies, the emergence of village and urban life, and the rise of states and kingdoms. The early states were often characterized and even reinforced by elaborate symbolic and religious systems expressed through ritual, art, and architecture-topics also covered by the course.
ARCH 1483 Arts of Imperial Song (HIAA 1040A)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1040A.
Art and power share a long reciprocal relationship in imperial China. In this history, Song (960-1279) emperors stand out because of their massive collections and their personal practice of calligraphy and painting, as well as their great patronage of contemporary art and material culture. The Song emperors literally created the Chinese national heritage by amassing and, if necessary, manufacturing the great works of the past. As Imperial artists and calligraphers, sometimes working with surrogates and collaborators the emperors and their empresses produced art in unprecedented quantities. We explore these achievements and the processes that produced them in this course.
ARCH 1484 Attachment to Objects in Chinese Literature (EAST 1950P)
Interested students must register for EAST 1950P.
A seminar investigating interactions between objects and literary composition in China of the 12th to 16th century, exploring 3 core issues: 1st, what do writers about objects reveal about notions of literary art and artifice? 2nd, in what ways are material artifacts endowed with aesthetic and personal meaning? 3rd, what literary and extra-literary factors shaped exchanges of poetry and gift-giving as linked forms of social intercourse? Readings in English translation.
ARCH 1486 The Bureaucracy of Hell: Envisioning Death in East Asian Art (HIAA 1213)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1213.
This seminar examines the material and visual cultures of death in premodern East Asia. Topics include the materiality of funerary rites, the practice of entombing the dead with miniatures, and the visual tradition associated with the influential Scripture on the Ten Kings, which envisioned the afterlife as an infernal bureaucracy. We will discover that the way people in premodern East Asia envisioned death had a lot to do with the way in which they experienced life. By thinking through the continuities, we will use the present traces of death to envision the absent world of the living.
ARCH 1487 Environmental History of East Asia (HIST 1820B)
Interested students must register for HIST 1820B.
This is a lecture course on the environmental history of East Asia from prehistory to the present aimed at students with no background in either Asian or environmental history. Because little has been written about Korean or Vietnamese environmental history, it will mostly concern China and Japan, for which there are good textbooks. The course will also incorporate weekly primary source readings, or analysis of artifacts.
ARCH 1490 Ancient Central Asia in the Shadow of Alexander
Popular imagination frames Central Asia as a marginal area whose relevance emerged only after the conquest of Alexander the Great – a faulty interpretation influenced by Orientalist bias. In contrast, this course turns its focus to the global and lasting impact of ancient indigenous cultures of Central Asia -- Afghanistan and the former Soviet Republics -- before and after the arrival of Greco-Macedonian colonialism, through the lenses of archaeology, art, and history. We will also consider Central Asia as a case study for broader approaches to issues around state power, identity, migration, resilience, and inequality in the ancient world.
ARCH 1492 The Priest-Kings and Village Life of Ancient Pakistan and India
The Indus Civilization was the largest culture in the Bronze Age, extending over Pakistan and much of India. It produced sculptures of priest-kings and dancing girls, seals imprinted with magical beings, vast water systems, and monumental structures. But it remains such a mystery that archaeologists can’t even read its texts: the Indus script is still undeciphered. This course will look at the remarkable material culture of the Indus and famous sites like Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, but will also introduce current research examining grassroots change effected by villagers in their daily lives.
ARCH 1500 Classical Art in the RISD Museum
The RISD Museum’s collection of Greek, Etruscan and Roman art will be studied firsthand and in light of recent scholarship in art history, archaeology and museum studies. The course will explore original contexts for museum objects; issues of cultural property and museum ethics; conservation and restoration; design and education components of exhibitions; and notions of historical interpretation in museum display.
ARCH 1515 The Fair Sex: Female Body and Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Beyond
Maidens, wives, goddesses, prostitutes, monsters. This course will explore gender and sexuality in ancient Greece through art, archaeology, and literature. Topics include representations of the female body in art; notions of aesthetics, beauty, and perfection; nudity and taboo; emotions; burial practices; tropes of femininity; zones of female agency and authority, such as funerals and festivals; notions of bodily decorum and clothing; archaeological evidence for women’s presence in domestic and public spaces; sexual violence in Greek art and literature, and multiply marginalized women (immigrants, enslaved workers).
ARCH 1518 Women and Families in the Ancient Mediterranean (HIAA 1302)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1302.
What was life like for the women of the ancient Mediterranean? What rights, roles, responsibilities, and expectations defined their lives? Why is the examination of art and architecture such an important source for answering these questions? This course will provide a comparative perspective exploring Greek, Etruscan, and Roman case studies. WRIT
ARCH 1520 Encountering the Foreign: The Archaeology of Diplomacy
Human societies have long been both intrigued and frightened by the foreign and exotic, from objects, peoples, and practices that appear “different”. Out of these encounters with the unknown evolved a way to manage these interactions: what we now call diplomacy. This course focuses on the earliest forms of diplomacy in the societies of the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, examined through the lens of material culture, texts, and art, while also considering how disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and anthropology might expand our understanding.
ARCH 1525 Struggle and Domination in the Prehistoric Mediterranean: Sex, Power, God(s)
Humans seek to survive, adapt, develop, and thrive. Yet our species is also prone to power struggles, violence, and domination. This strife can be seen in the findings of the latest archaeological and ethnographic research – which casts doubt on the peaceful, egalitarian societies sometimes imagined in the prehistoric past. This course will examine power and inequality in the prehistoric Mediterranean, considering such vectors as religion, human-nonhuman relationships, monument building, technological innovations, death, and sexuality.
ARCH 1536 Archaeological Ethnographies: Heritage and Community in the Mediterranean (ANTH 1126)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1126.
Archaeologists study objects and (socio-cultural) anthropologists investigate culture is how stereotype and conventions have long had it. As material culture studies have increasingly blurred these boundaries, the distinction is entirely meaningless when it comes to archaeological heritage. Taking its cue from material culture studies, this course explores how local communities experience the material remains from the past and (re)incorporate them into their contemporary lives.
ARCH 1537 Archaeological Heritage between Politics, Tourism and Local Identities in the Mediterranean and the Middle East
This course explores the developing fields of public archaeology, heritage studies and archaeological ethnographies with case studies drawn from the Mediterranean world and the Middle East. The tensions between archaeological sites and landscapes, their local communities, local governments and archaeological research teams will be studied while tourism and commercial endeavors to make archaeological heritage relevant to global and local audiences will be discussed.
ARCH 1538 Archaeology of Divided Places: From Conflict to Understanding, Memory, and Reconciliation
This course examines the intricate relationships between history and contemporary archaeology in divided places such as Cyprus, Jerusalem, Kosovo, and Belfast. Discussions will include the political and moral issues entangled in cultural heritage preservation, biases inherent in the archaeology of divided places, the use of archaeology to legitimize division, and ethics of archaeological research of places of conflict. How can we reconfigure imbalances resulting from decades of hiatus in archaeological research in divided places? How can archaeology contribute to fostering reconciliation?
ARCH 1540 Cultural Heritage: The Players and Politics of Protecting the Past
From Antarctica to Zimbabwe, cultural heritage encompasses the very old and the still in use, the man-made and the natural, the permanent and the ephemeral -- even the invisible and the edible. This course will explore issues of modern threats to cultural heritage such as tourism and development, questions of authenticity and identity, and archaeology's intersection with law, ethics, public policy, and economics.
ARCH 1541 Cultural Heritage in Crisis (HIAA 1010)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1010.
From high-profile acts of destruction by invading forces and fundamentalist groups to blood antiquities on the international art market, many regions of the world seem to be undergoing a crisis in cultural heritage. But what is cultural heritage? Who defines it? Why is it vulnerable? Should it be safeguarded, and if so, how? This course will explore the development of cultural heritage as a concept, the institutions that have developed around it, and its most troubling outcomes: the ongoing spectacles of destruction and looting that are grabbing headlines today.
(Former ARCH 1541: ISIS, NAGPRA, and the Academy: Archaeology and Global Issues in Cultural Heritage (ANTH 1580) These days cultural heritage is all over the news. The wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya have led to the destruction of countless sites and museums, and the looting of artifacts on a massive scale. Cultural heritage is a broad term however, and there are people and institutions around the world that have stakes in how it is defined and managed. How then do archaeologists, museum specialists, and others in the academy define, work with, and protect cultural heritage? This course will explore current themes in cultural heritage with an eye to material culture and ethical action.)
ARCH 1542 Cultural Heritage, Curation and Creativity (AMCV 1904L)
Interested students must register for AMCV 1904L.
The course examines current theories and practices in cultural heritage work from various international perspectives and places them in dialogue with practices, theories and critical perspectives from the contemporary arts. It offers students the opportunity to participate in a practical and creative cultural heritage project, realizing a curated experience/event/experience within the urban environment of Providence. Questions of material and form; the relationship between language and vision; the role of description in interpretation; and what constitutes learning through visual experience will be considered. Following readings in cultural heritage theory, curatorial studies and critical theory, the course will engage students both intellectually and practically through individual & group curatorial projects.
ARCH 1543 Decolonizing Classical Antiquity: White Nationalism, Colonialism, and Ancient Material Heritage (MGRK 1220)
Interested students must register for MGRK 1220.
Why do the material remnants of classical antiquity still attract public attention and exercise symbolic power? Why have such monuments been "used" by authorities and diverse social groups in the service of often totalitarian agendas? What are the cases where these monuments operate as weapons for resistance? How has colonial, racial, and national modernity shaped the way we understand and experience the materiality of the classical? Finally, how can we decolonise classical antiquity? We will use a diversity of global case studies, including modern Greece and Europe, and a variety of sources, from ethnographically derived performances to digital culture.
ARCH 1544 Heritage in the Metropolis: Remembering and Preserving the Urban Past (URBN 1871A)
Interested students must register for URBN 1871A.
Urban heritage – from archaeological sites and historic architecture to longstanding cultural practices – is increasingly threatened by the exponential growth of cities around the globe. Most critically, the complex histories and lived experiences of the diverse communities who have inhabited and shaped cities are often in danger of being erased and forgotten today. This course examines how we might remember and preserve this urban past – and the tangible sites and artifacts that attest to it – in light of the social and political dynamics of cities in the present.
ARCH 1545 Trafficking in Antiquities: The Law of the Land
The black-market trade in antiquities is the third largest illicit business in the world, ranking below only drugs and organized crime. Participants include local bands of looters, larger networks (often simultaneously involved in other illegal activities, such as drug trafficking) and dealers all over the globe. This class will trace the patterns of this trade, and the ongoing attempts of the law, at all levels, to prosecute and contain it.
ARCH 1546 The Monuments Men: Embedded Scholars and the Military-Archaeology Complex
In this course, we will examine the entanglement of antiquarians and archaeologists with the military, and the militarisation of monuments and archaeological sites. We will take a long-term historical perspective, from the early modern period to the present: from the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt and the "Monuments Men" in WWII, to the 20th and 21st century invasions and wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. But this is not a historiography course; it is rather an exploration of the ethics and politics of such entanglement.
ARCH 1549 Art and Crime: The History and Hazards of Collecting the Classical (HIAA 1306)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1306.
What if almost everything you thought you knew about Classical art was wrong, or at least highly suspect? This course will introduce and debate the epistemological and ethical problems entangled in the collection, display, and study of ancient art. Topics of discussion, among others, will include: How have decontextualized artifacts shaped narratives of ancient art? How are looting and forgery intertwined? Do museums and collectors unwittingly support the illegal trade of artifacts? What should be done with the thousands of unprovenanced objects in museum collections? What is repatriation and why is it such a complex issue?
ARCH 1550 Who Owns the Classical Past? (Ancient Studies 1120, Classics 1550)
The purpose of this course is to offer a forum for informed discussion of a variety of difficult questions about access to the classical past, and its modern-day ownership and presentation, seen primarily from the perspective of material culture (archaeology, art, museum displays, etc).
ARCH 1551 Who Owns the Classical Past? (Classics 1550)
The purpose of this course is to offer a forum for informed discussion of a variety of difficult questions about access to the classical past, and its modern-day ownership and presentation, seen primarily from the perspective of material culture (archaeology, art, museum displays, etc).
ARCH 1570 Cold Hard Cash: The Materiality of Money in Ancient and Modern Finance
Now more than ever we are in need of new perspectives on the value and meaning of money. This course examines the origins of a metal-based financial system in ancient Mesopotamia and the development of finance over time -- including not only the valuation of metal but also of gifts and other commodities. We will prioritize archaeological and anthropological approaches as a way to offer both time depth and insight into today's troubled financial climate.
ARCH 1572 The Economy of the Ancient Greek World: New Approaches (CLAS 1930E)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1930E.
What was the material basis of Greek society? How did trade and commerce link individuals and states and bring Greeks into contact with foreign populations? What was the role of state power in directing exchange and commerce? Was ancient economic activity similar to our idea of "economics" or was it fundamentally different? What ideologies and mentalities governed economic behavior in the ancient world? The goal of this course is to introduce students to the sources and approaches to the study of the economic history of ancient Greece.
ARCH 1574 Merchants, Trade, and Commerce in the Roman World (CLAS 1441)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1441.
Exotic spices, fermented fish sauce, mass-produced pottery, olive oil, fine wine, not so-fine wine, marble, bricks, metals, people, art, elephants – these are just a few of the things that the Romans traded. This course draws on archaeological, literary, and epigraphic material to investigate the world of Roman trade from the goods that were moved, to the logistics of transport, to the merchants and traders themselves. Who ventured to India in search of spices? Who ran the local wine shop? How were colossal columns transported across deserts?
ARCH 1575 Lost and Found: Coinage and Culture in the Roman Empire
Coins tend to be overlooked as sources of information about the ancient world, being used principally to date other objects. This is quite short sighted, for coins are themselves rich and revealing archaeological artifacts. Evidence of how coins were made, used, and lost will be explored during the seminar, in connection with recent debates about the ancient economy, the expression of identity through material culture, Roman colonialism and ethics of collecting cultural property.
ARCH 1600 Archaeologies of the Near East
Writing, urbanism, agriculture, imperialism: the ancient Near East is known as the place where earliest agriculture flourished, cities were developed and writing was invented. This course offers a detailed examination of the region’s archaeological history and current archaeological practice, in connection with its political engagements including Western colonialism and the formation of nation states. The social and cultural history of the Near East from prehistory to the end of Iron age (300 BC) will also be discussed.
ARCH 1602 The Age of Empires: The Ancient Near East in the First Millennium BC (ASYR 1300)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1300.
The first millennium BC saw a series of empires vying for control of the Near East: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks of Alexander the Great and his successors. The course will explore the political, social and cultural history of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East under these empires, using evidence drawn from archaeology and ancient texts (in translation).
ARCH 1603 Color and Culture in the Ancient Near East (ASYR 1160)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1160.
This seminar investigates the meaning of color as a culturally mediated and culturally embedded phenomenon using case studies drawn from the civilizations of the ancient Near East and Aegean. Employing contemporary critical theories from cognition, phenomenology, linguistics and material culture studies, we will explore how human beings perceived, categorized and valued color in ways that vary cross-culturally.
ARCH 1604 Borderlands: Art and Culture between Rome and Iran (HIAA 1432)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1432.
We tend to think of borders as hard and fast lines on a map, separating two distinct spheres of territory under different political authorities. In the ancient world however, borders formed regions of uncertain control, places defined by zones of influence projected from cities, with authorities and actors adept at playing both sides. This was especially true in the Classical and Late Antique Middle East, a region contested by the great empires of Rome and Iran. This class examines the art and architecture produced both by and between Rome and Iran. By studying the depictions (and appropriations) of the other, and the visual and material record of liminal places such as Palmyra, Commagene, Hatra, and Dura-Europos, this course investigates the forms of cultural expression in contested places, and how they forged an international visual language of power, prestige, and sacrality.
