Mar 28, 2024  
Catalogue 2017-2018 
    
Catalogue 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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STS 231 - Topics in Archaeology

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)


An examination of topics of interest in current archaeological analysis. We examine the anthropological reasons for such analyses, how analysis proceeds, what has been discovered to date through such analyses, and what the future of the topic seems to be. Possible topics include tools and human behavior, lithic technology, the archaeology of death, prehistoric settlement systems, origins of material culture.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2017/18b:  People in a New World. (Same as ANTH 231 ) Approximately 15,000 years ago, according to current scientific thought, humans expanded into the last large landmass left in the world without human inhabitants:  The Americas.  Who were these people?  How did they get here and from where?  What were the environmental and ecological conditions they faced, and how did they overcome them?  What technologies did they bring with them, and what new technologies did they create in order to colonize these continents? This course examines the history of studies of the earliest Americans, what theories emerged about their origins over time, which have been discarded, and which still exist and compete with one another.  Our current sources of information about the earliest immigrants – archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ecology, genetics, geology, geophysics, chemistry among them – are examined to consider what leads they can produce and how they must be evaluated in coming to conclusions about what happened in the Americas 20-10,000 years ago. Lucy Johnson.

Prerequisite(s):  ANTH 100  or ANTH 235 .

Two 75-minute periods.



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