Spring 2024

(Jump to Fall 2023)

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. LILE. Instructor: Jordi Rivera Prince. MWF 2-2:50pm.

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. Instructor: Saul Olyan. M 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. MWF 11-11:50am.

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. Instructor: Neil Safier. TTh 1-2:20pm.

ARCH 0295   Crafts and Production in the Ancient World: Making Material Culture 
The manufacture of artifacts distinguishes us from all other species. However, archaeologists often struggle with interpreting material culture without understanding its origins and production. This course will examine how things are made, considering craftsmanship and agricultural production, from raw materials to finished objects: sculpture and mosaics, bricks and concrete, ceramic and glass, metallurgy, tanneries, oil, wine, and perfumes. Through case studies and hands-on activities, students will consider the importance of the technological processes that produce artifacts for archaeology’s investigation of our human past. Instructor: Anna Soifer. MWF 10-10:50am.

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). Instructor: Susan Ashbrook Harvey. F 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Candace Rice. MWF 1-1:50pm.

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? Instructor: Eric Johnson. T 4-6:30pm.

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. Instructor: Gretel Rodriguez. W 3pm-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Candace Rice. M 10am-12:30pm.

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. Instructor: Kathleen Forste. TTh 1-2:20pm.

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. Instructor: Christina Hodge. F 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Yannis Hamilakis. TTh 10:30-11:50am.

ARCH 1211  The Body and the Senses 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. Instructor: Sheila Bonde. F 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Stephen Houston. TTh 2:30-3:50pm.

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. Instructor: Jeffrey Moser. W 12-2:30pm.

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. Instructor: Zachary Silvia. MWF 12-12:50pm.

ARCH 1515  The Fair Sex: Female Body and Sexuality in the Ancient World
Maidens, wives, goddesses, prostitutes, monsters. This course examines constructed concepts and stereotypes of “femininity”, “gender”, and “sexuality” and considers how – or even whether – they might be applied to art, archaeology, and literature of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Topics include representations of the female body and sexuality in art; notions of aesthetics, beauty, and perfection; nudity and taboo; women in myth, literature, and ritual; burials and funerals; gender roles and tropes of femininity; zones of female agency and authority; and multiply marginalized women (immigrants, enslaved workers). Instructor: Robyn Price. TTh 4-5:20pm.

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. Instructor: Margaret Graves. F 12:30pm-2:50pm.

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. Instructor: Yannis Hamilakis. TTh 1:00-2:20pm.

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. Instructor: Tyler Franconi. TTh 2:30-3:50pm.

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. Instructor: Patricia Rubertone. MWF 10-10:50am.

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. Instructor: Nancy Jacobs. W 3-5:30pm.

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. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor: Patricia Rubertone. W 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructors: Brian Lander and Daniel Ibarra. W 3-5:30pm. 

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. Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. TTh 10:30-11:50am.

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. Instructors: Felipe Rojas and Stephen Houston. W 12-2:30pm.

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. Instructor: Tyler Franconi. W 3-5:30pm.

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. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. M 3-5:30pm.

Fall 2023

(Jump to Spring 2024)

ARCH 0167  Mountains and Waters: A History of Chinese Landscape Painting (HIAA 0422) [CRN: 18216]
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. Instructor: Jeffrey Moser. TTh 9-10:20am.

ARCH 0152  Egyptomania: Mystery of the Sphinx and Other Secrets of Ancient Egypt  [CRN: 19131]
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. Instructor: Robyn Price. TTh 9-10:20am.

ARCH 0204  Museums: The Display of Culture (HIAA 0014)  [CRN: 19308]
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. Instructor: Margaret Graves. MW 1-2:20pm.

ARCH 0440  Goats, Grains, and Gilgamesh: Archaeology of the Ancient Near East  [CRN: 19132]
Ziggurats of forgotten gods, epics in lost languages, cosmopolitan cities bustling with traders from distant lands: the ancient Near East features the world’s earliest agriculture, writing, and empires. From these developments grew diplomacy and commerce – but also inequality and conflict. This course offers an introduction to the ancient Near East through art and archaeology spanning modern Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Asia. It also explores the influence of archaeology within modern nationalism, colonialism, Orientalism, memory, geopolitics, and the pop-culture reception of Near Eastern antiquity. Instructor: Zachary Silvia. MWF 10-10:50am.

ARCH 0524  Art and Architecture of the Roman Empire (HIAA 0032)  [CRN: 17685]
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 objects. 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) Instructor: Gretel Rodriguez. MWF 11-11:50am.

ARCH 0679  The Ocean in Global History (HIST 0150J)  [CRN: 17030]
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. Instructor: Gabriel Rocha. TTh -10:20am. 