ARCH 1605 Holy Spirits: Ancestor Worship in the Ancient Near East and Beyond
Looking at ancestor veneration in both the ancient and the modern world – from Mesopotamia and Egypt, to the Classical World and the Americas – this course will focus on three different angles: individual, communal, and material. We will consider grief, mourning, loss, and death’s impact on families, kin, or elites. How did ancestors shape communities’ social memories, identities, and religious practices? Finally, we will explore spirits’ material traces, examining specific ancestral monuments and landscapes.
ARCH 1606 Imagining the Gods: Myths and Myth-making in Ancient Mesopotamia (ASYR 1100)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1100.
Creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel--well-known myths such as these have their origins in ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Using both ancient texts in translatioin and archaeology, this course will explore categories of Mesopotamian culture labeled "myth" and "religion" (roughly 3300-300 BCE), critically examining the ancient evidence as well as various modern interpretations. Topics will include myths of creation and the flood, prophecy and divination, death and the afterlife, ritual, kingship, combat myths and apocalypses, the nature and expression of ancient religious experience, and representations of the divine.
ARCH 1607 Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia (ASYR 1750)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1750.
The interpretation of natural events as portents of good or bad outcomes played an important role in religious, political, scholarly and everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia. In this course we will study Mesopotamian omen literature from textual, scientific, philosophical and cultural viewpoints in order to understand how divination operated and what it was used for.
ARCH 1608 Sacred Spaces and Sacred Times: Religious Travels and Pilgrimages in the Ancient Near East (ASYR 1200)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1200.
The course will focus on the cultural and religious-historical interpretation of physical displacements among sacred places, including urban processions, visits to temples and journeys to sacred places within the context of the Ancient Near Eastern religions. We will attempt to sketch a map of the holy centers and cultic itineraries, focusing on case studies from Babylonia, Assyria and Syria from the third to the first millennium BC as well as comparative case studies from surrounding cultures. These topics will be explored with an emphasis on how written and archaeological sources can be interpreted with the help of theoretical literature.
ARCH 1609 Ancient Babylonian Magic and Medicine (ASYR 1500)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1500.
A survey of ancient magic and medicine focusing on Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq, ca. 2500-300 BCE), with an emphasis on beliefs about the body, health, illness, and the causes of disease, such as witchcraft or angry gods. Topics will include the training of healers, exorcists, and herbalists; concepts of contagion and plague, modalities of treatment, incantations, prayers, and empirical remedies like prescriptions; ancient perceptions of problems like sexual dysfunction, the perils of pregnancy, tooth decay, epilepsy, and mental illness. Readings will be drawn from ancient texts (in translation), archaeology, and parallels with ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Bible. No prerequisites. Not open to first year students. WRIT.
ARCH 1615 Art/Artifact: The Art and Material Culture of Africa
This course surveys the main themes in African art and archaeology. The course introduces students to central issues and controversies concerning method, approach and interpretation in the fields of African art/material culture (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial), and it explores the various interdisciplinary efforts to address them. The course is designed to familiarize students with a number of approaches – cultural biography, objectification, materiality, regimes of value, primitive art, tourist art, connoisseurship, heritage ethics, cultural property and repatriation.
ARCH 1616 Between Sahara and Sea: North Africa from Human Origins to Islam
From the early stages of human evolution to the present, this course explores the deep past of North Africa. Rejecting the colonialist perspectives typical of the study of the region, we will study its indigenous peoples and their long-term relationships with the Mediterranean, the Near East, the Sahara and Tropical Africa. Students are encouraged to bring their own interests (art, music, literature, technology) to their experience of the class.
ARCH 1618 Barbarians, Byzantines, and Berbers: Early Medieval North Africa, AD 300-1050 (HIST 1963L)
Interested students must register for HIST 1963L.
This class explores the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages through the lens of western North Africa. Divided internally by theological disputes and inter-communal violence, and subjected to repeated conquests and reconquests from the outside, in this period North Africa witnessed the triumph of Islam over Christianity; the rise and fall of ephemeral kingdoms, empires, and caliphates; the gradual desertion of once-prosperous cities and rural settlements; the rising strength of Berber confederations; and the continuing ability of trade to transcend political boundaries and to link the southern Mediterranean littoral to the outside world. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first year students.
ARCH 1620 Conquest to Conversion: The Formation of the Islamic World
How did the Arabs, originally a small group of tribes, come to conquer and rule a vast region from Spain to Iran? And how did their faith – Islam – become a major world religion? Moving between past to present, we will use the evidence of texts, landscapes, architecture and images to examine how an Arab state emerged, to explore what it meant to be Muslim and/or Arab, and to follow the spread of Islam.
ARCH 1621 History of Egypt I (EGYT 1430)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1430.
A survey of the history and society of ancient Egypt from prehistoric times to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 5000-1300 BC). Readings include translations from the original documents that serve as primary sources for the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian history. WRIT
ARCH 1622 Art, Secrecy, and Invisibility in Ancient Egypt (HMAN 1973M)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1973M.
Ancient Egypt is well known for having produced large and eminently visible art and architecture. But a persistent theme in Egyptian visual culture is that of invisibility, of art made and then deliberately hidden or destroyed. The range of examples is vast and varied, suggesting a complex relationship between visibility and meaning. This seminar will explore how unseeable art intersects with themes of audience, agency, and time in ancient Egypt, utilizing examples from other cultures - including our own - to examine the meanings of the invisible.
ARCH 1623 Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture (EGYT 1500)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1500.
Ancient Egyptian art and architecture had a remarkably long history, and much that was produced is amazingly well preserved. Almost anything Egyptian is immediately recognizable today, but developments in most areas were steady and pronounced. To do justice to this subject, a number of experts will cooperate in presenting various topics including monumental buildings and lavishly decorated tombs, as well as the sculpture, painting, and minor arts of all periods from Predynastic to Nubian. The ancient artisans, their materials, and their techniques will be discussed; modern efforts undertaken to conserve and document their work will also be described. Prerequisite: previous course work in Egyptology (e.g. EGYT 1430 or 1440) or written permission of the instructor.
ARCH 1624 Ancient Egyptian Art II (EGYT 1510)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1510.
Considers the art of ancient Egypt's New Kingdom or Empire Period (1500-1100 B.C.). The relief carving and painting of Theban temples and tombs are studied in detail, and the developments leading to the revolutionary Amarna style of art is carefully analyzed. Decorative arts, Tutankhamun's treasures, and recent exciting discoveries are all surveyed. WRIT.
ARCH 1625 Temples and Tombs: Egyptian Religion and Culture
Religion was central to life in ancient Egypt, and this course will examine Egyptian religion through its material culture. Students will explore temples and tombs as the physical settings for priestly ritual and private devotion, including feeding and clothing the gods and communication with the dead. The course will also address evidence for private domestic cult and the overlap between religious and magical practice.
ARCH 1627 Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (EGYT 1465)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1465.
Ancient Egypt is remembered for its grand temples and enduring tombs. Histories too often favor these examples of grandeur, forgetting the daily lives of non-royal ancient Egyptians. This class will investigate the daily lives of these underrepresented ancient Egyptians - craftsmen, servants, women, children - and address concerns such as illness, status, economy, magic and death. Additionally, we will look at the individual and discuss sexuality, love, style and fashion, religious practice and the family. Class format will include lectures and discussions, presentations, and tours through virtual temples which will enable us to reconstruct the daily lives of Ancient Egyptians.
ARCH 1630 Queering Ancient Egypt
Queering history is a means of challenging heteronormative narratives of the past. In this course, we will critically examine the archaeological evidence for concepts such as gender, sexuality, and the body in ancient Egypt. The goal of this class is to discover what archaeology can reveal about identity formation in the past, but also to explore how modern conceptions of identity impact our writing of history. Thus, this course will address both the marginalization of gendered identities in historical research about ancient Egypt, as well as the reception of ancient identities in contemporary society.
ARCH 1632 Fighting Pharaohs: Ancient Egyptian Warfare
When and why did the ancient Egyptians engage in war? Who was fighting? What were their weapons like and what were their military strategies? What were the political situations that caused them to go to war? How did warfare impact Egyptian society? In studying Egyptian history and society through the pervasive motif of war, we will gain an understanding of the forces that shaped Egyptian culture.
ARCH 1633 Black Pharaohs: Nubian Rule over Egypt in the 25th Dynasty (EGYT 1455)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1455.
The course will cover Egypt's 25th Dynasty (728-657 BC), when rulers of Nubia, located in the region of modern Sudan, added Egypt to their territories. Using a wide range of textual and archaeological evidence, students will learn about the history of famous 'black pharaohs' such as Taharqa and study some of Africa's most impressive archaeological remains. This fascinating period is not well understood and has often been afflicted in the past by racist, colonialist scholarship; using primary sources and recent theory on ethnic identity, this class will re-examine the complex and changing relationship between Egypt and Nubia.
ARCH 1635 The Great Heresy: Egypt in the Amarna Age
At the height of Egypt’s power in the New Kingdom, King Amenhotep IV initiated a religious revolution that affected all aspects of Egyptian high culture. Declaring the sun-disc, Aten, to be the sole god, this king changed his name to Akhenaten and moved the capital city to a new site at Amarna. Along with this move came massive shifts in everything from temple worship to art, international relations to funerary religion. This course will set the Amarna period in its context, examining remains from the reign before Akhenaten to the restoration of traditional Egyptian religion under his immediate successors, including King Tutankhamun.
ARCH 1636 Collapse! Ancient Egypt after the Pyramid Age (EGYT 1030)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1030.
How does a civilization or a kingdom collapse after building some of the most enduring monuments from the ancient world? What happens in Egypt after the Pyramid Age? This course uses texts, objects, and monuments to delve into the history and archaeology of the Late Old Kingdom up to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt (c. 2160–2055 BCE), often described as a Dark Age characterized by chaos, decline, and natural disasters. We will discuss how ancient history is written with a particular focus on the narrative of collapse in ancient cultures. The class will be based on presentations and discussions focused on controversies linked to the following topics: politics; kings, kinglets, and rulers; monuments and funerary architecture; climate change; religion and beliefs; (auto-)biographies; literature; and art. There are no prerequisites.
ARCH 1637 Egypt After the Pharaohs: Archaeology and Society in the Coptic and Early Islamic Periods (EGYT 1470)
Interested students must register for EGYT1470.
“I have killed Pharaoh! And I do not fear death!” Such was the statement made by the assassin who, in 1981, took the life of Anwar Sadat, then president of the Arab Republic of Egypt. With that in mind it could be argued that Egypt’s Pharaonic history has maintained some form of presence well into the contemporary period, whether through religio-political metaphor, cultural heritage, economic resource or a foil against which to craft new identities. However, the more than two millennia that intervene between the collapse of the New Kingdom and the bullet that took the life Egypt’s second president demonstrate important transformations in the societies that have occupied the land of the Nile. This course offers an introduction to the archaeology and social history of Egypt that spans the period from Late Antiquity and the development of the Coptic Church through the Islamic dynasty of the Mamluk Sultans of the 13th-16th centuries. Some of the key themes that we will examine include the transformations in the built and natural environment of Egypt, the emergence of new political structures and religious identities, and the formation of the Pharaonic legacy as it continues into the present.
ARCH 1638 Ethnic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt (EGYT 1550)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1550.
Egypt under Greek and Roman rule was the original 'multicultural society', with communities of Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Romans, Nubians, Arabs and even Indians. This course will explore the sometimes controversial subject of ethnic identity in Egypt 'after the Pharaohs', through a focus on the everyday lives of individual people and communities. Topics will include multilingualism; ethnic conflict and discrimination; and gender and intermarriage. Evidence will be drawn from ancient texts on papyrus as well as recent archaeological excavations.
ARCH 1650 The Etruscans: Italy Before the Rise of the Romans
The Etruscan people dominated the Italian peninsula for centuries before the Romans became a Mediterranean power, but left behind little textual evidence of their culture. Focusing on architecture, artistic production, and funerary practice, we will study the “enigmatic” Etruscans and their contacts with the Greeks and early Romans, and consider their impact on Rome and on modern Italian archaeological scholarship.
ARCH 1666 Archaeologies Out of the Mainstream: From Ancient Aliens to Modern Nationalism
Have you ever wondered what's beyond academic archaeology? Have you ever watched Ancient Aliens, Searching for the Lost Giants or read Chariots of the Gods? "Alternative" archaeologies are the most popular form of presenting the human past. This course will take a critical look at different types of alternative archaeologies, both past and present, to understand how they intersect and interface with academic understandings of archaeology and human history. Be prepared to quell academic prejudices as we delve deep into the culture of alternative archaeologies to rattle our comfort zones and uncover our connections to the most popular forms of human history ever to have been made.
ARCH 1670 The Beginning of the End? Neolithic "Revolutions" and the Shaping of the Modern World
How did the first farmers and settled human communities live their lives? How did they reshape the landscape, invent new forms of elaborate dwelling, and establish new relationships with plants and animals? And are the roots of some of our contemporary problems, including social inequality and patriarchy, to be found in the Neolithic? These are some of the questions we will be exploring in this course, using material from the European and Anatolian Neolithic and other, global, contexts.
ARCH 1680 Of Chiefs, Princesses and Warriors: Exploring Different Iron Ages
This course is about the Mediterranean Iron Age. It examines indigenous communities of the first millennium BC in order to assess critically conventional representations of Iron Age societies. Themes to be explored include the ever increasing social complexity of chiefdoms and states, princely burials and warriors, and urban settlements and monumental architecture that allegedly mark the transfer of 'civilization' from East to West.
ARCH 1700 Architectural Sculpture of Ancient Greece and Rome
What would Times Square or Rockefeller Center have looked like in antiquity? What would have been advertised, and by whom? This course examines the themes, style, and contexts of the sculptural programs that decorated public buildings from the Greco-Roman world, their connections to other visual media and to the landscape, and their reflections of different cultural, civic, and elite identities.
ARCH 1703 Water and Architecture (HIAA 1910D)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1910D.
The seminar explores the varied ways in which water is manipulated in architecture and urban planning. We examine several case studies, including Roman aqueducts such as the Pont du Gard, medieval urban and monastic hydraulic systems, Renaissance and early modern garden (and fountain) design, and the local examples of Slater Mill and the Providence water supply.
ARCH 1703A Water and Architecture (HIAA 1101C)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1101C.
The seminar explores the varied ways in which water is manipulated in architecture and urban planning. It is organized in ‘archaeological’ order: from the most recent to the oldest. We will examine case studies, beginning with Tadao Ando’s Water Temple and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. We will examine the local examples of Slater Mill, the Blackstone River, and Barnaby Evans’ Waterfire. We will then look back at historical examples: the Hoover Dam, the creation of Venice and the Grand Canal of China, the fountains at Versailles, the Islamic gardens at Isfahan, the medieval hydraulic plan for Canterbury Cathedral, and the Roman aqueduct bridge of the Pont du Gard. One of the principal aims of the course is to place the discussion of design into historical, technological and environmental contexts, and to provide students with experience in the production of architectural projects. FYS.
ARCH 1705 The Palaces of Ancient Rome (HIAA 1301)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1301.
This seminar addresses the palatial art and architecture of the ancient Roman Empire. Key themes include the architectural articulation of political power; the role of international relations in expressing cultural power; the interplay of influence among palaces and villas; the art of adornment, luxury, and collecting; the interaction of architecture and landscape, including interior gardens and urban environments; the critical analysis of archaeological evidence, reconstruction, and legacy. WRIT.
ARCH 1707 The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (CLAS 1120Q)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120Q.
"Everyone has heard of the Seven Wonders of the World," wrote Philo of Byzantium two millennia ago, and it's still true today. But what is a "Wonder"? And why seven of them? Why make such a list anyway, then or now? This class will use ancient texts, explorers' accounts, and archaeological investigations to travel through several thousand years of history in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. We will consider how the Seven Wonders captured past imaginations; the aura of technological achievements; the intersections of history, memory, invention, and myth; and how members of one culture view another culture's monuments.
