NEAA 20329/30321 Ancient Levant I
This course surveys the archaeology and history of the Levant from the time of its earliest human habitation in the Stone Age to the end of the Bronze Age around 1100 BCE.
2025-2026 Winter
NEAA
NEAA 20035/30035 Introduction to Zooarchaeology
(ANTH 28410, ANTH 38810)
This course provides undergraduate and graduate students with an introduction to the use of animal bones in archaeological research. Students will gain hands-on experience analyzing faunal remains from an archaeological site in the Near East. The class will address theoretical and methodological issues involved in the use of animal bones as a source of information about prehistoric societies. The course consists of lectures, laboratory sessions, and original research projects using collections of animal bone from archaeological excavations in southeast Turkey. Topics covered include: 1) identifying, ageing and sexing animal bones; 2) zooarchaeological sampling, measurement, quantification, and problems of taphonomy; 3) analysis of animal bone data; 4) reconstructing prehistoric hunting and pastoral economies, especially: animal domestication, hunting strategies, herding systems, seasonality, and pastoral production in complex societies.
Prerequisites
Any introductory course in archaeology
2025-2026 Winter
NEAA 30091/30092 Fieldwork 1 and 2
Students will supervise and direct work in one or more trenches, possibly (depending on suitability and project scale) an excavation area comprised of several trenches. This includes managing the local workforce and any junior students, and developing strategies together with the project leader. They should also be the lead on one type of material culture or data collected (e.g., surface survey, ceramics, glass), managing the team responsible for recording, measuring, sampling, etc., and interpreting and synthesizing preliminary results in the field. Assessment will be based on field notes, area summary, and contribution to any preliminary reports or articles.
2025-2026 Winter
NEAA 20330 Archaeological Theory
| Since the formalization of the discipline of archaeology in the 19th century, how we make sense of the past through its material traces has undergone a number of profound transformations. This class introduces students to the diverse array of theoretical approaches archaeologists have deployed in their interpretations of ancient cultures. In the process, students will gain an appreciation for the field's close relationship to developments in neighboring fields in the humanities and social sciences. The ultimate goal is for students to realize the incredibly wide range of interpretive modes archaeologists have operated under, both historically over the past century and a half as well as in current practice. |
2025-2026 Autumn
NEAA 20146/30146 Death, Burial, and Afterlives in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
| The treatment of the dead in past cultures provides insights into how communities engaged with religious beliefs and cosmology and how they conceptualised identity among the living. This seminar examines death, funerary practices, and beliefs in the afterlife from a cross-cultural perspective, based in the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Within each of these cultures, the rituals and format of burials and beliefs about ‘life’ after death varied widely. Most archaeological focus on burials in these cultures has been on the dead as the primary data, and many studies reflect simplistically on the economic cost of burials, rather than the effect of death on the living, the family or the socio-political structure. But there are hints in the archaeological and textual record at the response and responsibilities of those burying the dead. This seminar will use archaeological data, artworks and textual materials (in translation) to examine the diversity of responses to death in two important literate cultures. The seminars will foster engagement with theoretical approaches, varied methodologies, and two extremely rich datasets. |
Prerequisites
Undergraduate students should have taken at least one course in the archaeology or history of Egypt or Mesopotamia
2025-2026 Autumn
NEAA 20144/30144 Mesopotamian Archaeology I: Villages to States
| This course surveys the archaeology of the villages and states of Mesopotamia (approximately the modern countries of Iraq and Syria) during the late 7th through late 3rd millennia BCE. Students will be introduced to the range of Mesopotamian sites and material culture, the region’s variable landscapes and environments, and key themes and debates in the study of this literate complex society. Themes include the origins of irrigation and urbanism; the development of inequality and formalisation of violent conflict; the consequences of craft specialisation; the forms and meanings of funerary practices; the presentation of power; and the archaeological evidence for religious ritual and beliefs. These developments varied between north and south Mesopotamia (later Assyria and Babylonia), and the contrasts and cultural connections between these two linked but distinct regions are integral aspects of the course. |
2025-2026 Autumn
NEAA 20100/30100 Introduction to Archaeology
| Archaeology is the study of the material evidence of past human activity. This course, which is offered every year in the Autumn Quarter, explores the history of archaeology as a discipline and the methods used by archaeologists to obtain evidence about past human activity via excavations, surface surveys, and remote-sensing technologies such as satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar, with emphasis on archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East. This course also surveys the latest methods used to date, classify, and analyze various kinds of evidence after it has been obtained. And since archaeological data is always collected and interpreted within an intellectual framework of theoretical conceptions concerning human society, culture, and history, this course provides a brief overview of “archaeological theory,” i.e., the uses made by archaeologists of a wide range of different social theories that may lead to quite different interpretations of the same data. This topic is explored in more depth in a companion course on “Social Theory and Ancient Studies” (NEHC 20010/30010), which is offered in alternate years in the Winter Quarter. |
2025-2026 Autumn
NEAA 30092 Field Archaeology 2
Students will supervise work in one or more trenches, possibly (depending on suitability and project scale) an excavation area comprised of several trenches, including managing the local workforce and any junior students, and developing strategies together with the project leader. They should also be the lead on one type of material culture or data collected, managing the team responsible for recording, measuring, sampling, etc., and interpreting and synthesizing preliminary results in the field. Assessment will be based on field notes, area summary, and contribution to any preliminary reports or articles.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor
2024-2025 Winter
NEAA 20322/30322 Ancient Levant II: The Iron Age and Persian Period
This course surveys the archaeology and history of the Levant from the end of the Bronze Age around 1100 BCE to the Roman conquest of the region in 64-63 BCE.
2024-2025 Winter
NEAA 20511/30511 The Archaeology of Egypt I
(ANTH)
This course provides an overview of the archaeology of Egypt, focusing on data from the Paleolithic Period to the Second Intermediate Period, around 1,600 BCE. It introduces fundamental methods and approaches to the archaeological record, surveying significant sites, objects, art, and architecture to understand various aspects of culture, society, and history. While Egypt is well-known for its pyramids, temples and tombs, we will not only examine such constructions, but also explore how material culture can offer us insights on such themes as power and inequality, human-environment relations, urbanism, identity, cross-cultural interactions, collapse, and transformation. We will also consider the origins and legacies of Egyptology while engaging with diverse perspectives on the past, and how Egypt’s rich cultural heritage continues to be valued, used, and contested.
2024-2025 Autumn