ARCH 0680  Water, Culture, & Power  [CRN: 18508]
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. Instructor: Tyler Franconi. MWF 1-1:50pm.

ARCH 0683  From Fire Wielders to Empire Builders: Human Impact on the Global Environment before 1492 (HIST 0270A)  [CRN: 17033]
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. Instructor: Brian Lander. MWF 11-11:50am. 

ARCH 0771   An Anthropology of Food (ANTH 0680)  [CRN: 16888]
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. Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. MWF 2-2:50pm.

ARCH 0772  Food and Art in the Early Modern World (HIAA 0063​)  [CRN: 18715]
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. Instructor: Holly Shaffer. TTh 10:30-11:50am.

ARCH 1051  Archaeology of Settler Colonialism (ANTH 1622)  [CRN: 16900]
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. Instructor: Patricia Rubertone. TTh 10:30-11:50am

ARCH 1056  Indigenous Archaeologies (ANTH 1125)  [CRN: 16906]
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. Instructor: Robert Preucel. F 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 1108  Politics and Spectacle in the Arts of Ancient Rome​ (HIAA 1307)  [CRN: 18073]
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. Instructor: Gretel Rodriguez. W 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 1109  Games and Spectacles of Ancient Greece and Rome​ (CLAS 1120N)  [CRN: 18586]
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. MWF 10-10:50am.

ARCH 1237  Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture: A World That Matters (ANTH 1030)  [CRN: 16902]
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. DPLL LILE. Instructor: Stephen Houston. TTh 2:30-3:50pm.

ARCH 1242  Amazonia from the Prehuman to the Present (HIST 1360)  [CRN: 17586]
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. Instructor: Neil Safier. MWF 2-2:50pm.

ARCH 1621  Pyramids, Power, Propaganda: Ancient Egyptian History to 1300 BCE​ (EGYT 1430)  [CRN: 19133]
Interested students must register for EGYT 1430.
The first half of pharaonic history in ancient Egypt saw the invention of writing, the development of kingship, creation of a bureaucracy capable of erecting pyramids that still stand, and colonial expansion of Egypt both south into Nubia and east into the Levant. In this class we will critically examine ancient sources to understand not just what happened in this dynamic span of time but also how we as scholars can know about it. Who wrote what texts for what purposes, and how does the nature of these sources affect our ability to understand Egypt? Can we use literature as historical evidence? Utilizing primary sources in translation - sometimes multiple translations of the same text so we can critique translators - this course equips students to approach the history of an ancient but perennially fascinating place and culture. No prerequisites. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. MWF 12-12:50pm.

ARCH 1774  Microarchaeology  [CRN: 19151]
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. Instructor: Kathleen Forste. T 4-6:30pm.

ARCH 1868  River Histories: Fishes, Floods and the Transformation of Freshwater Ecosystems (HIST 1974D​)  [CRN: 18607]
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. WRIT. Instructor: Brian Lander. F 3pm-5:30pm.

ARCH 1900  The Archaeology of College Hill  [Course Website [CRN: 18506]
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).  Instructor: Liza Davis. W 3pm-5:30pm.

ARCH 2006  Principles of Archaeology (ANTH 2501)  [CRN: 16887]
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.  Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. M 3pm-5:30pm.

ARCH 2143  Asian Reprographics A Long History of Impression (HIAA 2210)   [CRN: 18490]
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. Instructor: Jeffrey Moser. M 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 2407  Lived Bodies, Dead Bodies: The Archaeology of Human Remains (ANTH 2560)  [CRN: 16898]
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. LILE. Instructor: Andrew Scherer. TTh 9-10:20am.

ARCH 2420  Making Modern Monuments: Race, Coloniality, and the Athenian Acropolis  [CRN: 18650]
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. Instructor: Yannis Hamilakis. Th 4-6:30pm.

ARCH 2227  Approaching Ancient Economies  [CRN: 19406]
The inhabitants of the Greek, Roman, and Late Antique worlds made decisions about families, food, work, and religion based on complex webs of economic factors that included agriculture, 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 people of the ancient world participated in their economic landscape. Instructor: Candace Rice. F 3-5:30pm.

 

Additional Course Information

You may also visit Courses@Brown listings for up-to-date information on courses and room assignments. Check under: Area of Study: "Archaeology and the Ancient World

For a listing of all courses ever taught in Archaeology and the Ancient World (or in Old World Archaeology, its predecessor), please visit the "All Courses" page on this website. To browse the web pages and Canvas sites -- including syllabi -- for most ARCH courses, please see our "Course Websites" page.