ARCH 1708 Sacred Sites: Law, Politics, Religion (RELS 1610)
Interested students must register for RELS 1610.
Sacred sites have long been flashpoints for inter-communal conflict the world over, as well as posing challenges to sovereign State authority. Such sites range from natural landscapes to architectural masterpieces. They often come to symbolize the perennial clash between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the political, tradition and modernity. We will discuss a diverse array of specific disputes and ask whether one may even speak of “sacred sites” cross-culturally. Can legal frameworks embrace different notions of the sacred? We will also examine the historical contexts that provoke such disputes, particularly the aftermath of colonialism.
ARCH 1709 Places of Healing: Memory, Miracle, and Storytelling (HMAN1970D S02)
Interested students should register for HMAN1970D S02.
From antiquity to our day, therapeutic landscapes such as mineral and thermal springs, shrines and churches built at sacred springs, volcanic ash mud baths, rocky landscapes emitting odorous gasses, and ponds filled with medicinal leeches attract health pilgrims who search for healing. Storytelling transformed these into places of memory and pilgrimage. This seminar investigates places of bodily healing and miracle from a cultural studies perspective. The case studies will be drawn from the Mediterranean world and Western Asia (including Lourdes in France, Hierapolis in Southeastern Turkey and the Agiasma churches of Byzantine Istanbul).
ARCH 1710 Architecture and Memory
Buildings and monuments have been mediators of the past with their powerful presence, either through their turbulent histories, various stories that cling to their stones or the residues of human life that shape them. Memories, imaginations and experiences, collectively shared or individual, give meaning to architectural spaces. This course explores the intersections of memory and architecture through various archaeological case studies from the ancient world.
ARCH 1712 Ruins: Cross-cultural Understandings of the Material Traces of the Past
What is a ruin? How, when, and why does something become a ruin? What sorts of ruins (e.g., nuclear, digital, biological) are we leaving behind us? This class probes the widely varied understandings of the relationship between time and matter that inform people’s ideas about the traces of the past. And it surveys how people across the globe and in many time-periods – from ancient China and Greece, to the early Americas and Islamic Arabia – have explained their own and others’ historical, ethical, aesthetic, and emotional connections to those traces.
ARCH 1713 Architectural Reuse: The Appropriation of the Past (HIAA 1440F)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1440F.
This seminar will consider the survival, revival and adaptive reuse of older objects, texts and built spaces in the visual and material culture of successor cultures. We will look critically at the literature on the archaeology of memory, “Renaissance and revival” spolia studies and adaptive reuse. The seminar will examine selected case studies, including the reuse of sculptural elements in the Arch of Constantine, the conversion of Pantheon into a church and Hagia Sophia into a mosque, appropriated elements in the Qutb mosque in Delhi and the adaptation of the Bankside Power Station as the Tate Gallery
ARCH 1715 Building Big! Supersized Architectural and Engineering Structures From Antiquity
Sometimes size does matter. The need and desire to "build big", to create colossal architectural or sculptural things, was a constant feature of antiquity, from temples to portraits, from tunnels to fortifications. Who and what lay behind this apparent architectural megalomania? What practical challenges to construction had to be overcome? And how have such monuments affected our understanding, both of the ancient world and of modern means of self-representation?
ARCH 1720 How Houses Build People
Archaeologists usually worry about how people in the past built houses. This course will flip the question on its head and ask: how do houses build people? Just what is a 'house'? What is a 'home'? Making use of an array of regional case studies, from different time periods, we will question how cultural values and norms can be extracted from, and explore the idea of the domestication of humans through architecture.
ARCH 1764 25 Things! 250 Years of Brown’s Material Past
Did you know the house of the first president of Brown lies under what is today the Quiet Green? That the statue currently in front of the Ratty has lost his arm — twice? That a network of secret tunnels connects the Rockefeller Library to Carrie Tower? To commemorate the University’s 250th anniversary, this course will explore objects from Brown’s material past (art works, maps, trees, dining hall trays), using perspectives from a wide variety of disciplines, humanistic and scientific. By its end, the class will choose 25 Things to tell stories of both Brown’s history and its future.
ARCH 1765 Pandemics, Pathogens, and Plagues in the Greek and Roman Worlds
Terror of mass illness is nothing new; as long as there have been humans, there has been disease. These pandemics and plagues have had mortal impacts on past societies, much as contemporary plagues affect today’s economies, social and political structures, and populations. This class considers disease and society in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, beginning with the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and continuing to the outbreak of the ‘first pandemic’ of bubonic plague in AD 541. We will examine these case studies through archaeological material, written accounts, DNA analysis, palaeoclimate reconstruction, and palaeopathology.
ARCH 1768 The Culture of Death in Ancient Rome (CLAS 1420)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1420.
This course examines the way that death and dying were perceived and managed in ancient Roman culture. Primary source readings will include selections from philosophers, poets, inscriptions, and a variety of prose literature (consolations, epistolography, historiography, novels). Secondary literature will focus on demography and social relations, the anthropology of funerary ritual, and material culture, which will be integrated systematically throughout the course, and which will include consideration of artistic representations and iconography, as well the archaeology of Roman mortuary practices.
ARCH 1769 Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology at the End of Antiquity (HIST 1835A)
Interested students must register for HIST 1835A.
How was the physical human body imagined, understood, and treated in life and death in the late ancient Mediterranean world? Drawing on evidence from written sources, artistic representations, and archaeological excavations, this class will explore this question by interweaving thematic lectures and student analysis of topics including disease and medicine, famine, asceticism, personal adornment and ideals of beauty, suffering, slavery, and the boundaries between the visible world and the afterlife, in order to understand and interpret the experiences of women, men, and children who lived as individuals—and not just as abstractions—at the end of antiquity.
ARCH 1770 Grave Matters: The Archaeology of Death, Decay, and Discovery
How do archaeologists study coffins, tombs, and human remains to learn about ancient societies? This course will explore the theory and practice of the archaeology of death. Topics will include the inference of social organization from mortuary remains, the experience of death and dying, social memory, identity, and others. Students will learn approaches to mortuary excavation and consider the politics and ethics of conducting burial archaeology globally.
ARCH 1771 Archaeology of Death (ANTH 1623)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1623.
Examines death, burial, and memorials using comparative archaeological evidence from prehistory and historical periods. The course asks: What insight does burial give us about the human condition? How do human remains illuminate the lives of people in the past? What can mortuary artifacts tell us about personal identities and social relations? What do gravestones and monuments reveal about beliefs and emotions? Current cultural and legal challenges to the excavation and study of the dead are also considered.
ARCH 1772 The Human Skeleton (ANTH 1720)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1720.
More than simply a tissue within our bodies, the human skeleton is gateway into narratives of the past--from the evolution of our species to the biography of individual past lives. Through lecture and hands-on laboratory, students will learn the complete anatomy of the human skeleton, with an emphasis on the human skeleton in functional and evolutionary perspective. We will also explore forensic and bioarchaeological approaches to the skeleton. By the course conclusion, students will be able to conduct basic skeletal analysis and will be prepared for more advanced studies of the skeleton from medical, forensic, archaeological, and evolutionary perspectives. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first year students. Instructor permission required.
ARCH 1773 Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology (ANTH 1750)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1750.
Bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology have common methodological roots (human osteology) but are oriented to answer very different questions. Both are grounded in the anthropological sub-disciplines of biological anthropology and archaeology. The focus in bioarchaeology is advancing our understanding of the human experience in the past. Bioarchaeologists study a range of topics including health, violence, migration, and embodiment. Forensic anthropology is a form of applied anthropology that is employed to document and interpret human remains in medico-legal contexts. The course will survey both fields while instructing in the methodologies and approaches of each. The course complements The Human Skeleton (ANTH 1720).
ARCH 1774 Microarchaeology
Sediment – informally called ‘dirt’ or ‘soils’ – is a rich source of untapped information on ancient natural, animal, and human activity: the foundations of microarchaeology. This course will introduce students to key microarchaeological concepts including site-formation processes, human-environmental interactions, and chemical and microremain assemblages. Case studies will include the geoarchaeological fingerprints of destruction; lifeways in cave shelters, pastoral encampments, and urban households; origins of agriculture and use of fire; and – everyone’s favorite topic – what can be learned from human and animal excrement. Hands-on archaeological experiments, field collection, and laboratory methods will be introduced.
ARCH 1775 Animals in Archaeology
Food, foe, friend: animals play all these roles, and more, in their relationship to humans, in the past as well as the present. This course will explore how zooarchaeology — the study of animal remains (bones, teeth, and shells) — allows us to reconstruct ancient human-animal-environmental interactions. We will cover a range of topics and analytical techniques, including hands-on sessions for the identification and quantification of faunal remains.
ARCH 1776 Animal Acts (ERLY 1150)
Interested students must register for ERLY 1150.
From the blood-soaked amphitheaters of the Roman Empire to tattooing and other forms of body modification, this course will explore how people, ancient and modern, view animals and what looking at animals reveals about what it means to be human. Examining evidence from a variety of disciplines (archaeology, religious studies, history, philosophy, art, and literature), we will investigate the problematic boundary between "man" and "animal" and challenge the presumed superiority of the "human". WRIT
ARCH 1777 Animals in the Ancient City: Interdependence in the Urban Environment (ERLY 1155)
Interested students must register for ERLY 1155.
In the past, as in the present, humans and animals were city dwellers, living side by side in urban environments. This course will focus on five ancient cities – in India, China, Egypt, Italy and Mexico – to examine the places where human and animal lives intersected in these early metropolises. We will explore how these complex relationships had a pervasive influence on nearly every aspect of urban life: from religious practices, to city planning, to entertainment, to health. WRIT
ARCH 1778 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Environmental Histories of Non-Human Actors (HIST 1976C)
Interested students must register for HIST 1976C.
More than other sub-fields of history, environmental history approaches non-human actors as agents in their own right. This forces a radical reconceptualization of the nature of the subject. What happens to our understanding of the past (and the stories we tell about the past) if we posit that mountains think, mosquitos speak, and dogs dream? Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, Thing Theory, and Animal Studies, this course examines such questions by decentering the human and elevating non-human actors within narratives of interactive networks. Short written assignments build on each other to culminate in a research project in environmental history.
ARCH 1780 Violence and Civilization: A Deep History of Social Violence
Why do we do violence to one another? This course will foster a sustained and critical reflection on social violence, history and humanity. We will explore social orders through time, together with their practices and moral economies of permissible and impermissible violence. Different conceptions of violence (‘symbolic’, ‘structural’, and ‘routine’) will be considered, in conjunction with their intersections with the many, ambivalent meanings of ‘civilization’. No prerequisites required.
ARCH 1781 Violence: A Brief History (HIST 1700)
Interested students must register for HIST 1700.
Violence has long shaped human societies. This class considers violence as a social phenomenon across the globe from prehistory to today: how it has been conceptualized, practiced, and legitimated; its effects on societies and on individuals; and its role in creating, patterning, and perpetuating relations of power. Class meetings interweave lectures with student analysis of textual, archaeological, and visual evidence. Themes include the origins of violence, gender, warfare, state mobilization, rhetorics of dehumanization, religion, colonialism, imperialism, race and ethnicity, the coercion of labor, crime and punishment, trauma, reliance, and representations and constructions of violence.
ARCH 1782 Violence of the Past (ANTH 1730)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1730.
This course is both a study of the evidence used by anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians for reconstructing patterns of war and violence in the past and also the implications for that research on contemporary peoples. Scholars continue to be pre-occupied with the question of whether war and violence has escalated or declined in modern times, often embedding their interpretations in notions of progress and the supposed success of western nation-states in curtailing violence. Less well-acknowledged is both the shakiness of the data on which such claims are made and the stereotyped perceptions they reinforce regarding the peoples subjugated by the colonial powers from which modern nation-states descend. We will consider both foundational tests and recent scholarship regarding the anthropological, archaeological, and historical evidence for violence in the human past while critically examining how that research is consumed in popular discourse.
ARCH 1787 Alcohol in the Ancient World
From the earliest Neolithic experiments with fermentation to the elaborate drinking cultures of the Classical world, alcohol has infused social life for thousands of years. This course provides an introduction to the production and consumption of beer, wine, and other beverages in the ancient world. Case studies from across the globe demonstrate that alcohol was (and is) a uniquely potent form of material culture, embedded within complex webs of social, political, economic, and ritual activity.
ARCH 1790 The Nature and Culture of Disaster
Our view of nature forms the basis of environmental studies, ecotourism, heritage management, and contemporary debates over global warming that impact both public policy and the very way we lead our lives. This course draws from theorists (such as Douglas, Latour, Strathern and Spivak), as well as recent anthropological test cases from Amazonia, Papua New Guinea, and South Africa to look at how humans in the 21st century view nature in terms of stability, instability and disaster. How should we assess the ‘risk culture’ in which we currently live?
ARCH 1791 Slavery, Materiality, and Memorialization (AFRI 1050X)
Interested students must register for AFRI 1050X.
The institution of slavery ended in the Americas in the 19th century, but its official conclusion says little about the ways in which its legacies are materially present and memorialized today. This course is designed to place the material aspects of slavery in conversation with less tangible dimensions of how slavery is or isn't remembered and publicly acknowledged. Students will be introduced to the social and economic dimensions of transatlantic slavery, conduct archival research, and visit sites in the Providence area in order to inspire critical dialogue about how the material realities of slavery affect our past, present, and future.
ARCH 1792 The Archaeology of Slavery
No one would question that slavery leaves invisible and painful marks on all individuals and societies touched by it. But slavery leaves behind many physical, recoverable traces as well: plantations, slave forts, slaving wrecks, burial grounds. From such evidence, this course will explore four centuries of slavery in the Atlantic world, asking not only about how people coped in the past, but about the legacy of slavery in our world today.
ARCH 1793 Slavery in the Ancient World (CLAS 1120E)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120E.
Examines the institution of slavery in the ancient world, from Mesopotamia and the Near East to the great slave societies of classical Greece and (especially) imperial Rome; comparison of ancient and modern slave systems; modern views of ancient slavery from Adam Smith to Hume to Marx to M.I. Finley. Readings in English.
ARCH 1794 Questions of Remembrance: Archaeological Perspectives on Slavery in the New World (ANTH 1625)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1625.
Archaeology of slavery, and particularly that of enslaved African-American communities in what came to be the United States, has been one of the fastest growing areas of archaeological research in the last few decades. This course will look into both classic and current literature on the archaeology of Atlantic slavery in order to understand the development of this archaeological subfield, from an initial focus on the living conditions of slaves on plantation sites to later interests in the processes of consolidation of African-American ethnicities. What are current challenges faced by those investigating the material constitution of African Diaspora through time? DVPS
ARCH 1795 Living and Material Landscapes of the African Diaspora (HIAA 1191)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1191.
Designed to be interdisciplinary, this course will incorporate historical, archaeological, architectural, and anthropological perspectives in order to critically investigate the living legacies of the sugar and slavery colonial system. Visits to historic and cultural sites around the island will challenge students to think about heritage practices, postcolonial development, and diasporic cultures. Through a partnership with the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, students will have the opportunity to visit heritage sites, analyze material culture from archaeological sites, and assess architectural preservation efforts with a critical eye towards the ways in which the afterlives of sugar and slavery make themselves present on the island landscape.
ARCH 1796 Patterns of Migrations / People and Objects (COLT 1440W)
Interested students must register for COLT 1440W.
This seminar studies and compares two trajectories of migration, which are thought as unrelated and studied separately by scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The first) migration is that of objects that generated professional care, scrupulous documentation, generous hospitality in museums, archives, and displays; the second is migration of people who do not have or cannot obtain the documents without which they are banned from access to most kinds of care and hospitality, and from rebuilding their homes and worlds.
ARCH 1797 A Migration Crisis? Displacement, Materiality, and Experience (MGRK 1210)
Interested students must register for MGRK 1210.
In the past few years, we have all experienced, most of us through the media, what has been called a migration crisis. And yet, migration as a phenomenon did not appear in 2015; it is as old as humanity, and displacement and contemporary forced migration have also a long history. In this course, we will examine the historical, material and experiential dimensions of contemporary displacement and migration. Many of the examples will be from Greece but also other parts of Mediterranean and beyond, including from the Mexico-US border.
ARCH 1798 Deep Displacement: Migration, Resettlement, and Citizenship in Historical Perspective (HMAN 1973J)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1973J.
The number of migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people is greater now than at any previous point in world history, and migration lies at the heart of populist, humanitarian, and progressive political discourse. This course offers a critical examination of the current politics of migration by examining its terms and conditions in historical perspective. Drawing on interdisciplinary readings in political philosophy, cultural anthropology, history, and archaeology, we examine the relationship between sovereign power and mobility, scrutinize current discourses surrounding migration, and attempt to envision alternative futures.
ARCH 1800 Contemporary Issues in Archaeological Theory
Why does archaeology matter? Archaeology, the study of the human past through the analysis of material remains, has historically been entangled with various social or political agendas. Who "owns" the past? What is an “expert”? Theory allows us to clarify the lenses through which we view the past to account for subjectivity in our research as we work to answer such questions. In this course, we engage with multiple theoretical approaches, such as queer theory, phenomenology, agency, and post-colonialism, as a means for understanding archaeology’s impact across disciplines.
ARCH 1805 The Archaeology of Us: A Material Approach to the Contemporary World
Archaeology is traditionally seen as exclusively concerned with the past. However, the budding field of contemporary archaeology considers that our own material culture and built environment are equally important to examine archaeologically. This course explores materially-oriented approaches to analyzing our contemporary world, from the study of garbage to the destruction of heritage sites by ISIS. Course material will examine geopolitical crises including migration, militarism, inequality, and environmental devastation. Students will engage with local communities and the Providence area.
ARCH 1810 Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle East
Present-day political ideologies profoundly impact our understanding of the past. Here we will explore the use and abuse of archaeological pasts in the modern nation states of the Middle East. What do pharaohs mean to modern Egyptians? Why did Saddam Hussein consider himself the last Babylonian king? This course will explore the role of imagined ancient pasts and cultural heritage in the making of collective identities and state ideologies.
ARCH 1816 Ancient Body (ANTH 1660)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1660.
ARCH 1817 Ancient Christianity and the Sensing Body (RELS 1300)
Interested students must register for RELS 1300.
ARCH 1820 The Location of Theory
Building and unbuilding. Who produces theory? The category of human. Archaeological ethnographies – or ethnographic archaeologies. Can heritage be tangible? Does theory have a topography? These are among the central theoretical questions facing archaeology today. Students will read some of the most influential and innovative works in recent archaeological theory, and question the underlying assumptions and tropes that inform these theories. The course will culminate in the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, being hosted at Brown in the spring of 2010.
ARCH 1821 (De)Constructing the Other: The Subjectivity of Objects
Archaeologists rely on interpretation of material remains to construct conceptions of humans in the past. This course explores this creation of archaeology’s subjects, with a critical eye toward the inherently political nature of this inventive process. Topics include the deconstruction of the “pots to people” analogy, racial and gendered disciplinary bias, and exposing the problems of unequal representation in the discipline. In connecting past, present, and future, this course seeks to develop strategies for building a more equitable and inclusive brand of archaeological method and thought.
ARCH 1822 Anthropology of Place (ANTH 1910B)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1910B.
The anthropology of place serves as a unifying theme for the seminar by bridging anthropology’s subdisciplines and articulating with other fields of knowledge. Through readings and discussion, students will explore how place permeates people’s everyday lives and their engagement with the world, and is implicit in the meanings they attach to specific locales, their struggles over them, and the longings they express for them in rapidly changing and reconfigured landscapes.
ARCH 1823 From Worlds in Miniature to Miniature Worlds: Theming and Virtuality (HIAA 1890F)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1890F.
This seminar surveys spaces of consumption that are organized around themes such as theme parks. Miniaturization, in particular, is a prevalent spatial strategy used in themed environments that range in form from historical quarters of cities that are reconfigured as miniature museum-cities to the culturally-themed hyperreal representations that emerge in multi-user virtual environments such as Second Life. What are the different kinds of experience these spaces offer to visitors immersed in their exhibitions? What are the appeals of themed environments and virtual reality technologies they employ? Posing such questions, this seminar explores theming and virtuality both historically and globally.
ARCH 1830 Fake! History of the Inauthentic
What is a fake? Who gets to decide what is authentic? Greek statues, Chinese bronzes, Maya glyphs. Have fraudulent objects always existed? Galileo’s signature, a centaur’s skeleton, Buddhas bearing swastikas. Are all fakes the same? If not, how are they different? Why do people make forgeries? This course revolves around the history of the inauthentic through a diachronic exploration of objects.
ARCH 1835 Inventing the Past: Amulets, Heirlooms, Monuments, Landscapes
Long before archaeology and art-history were academic disciplines, individuals and communities manipulated the physical traces of the past in order to imagine and explain their own antiquity. Who cared about these objects and why? What did pre-modern excavations, catalogues, and collections look like and what do they tell us about our own engagements with antiquities? This course delves into the origins of antiquarianism and archaeology, from pre-history to the Renaissance.
ARCH 1837 The Origins of Things: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Early Human Worlds
Were the first architects in the Orkneys subterranean-dwelling dwarves? What did Greek and Roman intellectuals have in mind when they spoke of ages of gold, silver, and bronze? Why did pots and brooms revolt against their owners in the ancient Americas? Accounts of bygone times have existed for millennia offering insightful, perplexing, and often astonishing glimpses into early human experience. Using a combination of literary, visual, and archaeological evidence from around the world, students will explore the epistemological challenges and ethical dilemmas that people have confronted when imagining life in the remote past.
ARCH 1840 Ceramic Analysis for Archaeology
The analysis and the interpretation of ceramic remains allow archaeologists to accomplish varied ends: establish a time scale, document interconnections between different areas, and suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites. The techniques and theories used to bridge the gap between the recovery of ceramics and their interpretation within anthropological contexts are the focus of this seminar. Registration limited to Archaeology and Egyptology concentrators. Others can enroll with permission of instructor, given on the first day of class.
ARCH 1850 Comparative Empires and Material Culture
The political, military, and cultural unit of “empire” has, by now, been the subject of numerous and varied studies. This seminar will explore the tangible effects of empires, that is, the art and architecture created when societies are engaged in what can be viewed as asymmetrical power relationships. In order to understand how conditions specific to empire influence the creation, dissemination, and reception of material culture, this course will examine the artifacts of four different empires—the Roman, the Chinese, the British, and the American—and their unique political, social, and cultural contexts.
ARCH 1852 Material Culture Practicum (ANTH 1621)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1621.
Combines theory with hands-on study of material culture in historical archaeology. Students gain skills and experience in identifying, dating, recording, analyzing, and interpreting artifacts and conduct individual or team research projects.
ARCH 1854 Handmade: An Archaeological Exploration of Materials and Making
This interactive course provides an introduction to the archaeology of materials and making. With the goal of developing an embodied appreciation for the archaeological record, we will engage in a series of hands-on activities, each dedicated to the exploration of a different type of material (e.g., clay, stone, wood, and bone). We will also examine theoretical perspectives on the topic and archaeological case studies that highlight the range of techniques employed to transform these materials into objects of use and value.
ARCH 1855 Archaeology and Craft: Experimental Archaeology and the Materials Science of Ancient Technologies
How did people in the past make the things that archaeologists find today? How can archaeologists learn about processes of design, engineering, and technological change from ancient objects? Students will approach production questions cross-culturally through firsthand involvement with craft processes and materials analysis - from raw materials to finished objects. Practicums will range from participation in blacksmithing and kiln design to learning about pyrotechnology, mechanical properties, and archaeometric techniques. The final class project will be an exhibit affiliated with the Haffenreffer Museum.
ARCH 1857 Metals and Engineering Design in the Ancient World
Metals are among the oldest and most ubiquitous materials in human history — just think of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Understanding metal production and uses and the development of metallurgical practices provides a long-term perspective on technological development and innovation. Studying ancient metal objects also reveals how they were designed, and the design principles that ancient engineers and craftsmen may have employed. The course will consist of both a lecture and a laboratory component.
ARCH 1860 Engineering Material Culture: An Introduction to Archaeological Science
Unlikely bedfellows? No way! This course demonstrates how well archaeology (the humanities) and engineering (the hard sciences) can do business together. An introduction to the world of archaeological science, presented from the dual perspectives of material culture studies and materials science. Students will be introduced to a range of methodologies, instrumentation, and interpretive approaches through a combination of hands-on laboratory work, guest lectures, and interdisciplinary group research. Students must have already completed at least two university courses in archaeology, engineering, or any related discipline. Priority will be given to admitting a proportional number of students from archaeology, engineering and related fields.
ARCH 1864 Paleoethnobotany: Ancient Agriculture to Criminal Investigations (ANTH 1740)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1740.
How can we use botanical evidence to understand the past, from cold cases to VERY cold cases? Which roles did plants play in ancient communities? What happens to plant remains after they become incorporated into the archaeological record, and what are the methods used to study these "ecofacts"? How do paleoethnobotanical interpretations contribute to our understanding of history and structure our public policy? How is botanical forensic evidence used in law enforcement investigations? This course trains students in laboratory methods and interpretations of botanical evidence through hands-on practice. We explore the major classes of plant remains likely to be encountered in forensic cases and archaeological sites; identify botanical residues and organize the data to make interpretable results; and address major issues within the discipline.
ARCH 1866 Ice, Coral, Dust and Pollen: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Climate History (ENVS 1917)
Interested students must register for ENVS 1917.
Scholars in the humanities increasingly recognize that human societies are ecosystems enmeshed in global biogeochemical cycles, and this brings their research into communication with the natural sciences. This course focuses on one area in which these two domains of knowledge meet, namely climate history, a field that forces historians to employ biological and geological materials as sources. The difficulties faced in working between these fields often reflect different methodologies, research questions and writing styles between the humanities and the sciences, something this course will explore by juxtaposing work from the sciences, history, and other branches of the humanities.
ARCH 1867 Pastoralism and Power: Lush Lives of Arid Landscapes
Deserts are often viewed as harsh, unwelcoming landscapes. However, human activity flourishes on these arid margins of civilization. Beginning with the physical landscape – the geology, geography, and hydrography – this class will then trace its influence on deserts’ social and political landscapes: communities, kinship and tribes, pastoral nomadism, trade, and territorial power struggles. Through case studies from the Negev, Sinai, and Arabian Deserts, we will explore how archaeology and archaeological science inform us about desert people, their world views and ideologies, and their strategies for thriving in arid landscapes.
ARCH 1868 River Histories: Fishes, Floods and the Transformation of Freshwater Ecosystems (HIST 1974D)
Interested students must register for HIST 1974D.
This seminar critically examines the ecological turn in the humanities. Proceeding from close examination of historically-specific artistic practices, it excavates the predispositions and assumptions embodied in particular “geoaesthetics,” and situates these aesthetics in the long history of human efforts to make sense of the earth. Moving from the immanent rocks of Tiantai Buddhism and the thinking forests of the Amazonian Runa to the nature writing of Emerson and the formation of modern geological science, it considers the challenge of a deep history of geo-thinking to recent theorizations of hyperobjects, Gaia, and the Anthropocene.
ARCH 1869 Environmental Archaeology: Sustainability, Catastrophe, and Resilience (ANTH 1560)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1560.
How did people in the past respond to environmental crisis? How did they modify their environments to suit their needs - sometimes to long-term detriment? How did they engage in sustainable practices, and build resilience into their local ecologies? In this course you will learn how archaeologists reconstruct paleoenvironments using multidisciplinary approaches, including botanical analyses, soil studies, and GIS modeling. You will learn how archaeologists tackle the problem of identifying ethnoecological relationships in the deep past, and how they track the impacts of these relationships on human history and the environment. Key case studies will be drawn from ancient societies in the Mesopotamia, Polynesia, West Africa, the American Southwest, Western China, the North Atlantic, and the Maya area.
ARCH 1870 Environmental Archaeology
How has climate change affected the development of human society? How have people changed or destroyed their environments in the past? What does "sustainability" mean over the long term? Environmental archaeology is the study of these questions and more through the use of scientific techniques to analyze soils, plants, and animal remains from ancient archaeological contexts. A combination of class and hands-on teaching will introduce these methods and how they allow us to interpret human-environmental interactions in the past.
ARCH 1871 Geoaesthetics and the Environmental Humanities (HMAN 1973Q)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1973Q.
This seminar critically examines the ecological turn in the humanities. Proceeding from close examination of historically-specific artistic practices, it excavates the predispositions and assumptions embodied in particular “geoaesthetics,” and situates these aesthetics in the long history of human efforts to make sense of the earth. Moving from the immanent rocks of Tiantai Buddhism and the thinking forests of the Amazonian Runa to the nature writing of Emerson and the formation of modern geological science, it considers the challenge of a deep history of geo-thinking to recent theorizations of hyperobjects, Gaia, and the Anthropocene.
ARCH 1872 Environmental Anthropology (ANTH 1555)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1555.
Environmental anthropology is the study of how people interact with environments, past and present. This course explores how humans have affected their environments over time and how environment shapes human culture, employing an interdisciplinary anthropological perspective to illuminate these reciprocal interactions. This course uses a variety of approaches to understand how people interact with environments, employing cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological methods. This course covers human adaptation to environmental change from earliest prehistory up to the present day and students will have the opportunity to explore the practical and interpretive dilemmas of environmental challenges of the 21st century and beyond.
ARCH 1873 Imperialism and Environmental Change (HIST 1976I)
Interested students must register for HIST 1976I.
Empires conquer and control territory to enrich their ruling elites, often transforming the environments of these regions to make them more productive and profitable. This course will examine how empires have reorganized the landscapes of the regions they conquered from the ancient empires of Rome and China to the modern overseas empires of Europe and Japan and the informal American empire.
ARCH 1874 The Anthropocene: The Past and Present of Environmental Change (ENVS 1910)
Interested students must register for ENVS 1910.
Scholars in many disciplines have begun using the term the Anthropocene to signal a geological epoch defined by human activity. This seminar examines the Anthropocene idea from the perspective of environmental history. What activities might have changed the planet – the use of fire thousands of years ago, or agriculture, or fossil fuels? Is the Anthropocene another term for climate change, or does it include pollution and extinction? Is it a useful concept? Drawing on anthropology and the sciences as well as history, we will use the Anthropocene to think through environmental change and the human relationship with the non-human world. WRIT
ARCH 1875 Sustainability Past and Present
Global warming and climate change are increasingly urgent realities in our daily lives. However, ours is not the first society that has struggled with issues of conservation, governance, infrastructure, and resilience. This course will introduce students to the social and ecological challenges of sustainability, past and present, through the lens of archaeology and the emerging discipline of political ecology -- including scientific, technological, and social strategies for sustainability. This includes asking the crucial question, "sustainable for whom?" -- who benefits from (or is most harmed by) environmental policies and transformations?
ARCH 1876 How to Do Things with Maps: Cartography, Power, and Political Imagination, from Gilgamesh to Google (HMAN)
Interested students must register for HMAN.
Maps are among our richest media, but they are far from neutral representations of the world: they both create and exceed it. This course critically examines the history and future of cartography, devoting particular attention to the role that maps and map-making have played in the emergence and persistence of different forms of social power and political imagination. Among other topics, we consider how maps have shaped property and class relations; state sovereignty and royal authority; colonialism and imperialism; national and ethnic identities; migration and citizenship; and the relationship between humankind and nature, earth and the cosmos. Class meetings will include visits to museums and archives and experimentation with critical mapping techniques. In final projects, students will create and curate their own maps.
ARCH 1877 The Pictured Text (ANTH 1830 and HIAA 1212 )
Interested students must register for ANTH 1830 or HIAA 1212.
Writing makes language visible, and thus concerns images. Language also delimits the legibility of imagery. Turning words into images and images into words occurs at great speed around us. This course explores the relation of text and image across world traditions—Chinese, Mayan, Egyptian, Islamic, Greco-Roman, and others, extending up to the present. Topics include: calligraphy, context, scribal practice, the form and shape of writing, including typography, hidden or pseudo-writing, graffiti, and contemporary art.
ARCH 1878 Illustrating and Interpreting the Past: Visual Representation in Archaeology (ANTH 1470)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1470.
Archaeologists investigate culture using material artifacts as evidence about the past, but in order to communicate and compare that evidence, they must turn to technologies of reproduction and representation. This course traces the evolution of archaeological illustration, and its contributions to our knowledge of the past, in the context of technological and intellectual change over time. It explores the most up-to-date methods of archaeological illustration and their current place and future directions in the digital humanities. Working with objects from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, students will acquire experience in traditional and cutting-edge illustration techniques.
ARCH 1879 A World in Color: Seeing and Feeling Colors in the Ancient World
Historical facts are often described as black and white: gritty, unfiltered reality. But to picture the ancient world in all its colors is to see a fuller picture of the beauty, luxury, meaning, and cultural struggles of the past. Adding color is in itself a controversial act: scholars have received death threats for asserting that marble statues were not pristine white in antiquity. This class investigates the meaning of color as a culturally mediated, embedded, and charged phenomenon, using not just art historical approaches, but contemporary critical theory, material culture studies, linguistics, and economics.
ARCH 1880 Geofizz!: Archaeo-Geophysical Data Visualization
Geophysical survey data act as primary information for locating archaeological sites, and contribute new perspectives when investigating existing sites. This course will develop students’ understanding of basic geophysical processes, through hands-on field-based data acquisition with ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and resistance survey techniques. We will also experiment with approaches to data management and visualization. The course will conclude with students conducting a comprehensive multi-technique field survey of an archaeological site.
ARCH 1881 An Introduction to GIS and Spatial Analysis for Anthropologists and Archaeologists (ANTH 1201)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1201.
This course serves as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and (to a lesser extent, the histories) that motivate geographic information systems and their employment in anthropological and archaeological scholarship. GIS brings together traditional cartographic principles, computer-assisted analytical cartography, relational database design, and digital image processing and analysis to enable people to develop geospatial databases, analyze those databases, and use maps and other visual representations as part of this analysis. No previous work in GIS or computer programming is necessary. Previous computer experience with MS Windows operating systems is helpful.
ARCH 1882 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems for Environmental Applications (GEOL 1320)
Interested students must register for GEOL 1320.
Introduction to the concepts of geospatial analysis and digital mapping. The principles of spatial data structures, coordinate systems, and database design are covered. Related work in image databases also discussed. Extensive hands-on training in ESRI-based geographic information system software will be provided. Focal point of class is the completion of student-selected research project employing GIS methods.
ARCH 1883 Global Environmental Remote Sensing (GEOL 1330)
Interested students must register for GEOL 1330.
Introduction to physical principles of remote sensing across electromagnetic spectrum and application to the study of Earth's systems (oceans, atmosphere, and land). Topics: interaction of light with materials, imaging principles and interpretation, methods of data analysis. Laboratory work in digital image analysis, classification, and multi-temporal studies. One field trip to Block Island. Recommended preparation courses: MATH 0090, 0100; PHYS 0060; and background courses in natural sciences.
ARCH 1884 Remote Sensing of Earth and Planetary Surfaces (GEOL 1710)
Interested students must register for GEOL 1710.
Geologic applications of remotely sensed information derived from interaction of electromagnetic radiation (X-ray, gamma-ray, visible, near-IR, mid-IR, radar) with geologic materials. Applications emphasize remote geochemical analyses for both terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. Several spectroscopy and image processing labs. GEOL 0230, PHYS 0060, or equivalent recommended.
ARCH 1887 Illustrating Knowledge (HIAA 1101A)
Interested students must register for HIAA 1101A.
This seminar will investigate the history of illustration from the first manuscript maps and printed herbals to the present, including paintings, photographs, and computer imaging. We will investigate the role of pictures in the exchange of scientific ideas, and modes of representation developed in both the arts and the sciences. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.
ARCH 1890 Lost Languages
Humans make many marks, but it is writing that records, in tangible form, the sounds and meanings of language. Creating scripts is momentous; writing facilitates complex society and is a crucial means of cultural expression. This course addresses the nature of writing in past times. Topics include: the technology of script; its precursors and parallel notations; its emergence, use, and "death"; its change over time, especially in moments of cultural contact and colonialism; writing as a physical object or thing; code-breaking and decipherment, including scripts not yet deciphered; and the nature of non-writing or pseudo- or crypto-scripts.
ARCH 1892 Non-Destructive Archaeology: Reconstructing the Past from Geophysics to Drones
Archaeology is not just digging! As archaeologists have become more cautious about excavation, technological developments have transformed our ability to detect the past. We can now analyze entire settlements through the aid of drones, spy satellites, magnetometers, and ground penetrating radar. Yet such technologies come at a social and ethical cost – particularly pertaining to indigenous rights, private property, and mass surveillance. Through hands-on training, lectures, and discussion, this course explores the methods and theory behind archaeological remote sensing and geophysics, and the legal framework and ethical issues around these approaches.
ARCH 1900 The Archaeology of College Hill
A training class in field and laboratory techniques. Topics include the nature of field archaeology, excavation and survey methodologies, archaeological ethics, computer technologies (such as GIS), and site and artifact analysis and conservation. Students will act as practicing archaeologists through the investigation of local historical and archaeological sites in the College Hill area (e.g. the First Baptist Church of America and the John Brown House).
ARCH 1904A Memories, Memorials, Collections and Commemorations (AMCV 1904A)
Interested students must register for AMCV 1904A.
ARCH 1970 Individual Study Project in Old World Archaeology and Art
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
ARCH 1990 Senior Honors Thesis in Archaeology and the Ancient World
Honors students in Archaeology and the Ancient World who are completing their theses should enroll in this course in their final semester. The subject of the thesis and program of study will be determined by the needs of the individual student. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
Primarily for Graduates
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ARCH 2000 Research Methods in Archaeology
Familiarizes beginning old world archaeology and art graduate students and graduate students from neighboring disciplines, as well as advanced undergraduate students, with the methods, history, and bibliography of the field.
ARCH 2006 Principles of Archaeology (ANTH 2501)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2501.
Examines theoretical and methodological issues in anthropological archaeology. Attention is given to past concerns, current debates, and future directions of archaeology in the social sciences.
ARCH 2010 Problems in Old World Archaeology
ARCH 2010A Ancient Numismatics
Deals with problems in ancient numismatics from these topics: introduction of coinage, major coinages of archaic Greece, coinage of 4th C.B.C. in the Greek west and Roman coinage of 3rd C.B.C.
ARCH 2010B Approaches to Archaeological Survey in the Old World (Anthropology 263)
Recent decades have witnessed a marked development of interest in regional approaches to the ancient world and its landscapes. This seminar will explore the history of this development, as well as survey’s impact on the work of both ancient historians and archaeologists. Topics to be covered include survey design and methodology, and the wider implications and lessons of regional analysis.
ARCH 2010C Architecture, Body, and Performance in the Ancient Near Eastern World
This seminar investigates the relationship between bodily practices, social performances, and production of space, using case studies drawn from ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Syria. Employing contemporary critical theories on the body, materiality, and social practices, new theories of the making of architectural spaces and landscapes will be explored with respect to multiple geographical, historical contexts in the Ancient Near East.
ARCH 2010D Archaeology and Religion: Excavating the Sacred from Prehistory to Islam (Religious Studies 2030)
This course explores methodological approaches and theoretical underpinnings of scholarly (and sometimes unpopular) interpretations of the archaeological record as evidence for the religious life of past societies, considering how archaeologists have treated the analytical categories of ritual, religion, ideology, and the sacred. These discussions will be examined through Mediterranean case studies as a key region in the archaeology of religion.
ARCH 2010E Archaeology in the Information Age
Archaeology must circulate the material past in two dimensions. The right combination of image (maps, plans, photographs) and text has long defined professional archaeology. However, the current explosion of digital media has spurred profound shifts in all domains of archaeological practice and documentation. This course encourages reevaluation of archaeological media, which pertains to information technology across the humanities and sciences.
ARCH2010F GIS and Remote Sensing: Advanced Applications in Archaeology
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and various forms of remote sensing are increasingly essential components of good archaeological practice. This advanced course is intended primarily for students with some background in GIS software, and who have evolved a relevant research project to develop over the course of the term. Less advanced graduate students may enroll with permission of the instructor and will be provided with additional tutorial instruction.
ARCH 2010G Ethical Issues in Archaeology
Graduate students will certainly confront ethical, legal, and professional issues in the course of their own doctoral research and subsequent careers. This seminar offers a forum for open, but well-informed, discussion of a variety of significant ethical problems and dilemmas currently facing the discipline of archaeology worldwide. We will give attention to practical matters arising from archaeological field research, as well as a wide range of difficult questions concerning ownership and presentation of the past.
ARCH 2010Z The Archaeology of Empires (Anthropology 2500, Classics 2070)
Empires have been among the most influential political and social formations in global history. This seminar will explore general literature on imperial genesis, consolidation and decline, as well as considering the specific and unique contributions archaeology and art history can offer to the understanding of empire. A variety of case studies will be explored, with selections depending on student interest.
ARCH 2020 Research Seminar in Greek Art and Architecture
May be repeated for credit.
ARCH 2020A Greek Vase Painting
ARCH 2020B Topography of the City of Athens
ARCH 2020C Pausanias's Guidebook to Greece
ARCH 2020D Greek Painting
Major developments in the history of Greek painting with special emphasis on archaic and classical Greek culture as reflected in vase painting. There will be field trips to area museums which may take longer than class time.
ARCH 2020E Economy and Trade in the Later Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean
Beginning with an examination of the workings of the Mycenaean palace economy, including the evidence of Linear B documents, this seminar will then turn to a more inclusive consideration of trade and exchange involving Aegean states and their counterparts further east, and of the nature and extent of cultural interaction between them during the later Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1100 BC).
ARCH 2030 Research Seminar in Roman Art and Architecture
May be repeated for credit.
ARCH 2030A Late Roman and Early Christian Mosaics
Study of Christian, Jewish, and secular mosaics of the Late Roman period.
ARCH 2030B Problems in Roman Portraiture
ARCH 2030C Roman Copies of Greek Sculpture
Copies of masterpieces of classical sculpture. Since the Renaissance, certain masterpieces of Greek sculpture have become famous through Roman copies. The relationship between copy and original will be investigated along with its relevance to Roman taste.
ARCH 2030D Roman Historical Relief
The scope of this seminar will not be limited to traditional examples of 'Roman historical relief' — that is, architectural reliefs charged with historical and political significance — but will also embrace media such as cameos and silver plate that similarly carry such messages. We will be examining monuments dating from the Roman Republic through Late Antiquity.
ARCH 2030E Roman Sculpture in East Coast Museums
ARCH 2030F The Archaeology of Constantinian Rome
Selected topics related to the monuments of Constantinian Rome, both secular and ecclesiastical.
ARCH 2030G Wall Paintings from Pompeii
Interpretations of Campanian frescoes.
ARCH 2040 Research Seminar in Old World Archaeology
May be repeated for credit.
ARCH 2040A The Cities of the Decapolis
Examines the archeological evidence of the Decapolis, an administrative district or region of Greek cities located in northern Transjordan, southern Syria, and northern Palestine. The sites of most Decapolis cities have been surveyed and several have been extensively excavated. Excavation reports and their scholarly evaluations will form the basis for this course.
ARCH 2040B The Parthenon
ARCH 2040C Value and Exchange
ARCH 2040D Genealogies of Complexity in East Asia (3000-221 BCE)
Despite East Asia's rich archaeological and historical record, its early political (pre)histories have been more sites for theoretical projection than theoretical innovation. Focusing on mainland East Asia, we will engage political theory and its applications in case studies from the Neolithic to the first Empires. Topics will range from mortuary rituals to practices of social violence and sources include both material culture and text.
ARCH 2040E International Cultural Heritage: Creating a Future for the Past
From the Parthenon to Puccini to pizza, cultural heritage can be defined as places, objects, and ideas from the past that have survived to the present. This course will examine the theories, methods, and questions that shape the effort to protect and interpret cultural heritage today as well as responses to them. We will explore issues such as current threats to cultural heritage, the role of tourism and impacts of development, questions of authenticity and identity, international law, ethics, and emerging and non-traditional areas of the field.
ARCH 2040F Public Culture and Heritage in Postapartheid South Africa
This course examines the complex processes whereby issues of culture, race, identity/ subjectivity, globalization, memory and heritage are being reframed and rethought in post-apartheid South Africa. We will be guided by three broad themes: public histories; archives and knowledges; and questions of performance. Of all possible settings, post-apartheid South Africa may present one of the most challenging – at times troubling – contexts through which to consider such public negotiations and meanings.
ARCH 2040G Designing Heritages: From Archaeological Sensibilites to Relational Heritages (AMCV 2654)
Interested students must register for AMCV 2654.
Do you believe in the past? This course takes as its starting assumption that pasts are not temporally distant from today. They are contemporary experiences whose structure and mediation impact how we live in our shared world. This course will explore the intellectual history of archaeological thought and the development of heritage theory. While simultaneously exploring practical design skills, it will provide context to contemporary synergies between art, archaeology and heritage studies through interdisciplinary studies of architecture, art history, cultural criticism, heritage studies and archaeological theory.
ARCH 2040H Imperial Cities
What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Tenochtitlan with London? Beijing with Rome? Cuzco with Persepolis? All are capital cities of imperial systems, each shaping and reflecting the nature of the empire, its ruling ideology, and its social and economic infrastructure. The category of "imperial cities", however, must extend beyond these primate centers, to consider the urban networks in play across each empire's territorial reach, and beyond.
ARCH 2041 Mesoamerican Archaeology and Ethnohistory (ANTH 2520)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2520.
Seminar focusing on current issues in the archaeology and history of Mesoamerica, including Mexico and Northern Central America. Draws on rich resources at Brown, including the John Carter Brown Library.
ARCH 2050 Glimpses of Mesopotamian History & Archaeology
A course dealing with the country's ancient history through the ages, giving an account of the most prominent discoveries made and reviewing the leading problems of Mesopotamian archaeology.
ARCH 2090 The Nabataeans† (ANTH 2010)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2010.
ARCH 2100 Things! The Material Worlds of Humanity
This course explores the relationships between people and things. From archaeology to material culture studies, from philosophy to science studies, we will examine a wide variety of approaches to the world of objects, artifacts, and material goods. Perspectives will include materialist approaches, consumption studies (including notions of fetish), phenomenology, social constructivism, cognitive approaches, actor-network-theory, and more.
ARCH 2101 Material Matters (ANTH 2515)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2515.
In the past decade there has been a growing interest in the study of material culture as an explicitly interdisciplinary endeavor involving the fields of anthropology, archaeology, art history, literary theory, museum studies, and philosophy, among many others. These perspectives exhibit a range of approaches to interrogating how people make things, how things make people, how objects mediate social relationships, and how inanimate objects can be argued as having a form of agency. This graduate seminar is designed to encourage reflection upon material culture and its influence in shaping our lives.
ARCH 2105 Ceramic Analysis for Archaeology
The analysis and the interpretation of ceramic remains allow archaeologists to accomplish varied ends: establish a time scale, document interconnections between different areas, and suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites. The techniques and theories used to bridge the gap between the recovery of ceramics and their interpretation within anthropological contexts are the focus of this seminar.
ARCH 2110F Greek Palaeography and Premodern Book Cultures (GREK 2110F)
Interested students must register for GREK 2110F.
Introduction to pre-modern Greek book culture and the study of Greek literary scripts from classical antiquity to the Renaissance. Students become acquainted with the history of books, the context and agents of their production, and the transmission of Greek (classical as well as postclassical) literature. Training is provided in reading and dating different scripts and in editing ancient texts.
ARCH 2112 Roman Epigraphy (LATN 2120A)
Interested students must register for LATN 2120A.
A practical introduction to the study of Latin inscriptions, with emphasis on the reading, editing, and interpretation of texts on stone. Class time will be divided between discussion of various categories of texts in the light of the 'epigraphic habit', literacy, and the sociology of reading in antiquity and hands-on experience with editing inscriptions on stone.
ARCH 2113 Research Seminar in Medieval Art: Representing the Past: Archaeology through Image and Text (HIAA 2140)
Interested students must register for the appropriate section of History of Art and Architecture 2140.
ARCH 2114 Archaeologies of Texts (ASYR 2800)
Interested students must register for ASYR 2800.
An interdisciplinary seminar that examines the interplay between ancient texts and archaeology in the study of the ancient world. The emphasis will be on articulating the research methods and assumptions distilled from case studies set in the ancient Near East, Mediterranean, East Asia, and the Americas. Topics will include: canons of literature as/versus ancient inscriptions; materiality of text; texts on display, in deposits, in archives, in libraries, as refuse; literacy and education; practices of documentation and analysis; writing, language, and 'ethnicity'; historical geography; fakes and forgeries; ancient texts and archaeological ethics. No prerequisites. Intended primarily for graduate students.
ARCH 2115 Ancient Mediterranean Scripts: Origins, Contact, Obsolescence
Writing systems abounded in the ancient Mediterranean: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mesopotamian cuneiform, and the linear scripts of the Aegean are only a few of dozens of systems that people in the region have used to record language over millennia. Who wrote first and why? What “killed” hieroglyphs and cuneiform? What happens when a literate culture comes into contact with another without writing? Why do these questions matter now that the alphabet seems to reign supreme?
ARCH 2116 The Pictured Text (HIAA 2212)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2212.
Writing makes language visible, and thus concerns images. Language also delimits the legibility of imagery. Turning words into images and images into words occurs at great speed around us. This course explores the relation of text and image across world traditions—Chinese, Mayan, Egyptian, Islamic, Greco-Roman, and others, extending up to the present. Topics include: calligraphy, context, scribal practice, the form and shape of writing, including typography, hidden or pseudo-writing, graffiti, and contemporary art.
ARCH 2117 Marking Meaning: Visual Signs, Language, and Graphic Invention (HMAN 2401V)
Interested students must register for HMAN 2401V.
To be human is to make many marks: tags and emblems of identity, memory aids that direct and guide human action, and writing that records the sounds and meanings of language, or that might exult in the purposively meaningless asemic script. This process reveals the powers of human invention and facilitates and deepens the “graphospheres” that envelop human life. Visible, concrete signs form an environment from which people construct and construe meaning. This collaborative humanities seminar addresses the nature of graphs from past to present. Topics include: the technology of graphs; their many precursors and parallel notations; their emergence, use, and “death”; their development over time, especially in moments of cultural contact and colonialism; their setting and presence as physical things; the perils and possibilities of their interpretation; acts of grapholatry and graphoclasm; and the nature of non-writing.
ARCH 2140 The Marriage of Archaeological Science and Social Theory
What do ceramics, lithics, building materials and metals tell us about the people who used them? Do high-tech analytical methods contribute to a deeper understanding of the past or simply muddy the waters? Theoretically, we will challenge the objectivity of ‘science’ and the value of archaeological taxonomies, as they relate to the construction of archaeological narratives. The ultimate objective in this course is to access the symmetrical social relationships between people and things, through the medium of the archaeological materials, as understood through the application of scientific techniques.
ARCH 2142 Facture: East and West (HIAA 2870F)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2870F.
Objects are the tangible outcomes of available means of making. One can't understand the maker's choices unless one understands the maker's practical options. This seminar focuses on the materiality of objects by grounding them in the fundamentals of making material culture in Asia and the West – that is, facture. We explore ceramic technologies; lapidary crafts, and mosaics; metallurgy; painting mediums and surfaces; mass-production, and modules; realized outcomes of computer-assisted design. Instruction includes lecture-demonstrations by guest practitioners and site-visits to foundries, studios, conservation laboratories. Readings span history of technology, science and aesthetics, contemporary writings on the "thingness" of art history.
ARCH 2143 Asian Reprographics A Long History of Impression (HIAA 2210)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2210.
This seminar examines the early history of reprography in East Asia. Defining reprography broadly to encompass all pre-photographic technologies of graphic impression, it explores the transfers that occurred within and between piece-mold bronze casting, ceramic molding, sealing, rubbing, and woodblock printing as they developed in succession and tandem over the past four millennia. In particular, the seminar considers the extent to which technics of transfer facilitated the movement of images across medium and time.
ARCH 2145 Technology and Production in Archaeology: Anthropological Foundations and Contemporary Theory
An intensive focus on theoretical approaches to technology and production that have shaped archaeological thinking over the past century and have formed the basis of many of the contemporary issues in the field. Students will read and critically assess key works about concepts of production and technology in various cross-cultural archaeological contexts. Seminar themes include political economy, specialization, technology transfer, cross-craft production, power dynamics, ritual, and tool use.
ARCH 2147 Ancient Technology and Culture: An Exploration
Few things are as emblematic of Roman cultural and political power as aqueducts. But who built them and how? Where did, for example, the technicians responsible for measuring the slope of a water-channel learn their craft and who did they learn it from? Were there any female surveyors? Using an ambitious interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence this course will explore not just aqueduct-makers, but also such specialists as military-engineers and architects, as well as miners, potters, mosaicists, and quarrymen. The purpose of this course is to explore the cultural impact of technology in the Greek and Roman world. Rather than inspecting merely the tunnel of Eupalinos or the Pont du Gard, we will study the social practices that made such monuments possible, and also the changing social attitudes to the technicians who designed and constructed them.
ARCH 2150 Theoretical Issues in Archaeology
The goal of this seminar is to examine the state of archaeological theory, with special emphasis on archaeological practice and interpretation in the Mediterranean, Egypt and ancient western Asia. While providing some measure of historical overview, the class chiefly offers an opportunity for students to read and critique recent writings that exemplify the variety of contemporary approaches to this subject.
ARCH 2151 Slow Archaeology: Thinking Things through in Archaeological Theory and Philosophy
This course questions the so-called paradigm shifts in our discipline -- ‘the spatial turn’, ‘the material turn’, or the ‘the ontological turn’ -- to discuss the way archaeological theory has developed in academia. Students will explore theoretical angles other than the ‘usual suspects’ in archaeological theory to creatively rethink individual research. We will take a philosophical approach to critically and carefully discuss academic archaeology and our roles, our engagement, and future as scholars within an institutional culture that often seems to be dominated by individual achievement, speed, and efficiency. What ideas might emerge if we all just slowed down?
ARCH 2153 Archaeological Ethnography: A Multi-Temporal Contact Zone
In this course, we will examine the emerging field of archaeological ethnography, a shared space of interaction between social anthropologists and archaeologists, and between scholars and the various local communities around archaeological sites. Our main focus will be the Sanctuary of Poseidon on the island of Poros in Greece, the epicenter of a long-term archaeological ethnography project, started in 2007. We will place the site in global comparative perspective, and debate together the challenges in producing an archaeological ethnography monograph.
ARCH 2154 Anthropology of War and Violence in the Archaeological Past (ANTH 2580)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2580.
This course is an overview of anthropological archaeological approaches to war, violence, and peace. We will begin by reviewing past and current social scientific thinking on the past six million years of human war and violence. We will consider in greater detail how anthropological archaeologists conduct research regarding ancient war and violence. Special attention will be given to the role of war and violence in statecraft and the (de)construction of society. We will consider some of the methodologies employed in the study of ancient violence including, landscape archaeology, art and iconography, and bioarchaeology.
ARCH 2155 History, Anthropology, and Archaeology: Disciplinary Dialogues
Archaeology has always occupied an uneasy space between the fields of anthropology and history. This seminar examines the interplay of theories and methods in all three spheres of scholarship, with an emphasis on current inter- and trans- disciplinary research. Several fundamental 20th century dialogues between anthropologists and historians will be reviewed, and key topics in contemporary archaeology explored in relation to those debates.
ARCH 2156 Other Pasts: Alternative Ontologies in the Study of What Was
Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists have become increasingly aware that “the past” is not a self-evident concept. What counts as a meaningful trace of former times is under constant negotiation, and strategies of exploring such traces are shaped by dizzyingly variable cultural norms and individual interpretations. This class asks what “the past” was (and is) in other times and places, especially among communities whose notions of materiality, temporality, causality, and agency differ fundamentally from modern western scientific ones. Can we study those pasts? If so, how?
ARCH 2157 Subaltern Communities: Archaeological Perspectives Beyond Domination and Resistance
Mediterranean (pre)history is usually cast in terms of an inexorable rise of state domination and colonial exploitation under the euphemistic label of ‘social complexity’. This seminar will examine and highlight the role of ‘people without history’ not by simply pitching them as rebels against dominant powers but by exploring the subtle and manifold connections that interweave subaltern communities with hegemonic groups.
ARCH 2158 Decolonial Matters: Thinking from the South (HMAN 2401M)
Interested students must register for HMAN 2401M.
This collaborative humanities seminar considers colonization as a material condition and focuses on decolonial practices from the ‘south’ that engage the matter and materiality of things, objects, artefacts, and landscapes, from archaeological remains to museum objects, works of art, and contemporary material traces of migration and border crossing. We will interrogate the material and racial basis of the 'south' and explore modes of thinking and practice (from indigenous perspectives to contemporary art) that can suture the relationship between objects and people. The seminar will also function as a workshop for student collaborations on decolonial experiments with material objects/sites.
ARCH 2160 The Archaeology of Democracy: Social Transformations in Ancient Greece
Between 900 and 600 BCE, profound social transformations took place in Greece, setting the stage for a revolution in political form: by 500, Athens was collectively governed by its citizen body. This course engages with the everyday materialities underlying Greek democracy of this era. Focusing on relationships among people and things, students will reassess of the composition of the demos from the ground up.
ARCH 2165 The “Second Sophistic”: Archaeological and Literary Approaches
The cultural phenomenon of the “Second Sophistic” affected both the material fabric and the intellectual life of the eastern Roman empire of the second/third centuries CE. This course will examine how awareness of "Greek" learning (paideia) and the "Greek" past informed people's literary and artistic tastes, as well as their responses to changing political and religious pressures, affecting everything from civic coinage to elite dining habits and even bodily comportment.
ARCH 2170 Archaeology of Greek and Punic Colonization
This course investigates cultural interaction at local and regional scales between 'colonists' and locals, introducing students to a range of case study material across the Mediterranean. This will focus on material from the eighth to sixth centuries BC from Iberia, France, Italy, North Africa, and the Black Sea. Examples of Etruscan colonization will also be explored. The concept of 'colonization' will be critically examined, along with how it has been treated by archaeologists and ancient historians over the past century.
ARCH 2175 Archaeology and Modernity
Past societies, it is commonly supposed, differ fundamentally from our own. From antiquarians and artists to topographers and landscape archaeologists; from travelogues, maps and landscape painting to regional syntheses and survey reports, this course explores the history of archaeology and its relationship to modernity. It engages issues relating to the rise of the nation state, imperialism, and colonialism and the uses of the material past in these processes. It will explore issues related to the antiquity of humankind, the Heritage industry, museums, collecting culture and tourism.
ARCH 2176 The World of Late Antiquity (CLAS 2100G)
Interested students must register for CLAS 2100G.
Focused on the Mediterranean world between the third and ninth centuries CE, this seminar introduces students to the study of late antiquity and the early middle ages from a multidisciplinary perspective. Class sessions focus on the intensive reading of a small collection of closely-related primary sources in the original language and contextualizing them through a grounding in other disciplines essential to the study of ancient and medieval history, including archaeology, codicology, palaeography, numismatics, and prosopography. Topics vary by semester and may include such themes as the body, emotional and psychological histories, trauma, slavery, violence, “barbarians,” or interfaith interaction. Prerequisite: Latin.
ARCH 2177 Global Medieval (HIAA 2440F)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2440F.
The seminar will examine the concept of the 'global' middle ages, looking critically at periodicity, style, culture contact and technologies. We will survey recent historical literature on global medieval topics, and will look critically at art and architectural history’s treatment of global themes. The class will constructing a collaborative syllabus that develops new pedagogic strategies for teaching medieval art and architecture in a global context.
ARCH 2178 Afterlife of Antiquity (HIAA 2440D)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2440D.
This seminar will consider the survival, revival and adaptive reuse of older objects, texts and built spaces in the visual and material culture of successor cultures. We will look critically at the literature on the archaeology of memory, "Renaissance and revival, spolia studies and adaptive reuse." The seminar will examine selected case studies, including the reuse of sculptural elements in the Arch of Constantine, the conversion of Pantheon into a church and Hagia Sophia into a mosque, appropriated elements in the Qutb mosque in Delhi and the adaptation of the Bankside Power Station as the Tate Gallery.
ARCH 2179 Frameworks of Antiquity: Disciplines, Discourses, Politics (HMAN 2401G)
Interested students must register for HMAN 2401G.
At least since decolonization, the study of antiquity has been a battleground for conflicting projects (imperial, colonial, national, indigenous, religious, feminist and queer, etc.). This seminar explores disciplinary formations that have supplied rival groups with cognitive maps, narratives of identity formation and transformation, and assets for real and symbolic capital. We will explore key disciplinary sites of debate—in archaeology, philology, philosophy, Scriptural and Classical studies, and history—concerning the distribution of groups (of people, languages, races), the establishment of spatial and temporal boundaries, and the limits of what can be argued, shown, possessed, and claimed to be true.
ARCH 2180 Memory and Materiality
What is the difference between memory, facts, and knowledge? This course uses memory as a lens through which to view recent critical theory and questions how theories of memory and materiality can be used by archaeologists to better understand the past.
ARCH 2184 Material Culture and the Bodily Senses: Past and Present
How do the senses shape our experience? How many senses are there? How do ancient and modern art and material culture relate to bodily senses? What is material and sensorial memory, and how does it structure time and temporality? Using media and objects, including archaeological and ethnographic collections at Brown and beyond, this course will study how a sensorial perspective on materiality can reshape and reinvigorate research dealing with past and present material culture. Furthermore, we will explore how sensoriality and affectivity can decenter the dominant western modernist canon of the autonomous individual.
ARCH 2185 Sensing Antiquity: New Approaches to Ancient Aesthetics and Sensoria
How did the Greeks and Romans perceive and discuss the beautiful and the ugly? The fragrant or malodorous? The ticklish and the tart? These may seem like difficult questions, even bizarre, and yet, in many ways, those past opinions inform our own experience of the world. This course is an exploration, through archaeological and literary primary sources, of the many ways in which ancient men and women interacted through their senses with the world around them and how they reflected upon that interaction.
ARCH 2200 Evolution of Old World States and Civilizations in Comparative Perspective
The origins, evolution, and nature of ancient states have always constituted central problems of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, but in recent years they have undergone radical critique. This seminar will consider modern studies on state formation, social structure and change in early states, with a primary emphasis on so-called ‘Old World’ cases, for example on ancient Mesopotamia and Greece.
ARCH 2225 Beyond Decline and Fall: New Perspectives on the Late Antique Mediterranean
This seminar will examine the Mediterranean from the fall of Rome to the Arab conquests (AD400-700), interrogating models of decline, catastrophe and transformation through the most recent archaeology of the region. We will explore key themes such as decline and fall, post-Roman state-formation, urbanism, rural settlement, Christianisation and ethnic, social and religious identities, and compare the different trajectories of Europe, Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean in this period.
ARCH 2227 Approaching Ancient Economies
The inhabitants of the Greek, Roman, and Late Antique worlds made decisions about families, food, work, homes, and religion based on a complex web of economic factors that included not just agriculture but also sectors such as mining, crafts, manufacturing, and trade. Economic activities were ubiquitous across the ancient world, yet it remains challenging to assess their nature and scale. This course engages with the large amount of archaeological data that can now be brought to bear on ancient economies, situating this material within its historical, political, geographical, and chronological contexts to examine the ways in which the inhabitants of the ancient world participated in their economic landscape.
ARCH 2228 Prosperity in Antiquity
What did it mean to be prosperous in antiquity, and how do we identify this in the archaeological record? What methodologies can we use to conceptualize and evaluate privilege in the ancient world? This course investigates material evidence for prosperity at individual, community, and state levels, seeking to understand how lives were affected by broader societal prosperity. We’ll address questions of inequality, explore the impact of technological developments, and consider how literacy, art, and entertainment contributed to a different quality of life for the wealthy.
ARCH 2230 Material Networks: Migration and Trade in the Ancient West Mediterranean
This course investigates trans-regional and trans-cultural practices of Mediterranean peoples of the first millennium BC on a comparative basis through the combined lenses of materiality, migration, trade, colonial encounters, hybridization and connectivity or insularity. We will explore how 'things' mediated the experience of ancient Mediterranean peoples, both helping to shape and informed by long-term collective memories of movement, colonization and localization.
ARCH 2235 One Sea for All: Economic, Social and Artistic Interaction in the Medieval Mediterranean
This seminar explores the phenomenon of interaction in the Medieval Mediterranean. We will study how, even in times of conflict, Byzantines created and maintained networks of ideological, commercial and artistic communication with the Arabs, the Slavs, the Latins, and the Ottomans. How did such encounters, among people of such different faiths, languages, and world-views, influence the political, economic and social transformations of the Medieval world?
ARCH 2240 Key Issues in Mediterranean Prehistory
This course's scope is the entire Mediterranean basin, from its first peopling until ca. 500 BC. The focus is on key transformations in economic, social, and political structures and interactions; on explanations for these changes; and on current issues where fresh data or new approaches are transforming our understanding. This seminar is intended for students both with and without prior knowledge of this field, and particularly for those preparing for the Mediterranean Prehistory field exam.
ARCH 2245 Rural Landscapes and Peasant Communities in the Mediterranean
The broad aim of this course is to explore rural settlement and agrarian production in the Mediterranean, both in the ancient and the recent past. The archaeological starting-point is provided by the numerous scatters of surface remains that archaeological surveys across the Mediterranean have collected and that are usually interpreted as 'farmsteads' broadly datable to Classical Antiquity. We will look well beyond these scatters to examine the social and economic significance of rural settlement through comparison with ethnographic and historical rural studies from across the Mediterranean and to explore household and community organisation as well as agrarian production in Classical Antiquity.
ARCH 2250 Island Archaeology in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is a world of islands, par excellence, and the island cultures that have developed there over the millennia have great archaeological distinctiveness. This seminar will consider the concept of insularity itself, in cross-cultural archeological, anthropological, and historical perspective. We will then turn to the rich, specifically Mediterranean literature on island archaeology (exploring issues of colonization, settlement, interaction).
ARCH 2255 Coastal Values: Archaeology and Paleoecology of Coastal and Island Environments
People like to live by the water. What characteristics (social, economic, environmental) make coastal environments so attractive? What are the effects of human settlement on these environments? How do societies adapt (or not) to changing coastal environments? This seminar takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions, applying the lessons of the past to the challenges of the present through an explicitly diachronic, cross-cultural, and data-driven approach to examining human-environmental interaction in coastal settings.
ARCH 2263 Geoaesthetics and the Environmental Humanities (HIAA 2215)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2215.
This seminar critically examines recent formulations of “the planetary” in the environmental humanities. Proceeding from close examination of historically-specific artistic practices, ranging from the medieval sculpture of China’s “Mountain that Flew” to the land art of the 1960s, it excavates the predispositions and assumptions embodied in particular “geoaesthetics,” and situates these aesthetics in the long history of human efforts to transcend the temporal and spatial scale of the human body. Moving from the “climatic artistry” of the medieval Deccan and the thinking forests of the Amazonian Runa to the formation of modern geological science and the creation of the metric system, it considers the challenge of a deep history of geoaesthetics to contemporary theorizations of hyperobjects, planetarity, and the Anthropocene.
ARCH 2265 Nature and Society in the Ancient World
What is ‘nature’? Is human society separate and distinct from the ‘natural’ world, or a closely-entwined part? Historical investigations often simplify this relationship to one-sided explanations of social or environmental determinism, missing the lived reality of people in their landscapes. This class explores the ecological reality of the ‘natural’ world in Antiquity, using archaeological, historical, and palaeo-environmental data to investigate these questions, focusing especially on the Roman and late-Roman periods.
ARCH 2290 Empire: Global Perspectives (HMAN 2402)
Interested students must register for HMAN 2402.
Empires — ancient, early modern, and contemporary — have profoundly shaped the distribution of wealth and power in the modern world. However, imperial formations are strikingly diverse, and many of the entities that scholars now call “empires” were not understood as such during their own times. This collaborative humanities graduate seminar explores that diversity and examines how empires rise, fall, and perdure. While taking a global, comparative perspective, we also attend to local processes, analyzing how landscapes, objects, and people were bound up with imperial trajectories in such contexts as the ancient Mediterranean, Persia, China, the Andes, the Early Modern Atlantic, and the contemporary world. We afford particular attention to local peoples' relationships with empires, environmental history, political economy, historiography, and imperial art and material culture.
ARCH 2295 State Formation in the Prehistoric Aegean
Outside the Near East and Egypt, Crete and mainland Greece were arguably the first areas within the Mediterranean to witness the appearance in the early second millennium BC of state-level societies. This seminar will critique some classic archaeological and anthropological texts on state formation, before turning to examine the available data on emerging complexity in the Minoan and Mycenaean worlds and theories to account for it.
ARCH 2300 The Rise (and Demise) of the State in the Near East
Discourses on state formation dominate archaeological explorations of Mesopotamia in association with social complexity, urbanization, long-distance trade, and development of writing. Archaeological evidence from the 4th-3rd millennia BC was incorporated into narratives of state from chiefdoms to empires, and linked to its ideologies and political economies. We will unpack this preoccupation with states in academic practice, while exploring case studies from Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Levant from 9000 to 2000 BC.
ARCH 2303 The Ancient Near East: Early Modern Intellectual Histories (ASYR 2100)
Interested students should register for ASYR 2100.
This course explores how the early modern study of the ancient Near East took shape, paying particular attention to relevant debates from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Students will engage in thorough analysis of topics such as the history of decipherment of cuneiform; the development of systematic archaeological excavation; the rise of historical linguistics; debates about the historical value of classical Greek and Roman sources on the ancient Near East; the entanglement of European imperialist projects beyond Europe and the expansion of first-hand knowledge about Mesopotamia; the role of local collaborators in the production of academic knowledge; the place of non-western cultures in European constructions of ancient history; etc. The course is primarily aimed at graduate students (or advanced undergraduates) interested in the history and archaeology of the region in antiquity and/or early modern intellectual history.
ARCH 2310 Cities in the Sand: The Archaeology of Urbanism in Mesopotamia
Images of legendary Mesopotamian cities, now wired with explosives or pockmarked with looters’ pits, flit daily across our screens. For more than a century, archaeologists have been working to uncover these early urban centers in Iraq and Syria, where the very idea of the city was first imagined. This seminar offers an introduction to the archaeology of urbanism and a detailed examination of the cities of Mesopotamia – from Uruk and Ur to Babylon and Baghdad.
ARCH 2313 Art & Visual Culture in the Ancient Near East (ASYR 2750)
Interested students should register for ASYR 2750.
Peoples of the Ancient Near East from prehistory to the Hellenistic period produced a unique corpus of production technologies and visual culture. Cultures from Anatolia to the Iraqi southern alluvium, from the Levant to Iran and the Caucasus shared this common pictorial language in a variety of ways. In this seminar, we will investigate bodies of archaeological, architectural and pictorial evidence from the Near East while also debating relevant art and architecture historical methodologies and discourses in direct relationship to that material. Conceptual issues such as narrative, representation, perspective, agency, technology, style, symbolism, landscape, space, and power will be explored. Enrollment limited to 15.
ARCH 2320 Household Archaeology in the Ancient Near East and Beyond
House, home, household, family: defining these terms is not as easy as it might seem, especially across space and through time. After introducing the principles of household archaeology, this class will explore the state of this growing archaeological subfield in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. We will also draw on developments in New World archaeology in analyzing the potential and problems of household archaeology and in articulating its future directions.
ARCH 2330 Roman Asia Minor: The Empire Goes East
If one is curious about the dynamics of life within the Roman empire, the province of Asia makes an excellent case study. Its numerous urban centers and rural landscapes were socially and economically differentiated and frequently monumentally elaborated, as an increasing amount of varied archaeological data reveal. Asia offers a rich laboratory for exploring issues of provincial development, and ultimately decline, over the course of the empire.
ARCH 2335 In the Wake of Empire: Anatolia after the Hittites, before Alexander
Kings Croesus, Midas, and the much lesser known Warpalawas… Who were these people, when and where did they rule, and why does any of this matter? During the first millennium BCE, Anatolia was an astonishingly varied, multicultural and multilingual environment. This course will tackle head on the myriad archaeological, historical, and even linguistic challenges posed by this fascinating, but often-overlooked period in the history of the region.
ARCH 2340 The Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire: Cities, Landscapes and Material Culture
Ritual, war and conquest! The Assyrian Empire was a powerhouse in the ancient Near East with fearsome military expeditions, sumptuous cult festivals, grand cities, and complex governing systems. This course investigates the archaeology of Assyria from the trading center of Ashur in the second millennium BCE to the collapse of the empire in the 7th c. BCE. Using published excavations, surveys, and texts, we will explore Assyria’s material culture, landscape, cult practices and state ideology.
ARCH 2350 Archaeology of the Caucasus
The goal of this seminar is to provide students with an overview of the long-term archaeological record from the Caucasus and its near neighbors, as well as an understanding of the history of research in this area during Imperial Russian, Soviet, and contemporary times. Readings will cover a range of periods, prehistoric and historic, following the interests of the class.
ARCH 2400 Sacred Space: Archaeological and Religious Studies Perspectives
Innumerable cultures, past and present, have singled out specific locales and even whole landscapes as powerful vectors for communicating with the divine. This course will analyze such spaces for their ability to transform body, escape the material plane, and reconstitute social relations and bodily practice. Case studies will largely be drawn from the Mediterranean world and will employ an archaeological attention to the materiality of these sacred spaces. Key concepts will include: ritual practice, landscape production, memory and agency.
ARCH 2404 Archaeology of Ritual (ANTH 2570)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2570.
Many essential theoretical perspectives in anthropology have been built from the study of ritual. For archaeologists, evidence for ancient ritual is abundant, yet the reconstruction of ritual practice and meaning is both challenging and is often neglected in practice. We will take a comparative look at the archaeology of ritual in a global perspective. We will explore a variety of relevant anthropological and archaeological topics including, ritual practice, performance, the sacred (objects, sites, architecture, and landscape), ritual and power, domestic ritual, rites of the dead, sacrifice, and war. And of course, we will probe the question of what exactly constitutes "ritual."
ARCH 2406 Architecture of Solitude: The Medieval Monastery (formerly The Body in Medieval Art and Architecture) (HIAA2440B)
Interested students must register for HIAA2440B.
Religious men and women, as well as their patrons, sought to establish places of devotion and learning across the medieval landscape. This course examines the rise and development of the medieval monastery from its late antique beginnings in the deserts of Africa to the rise of the preaching orders in early thirteenth-century Europe. Emphasis will be placed upon the material expressions of western monasticism and upon the notion of the monastery as an architectural, archaeological and historical research problem through examination of individual case study examples.
ARCH 2407 Lived Bodies, Dead Bodies: The Archaeology of Human Remains (ANTH 2560)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2560.
Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological contexts. We will survey the "state of the art" in bioarchaeology, while exploring its relevance and application to the archaeology of complex societies. We will survey a range of bioarchaeological methods and applications, including paleopathology, stable isotope analysis, population affinity/ancient DNA, perimortem trauma, and body modification. In turn, we will explore how bioarchaeology can be used to approach a wide range of archaeological problems relative to complext societies, including subsistence, economy, migration, urbanism, social inequality, conflict and warfare, and identity. Open to graduate students only. S/NC.
ARCH 2410 Archaeologies of Place
The concept of place, as a site of human practice in and with the material world, has become foregrounded in humanities and social sciences. This course explores how archaeological and ethnographic research addresses material complexities and cultural meanings of places in the broader context of landscapes. We will investigate critical theories of place and landscape, while working with fieldwork data from the ancient Near East.
ARCH 2412 Space, Power, and Politics (ANTH 2590)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2590.
This course critically examines the politics of space and landscape from an interdisciplinary perspective. After reading key texts in political philosophy and cultural geography, we explore themes in recent scholarship including the spatial production of sovereignty, capital, and political subjectivity and the evolving role of digital cartography in public culture and politics. Case studies are drawn from archaeology, art history, ethnography, cultural geography, and history.
ARCH 2413 Decolonizing Space and Visual Cultures (HIAA 2285)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2285.
This seminar explores scholarly debates about decolonizing space and visual cultures in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. We will discuss these recent initiatives in the context of previous efforts and of a focused study of African-European colonial histories. Themes include: the violent acquisition of African artifacts; the inscription and erasure of mythologies of colonial conquest and heroism in the iconography of colonial monuments; the semiotic transformation of colonial architecture through nationalization; colonial toponymy and land reform.
ARCH 2414 Race and Architecture (HIAA 2880)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2880.
This graduate seminar will explore race--- a concept of human difference that established hierarchies of power and domination between Europe and Europe's 'others--and architecture from its earliest appearance to the present. Architecture has long reinforced the hierarchies embedded in western epistemology and present narrow visions of the world, reproducing cultural assumptions about space, place, city, comfort, etc., while assimilating race without acknowledging its impact. For its part, architectural history has largely uncritically conveyed the culture, norms, and values of architecture.
ARCH 2420 Making Modern Monuments: Race, Coloniality, and the Athenian Acropolis
How does modernity construct monuments and monumental landscapes, out of the multi-temporal remnants of various pasts? How do coloniality and race shape this process? What is the role of disciplinary apparatuses, especially archaeology, classics, architecture, and history of art? How do modernist sensorial regimes, particularly technologies of vision, co-constitute such “significant” monuments? Exploring these key questions, this seminar takes a close and sustained look at one iconic specimen, a sacred locus of western, racialized modernity: the Acropolis of Athens.
ARCH 2425 Ruins and Ruination: Objects of the Past in the Present
Ruins — the debris and skeletons of monuments from the past —constitute the leftovers of people and places that once were. Yet archaeologists have not thought critically about this seemingly essential concept. Ruins and ruination are fundamental to deeper understandings of culture contact, the rise and fall of civilizations, state power and political factionalism, urbanism, colonialism, capitalism, and deindustrialization. This course will examine, across a broad geographic and temporal scope, ruins as things, as well as ongoing processes, that affect the landscape.
ARCH 2500 Art and Archaeology of Civic Identity
Every urban community in the Greco-Roman world presented itself in a specific way to other communities and to foreign entities. Looking at coins, public monuments, programmatic sculpture, and epigraphic and textual evidence, we will address different concerns related to the formation and propagation of civic identities. Comparative material from other historical periods and theoretical and anthropological literature on group identity, social cohesion, and empire will contextualize the visual and archaeological evidence.
ARCH 2501A Problems in Archaeology: Culture, Contact and Colonialism (ANTH 2500A)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2500A.
Explores the theoretical discourses shaping anthropological approaches and defining archaeological projects on culture contact and colonialism. Attention will be given to examining colonial encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples as ongoing processes rather than particular historical moments, and to looking at recent efforts at decolonizing archaeological practice.
ARCH 2501C GIS and Remote Sensing in Archaeology (ANTH 2500C)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2500C.
ARCH 2502 Historical Archaeology: From Colony to City (ANTH 2540)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2540.
Examines historical archaeology as a complex field of inquiry that engages multiple sources of evidence and incorporates a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The seminar will consider the range of evidence available to historical archaeologists, and draw on examples from colonies and cities around the world to explore how the richness and diversity of the evidence is used.
ARCH 2511 Circumpolar Archaeology (ANTH 2510)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2510.
ARCH 2535 The Levant and Egypt: Cultural Contacts and Connections
A land steeped in story and history, the Levant (now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan) was a dynamic crossroads of ancient civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Anatolia and stretching across Europe. But this region is nearly always viewed through the lens of its larger, well-known neighbor: Egypt. This course will shift this viewpoint by exploring the nature and agency of trade, colonization, diplomacy, migration – and even war – between the Levant and ancient Egypt, paying particular attention to the archaeological record in reconstructing these interactions and cultural interconnections.
ARCH 2540 Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic Jerusalem
Jerusalem constitutes one of the most important archaeological sites connected to the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Early Islam. Early and recent studies and discoveries, as well as old and new theories, will be examined in the seminar with special emphasis on the Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic periods. Prerequisite: knowledge in archaeological methodology.
ARCH 2550 Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
This course is structured as a seminar on the archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The site will be examined in its larger geographical, historical, and archaeological context. The goal is to become familiar with the different scholarly interpretations of the site. Prerequisites: solid background in at least one of three fields: archaeology, Judaism, and Early Christianity.
ARCH 2551 Archaeological Research Methods, Theory and Practicum (ANTH 2550)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2550.
ARCH 2552 Museums in Their Communities (AMCV 2220D)
Interested students must register for AMCV 2220D.
This seminar examines in detail the internal workings of museums (of anthropology, art, history, science, etc.) and their place in their communities. Accessions, collections management, conservations, education, exhibition, marketing, research, and museum management are among the topics discussed. Open to graduate students only.
ARCH 2553 Introduction to Public Humanities (PHUM 2010)
Interested students must register for PHUM 2010.
This class, a foundational course for the MA in Public Humanities with preference given to American Studies graduate students, will address the theoretical bases of the public humanities, including topics of history and memory, museums and memorials, the roles of expertise and experience, community cultural development, and material culture. Enrollment limited to 20 graduate students.
ARCH 2554 Decolonizing Public Humanities: Intersectional Approaches to Curatorial Work + Community Organizing (PHUM 2694)
Interested students must register for PHUM 2694.
This course will decenter experiences and cultural expectations attendant to whiteness, cis-maleness, able-bodiedness, heterosexuality, and middle/upper-classness in the public humanities,and thereby explore the contemporary problems and possibilities of intersectional approaches in the field. What do contemporary paradigms of “diversity,” “public engagement,” and “cultural organizing” have to teach us about effective and ethical public humanities approaches? Do different, multiply marginalized communities of affinity practice entirely different public humanities? How are cultural interventions changing to accommodate the demands of an increasingly segmented public sphere?
ARCH 2555 Museum Interpretation Practices (PHUM 2014)
Interested students must register for PHUM 2014.
This course examines current interpretive practices and offers students the opportunity to participate in creating gallery interpretation for the museum context. Questions of material and form; models of attention and perception, the relationship between language and vision; the role of description in interpretation; and what constitutes learning through visual experience will be considered. Throughout the semester students will develop their interpretive practice through a series of workshops, exercises, site visits, and critical discussions. Enrollment limited to 15.
ARCH 2557 Critical Approaches to Architectural Preservation and Cultural Heritage (PHUM 2685)
Interested students must register for PHUM 2685.
This course examines the modern fields of preservation and cultural heritage from a historical and critical point of view to better understand their formation, evolution, current condition and the issues integral to their future. We explore such thorny topics as the “invention” of tradition and the relationship between heritage programs and nationalism, the evolution of the global cultural heritage industry, the story of preservation institutions in the United States and abroad, the rise of cultural heritage crimes in conflict zones, public history and memorials at “sites of conscience,” and the emergence of digital preservation and “experimental preservation.”
ARCH 2558 Methods in Public Humanities (PHUM 2020)
Interested students must register for PHUM 2020.
This course surveys public humanities work, including cultural heritage preservation and interpretation, museum collecting and exhibition, informal education, and cultural development. It also provides an overview of the contexts of that work in nonprofit organizations, including governance, management, and development.
ARCH 2559 Finding the Viewer: The Reception of Ancient Art and Architecture (HIAA 2301)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2301.
This graduate seminar will explore the role of viewers in the creation of meanings for ancient art and architecture. We will be looking at a wide variety of artistic forms including architecture, sculpture, wall painting, and mosaics, asking, who were the viewers who encountered these works in ancient settings and how did they respond to their messages? In order to contextualize our case studies, we will engage with primary sources, archaeological data, and theories of ancient viewership and reception. A
ARCH 2600 Gender and Sexuality in Roman Art
The study of the body and embodiment in Roman art encourages us to make use of multiple theoretical models for interrogating both the art and the bodies involved. Gender and sexuality provide the lenses through which this course will explore a variety of topics (for example, the homoerotic gaze, sexualized spectacles of pain, gendered architectural typologies, and the body in rabbinic imagery) in Roman imperial art.
ARCH 2601 Approaching Women and Gender in Roman Culture
Gender as a hierarchical concept was a fundamental basis of Roman culture, but women often played active roles in shaping political, religious, and social ideologies in both public and private contexts. Drawing on material, visual, and literary evidence, as well as theoretical concepts of gender in the ancient world, this course will examine not only how the concepts of women and gender were constructed and perpetuated, but also how they were simultaneously resisted and subverted.
ARCH 2602 Visual Humor (HIAA 2980 S08)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2980 S08.
Can humor be a serious topic of inquiry? What images made the ancient Romans laugh? What evidence do we have of wit, irony, and visual puns from various cultures? Humor takes many shapes, and can be deployed to many ends. But what are we laughing at? Humor can be subversive or reactionary. When is it consensual? What is the sense of humor in visual art works?
ARCH 2610 From Hilltop to Caput Mundi: The Archaeology of the Roman World
From an iron age village atop a hill overlooking the Tiber to the largest land empire prior to the Mongols of the 13th century, Rome has a deep and storied past. This class examines the current methods, theories, and major debates in Roman archaeology. We especially focus on material from outside the city of Rome and emphasize the geographical and chronological breadth of the Roman Empire. Topics may include colonialism, imperialism, Romanization, settlement, economy, religion, environmental change, violence, technology, and military life.
ARCH 2620 All Italia: City and Country in Ancient Italy
This seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the urban and rural spheres. Overall the seminar aims to contextualize Italian landscapes across both time and space and to that end we will consider issues pertaining to urbanism, economy, production, infrastructure, administration, architecture, and iconography.
ARCH 2622 Roman Topography (CLAS 2010B)
Interested students must register for CLAS 2010B.
That actions occur in place is obvious, but how does place define action, and how do actions define place? How does the accretion of meanings assigned to a place through repeated use provide significance to the current actions, affect reinterpretations of past events, and effect future uses? Topography explores not only the history of monuments but also the constellation of meanings shaped by the interaction of monuments with each other in the cultural landscape. Topographical relationships serve as an imprint of a particular community's social, political, economic, and religious behavior within and across space and time. Ancient Roman case studies.
ARCH 2625 Broken Pots to GDP: Economies of the Roman World
Rome developed one of the most complex and extensive economic systems of the pre-industrial era, and debates on the nature and scale of this system have intensified in recent years due to an influx of archaeological data. This course examines a diverse range of material from across the Roman world as we explore the impact that recent archaeological discoveries and new methodological developments have had on our understanding of the Roman economy.
ARCH 2630 Global Romans and Indigenous Persistence
The military expansion of the Roman Republic has long been regarded as the starting point for profound cultural transformations around the West Mediterranean, as conquered indigenous societies were assumed to be "becoming Roman" as a result. In contrast with that traditional, profoundly hegemonic interpretation, this seminar will trace the longevity and influence of indigenous traditions -- particularly those of Gallia Narbonensis, the Hispaniae, Africa, and the major islands -- that began well before and extended far beyond the Roman conquests.
ARCH 2635 An Empire without Bounds: The Roman Empire in Its ‘Global’ Context
The Roman world did not stop at the Empire’s borders; its influence spread through sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, India, central Asia, China, and northern Europe – and these interactions shaped the Roman Empire, in turn. This course aims to de-center the Roman and Mediterranean experience of Antiquity by considering archaeological and historical evidence from places as far-reaching as Parthian Mesopotamia, Kushan India, and Han China, as well as the Saharan oases, the Indian Ocean monsoon routes, and the many intertwined land routes of the ‘Silk Road(s)’ across central Asia.
ARCH 2640 Hispania: the Making of a Roman Province
How were Roman provinces created and incorporated into the Roman Empire? What traces exist in the archaeological record of the bonds between the provinces and the metropolis? This course approaches the complex issue of colonialism, material culture, change and continuity in connection with the Roman conquest of new territories in the Mediterranean, taking as an example the impressive pool of new archaeological data available from Roman Spain.
ARCH 2670 Between the Sahara and the Sea: North Africa in the Ancient World
The archaeology of ancient North Africa (here Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) is a complex and fascinating record of the many ancient cultures, both indigenous and colonial, who lived between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. This course will explore the material record of Numidians, Garamantes, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans across diverse rural and urban landscapes as we contextualize the archaeology of North Africa not simply as a place built by foreign powers who controlled the Mediterranean, but one characterized by vibrant and lasting local traditions and multidirectional connections and influences.
ARCH 2710 The Archaeology of Nubia and Egypt
Egypt and Nubia share the distinction of ancient civilizations along the Nile river, but Nubia remains much more poorly known than Egypt. This seminar will examine the archaeology of Nubia, including its relationship to Egypt, from the introduction of ceramics and agriculture to the medieval period. This long-term perspective will allow comparative study of issues such as state formation, imperialism and religious change.
ARCH 2725 The Making of Egypt
In the late 4th millennium, a state and culture recognizably pharaonic in structures rose in the Nile Valley. How was Egypt made, and how can we study the process? This seminar will examine the convergence of the development of monumental architecture, writing, canonical art, and kingship during Egypt’s formative centuries from c. 3200-2600 BC. We will study the rapid changes at the start of the First Dynasty in the context of state formation over the longer span of late-Predynastic to Old Kingdom Egypt.
ARCH 2730 Images, Ideology, and Egyptian Warfare (EGYT 2850)
Interested students must register for EGYT 2850.
Images of violence and warfare are pervasive in Egypt, but their interpretation is not straightforward. What relationship is there between such images and historical events, ritual events, and royal ideology? How do such images function? This seminar will examine Egyptian images of violence and warfare from before the New Kingdom. It will take a contextual and comparative approach to discern patterns in the ways such images are used, with the goal being to understand why they were made rather than how they can be used to answer historical questions. .
ARCH 2740 Social Life in Ancient Egypt
This course will draw upon recent discussions in anthropology and sociology that explore issues of identity by examining hierarchies of difference - age, sex, class, ethnicity. We will focus on linking theory with data and discussing modern and ancient categories of identity. Taking the lifecycle as its structure, the course covers conception to burial, drawing on a range of data sources, such as material culture, iconography, textual data and human remains. The very rich material past of of ancient Egypt provides an excellent framework from within which to consider how identity and social distinctions were constituted in the past.
ARCH 2743 Egyptian Art in New England Museums (EGYT 2900)
Interested students must register for EGYT 2900.
This seminar will be an in-depth, in-person study of Egyptian art from before the New Kingdom focusing on the entire life-history of Egyptian art in all available media and genres. The course will alternate between meeting in the classroom and meeting in museums. Classroom days will be devoted to discussion of the contexts, meanings, and uses of Egyptian art. Museum days will be devoted to the close observation of that art, and discussion of both its formal properties and the technological processes that were used in its creation. Consideration of conservation and display will also be of paramount importance.
ARCH 2744 Egyptian Art in New England Museums
This seminar will be an in-depth, in-person study of Egyptian art from before the New Kingdom focusing on the entire life-history of Egyptian art in all available media and genres. The course will alternate between meeting in the classroom and meeting in museums. Classroom days will be devoted to discussion of the contexts, meanings, and uses of Egyptian art. Museum days will be devoted to the close observation of that art, and discussion of both its formal properties and the technological processes that were used in its creation. Consideration of conservation and display will also be of paramount importance.
ARCH 2820 Special Topics in Old World Art and Archaeology
ARCH 2851 Skills Training in Material Culture Studies I
When dealing with material culture, one must possess a solid foundation in a range of skills. How does one document and analyze artifacts, architecture and landscapes, what techniques are appropriate in what cases? How should all this information be securely stored and promulgated? This "hands on" class, intended for students in multiple disciplines, will consider the study of particular types of material or bodies of evidence (e.g., pottery, lithics, epigraphy, numismatics).
ARCH 2852 Skills Training in Material Culture Studies II
When dealing with material culture, one must possess a solid foundation in a range of skills. How does one document and analyze artifacts, architecture and landscapes, what are the appropriate techniques? How should all this information be securely stored and promulgated? This "hands on" class, intended for students in multiple disciplines, will revolve around techniques of documentation and analysis (e.g. architectural drawing, GIS [Geographic Information Systems], data bases and digital media).
ARCH 2857 Archaeology in the Digital Age (ANTH 2201)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2201.
In the 21st Century, digital tools are as integral to archaeological research as the trowel and the field notebook. This course combines essential training in digital archaeology with critical discussions of how digital methods are impacting the conceptual dimensions of archaeological research. Topics include topographic survey, GNSS, tablet-based recording systems, database design, digital photogrammetry, and intermediate level archaeological GIS. Demonstrated proficiency in ArcGIS or open-sourced GIS software (the equivalent of an introductory course, preferably Anthropology 1201) and previous archaeological field experience are prerequisites.
ARCH 2858 Archaeology in the Digital Age (ANTH 2202)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2202.
This course develops students’ skills in geographic information systems and spatial analysis beyond those taught in Anthropology 1201 or other introductory GIS courses, with the goal of facilitating advanced, independent research. The course begins with a rapid review of data models, spatial data management, and thematic mapping, which is designed to quickly bring students with less formal GIS training up to speed. We then move on suitability modeling, network analysis, intermediate spatial statistics, and scripting, with a focus on developing competencies across multiple software platforms, including QGIS, ArcGIS Pro and R. Some topics can be further adjusted to meet student needs and interests. There are no formal prerequisites but an introductory course in GIS (such as Anthropology 1201) is highly recommended.
ARCH 2950 Intensive Readings in Ancient Language for Archaeologists
In this course, students with some previous training in an ancient language will have an opportunity to hone their linguistic skills while reading ancient texts that are specially relevant to archaeologists. The primary purpose of the course is to prepare students to take doctoral ancient language exams and to identify weak spots in individuals' knowledge of the ancient language. Emphasis will be placed on identification and justification of morphology and syntax, as well as on reading comprehension and idiomatic translation.
ARCH 2970 Preliminary Examination Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
ARCH 2980 Individual Reading
Graduate-level independent study course.
ARCH 2981 Thesis Research
Individual reading for the Master’s degree.
ARCH 2982 Individual Reading for Dissertation
Reading leading to selection of the dissertation subject. Single credit.
ARCH 2983 Dissertation Research
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
ARCH 2990 Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who are preparing a thesis and who have met the tuition requirement and are paying a registration fee to continue active enrollment. No course credit.