Archaeology at Hampshire College

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Students of archaeology and anthropology at Hampshire engage in a study of the dimensions of humanity.

Through courses in physical, cultural, and linguistic anthropology, students learn anthropological models and methodology, which provides the groundwork for the pursuit of informed, integrative independent research. By combining coursework in the natural sciences and social sciences, anthropology students are exposed to field work and laboratory analysis.

For Ph.D.s awarded in 2000 to 2004, Hampshire ranks 20th nationally in the percentage of its graduates who have earned Ph.D.s in anthropology.

Student Project Titles

 * Four Days in the Valley: the Archaeology and Oral Histories of Downtown Chaco
 * Turkce and Deutsch Places: Agency, Resistance, and Ethnographic Thickness in the Voices of Second Generation Turkish Women in

Berlin, Germany


 * Downtown Chicks: Youth Prostitution, Homelessness, and the Comodification of Sex in Las Vegas, Nevada
 * Rhizomes, Sponges, and Icebergs: An Ethnography of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement of La Matanza
 * Health Disparity: Diabetes and African-Americans in Boston
 * Breaking Bread: A Portuguese-American Baker Negotiates Work and Family
 * What it Feels Like for a Girl: Black and Mixed-Race Women’s Identity Construction

Featured Faculty Profiles

 * Barbara Yngvesson Professor of Anthropology
 * Alan Goodman Professor of Biological Anthropology
 * Susan M. Darlington Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies

Sample First-Year Course

 * Sex, Death, and Teeth: Life Stories Recorded in Teeth

In this project-focused course we will research how teeth provide insights into health, nutrition, diet, and origins. Teeth develop in utero and during early life, and then are nearly inert. Because teeth grow somewhat like trees (teeth also have growth rings), one can use teeth as windows onto past lifetimes and geological times. We will learn how to read the record of nutrition and health from tooth size, shape, and chemistry. Examples of hands-on projects include gender differences in prenatal nutrition among the Maya, lead pollution in contemporary Egypt and Mexico, and the geographic origin of enslaved Africans. This course is particularly recommended for students with interests in anthropology, archaeology, public health, and nutrition.

Sample Courses at Hampshire

 * The Anthropology of the Body
 * The Anthropology of Human Rights
 * Anthropology of Mass Media in Late
 * Capitalism
 * The Anthropology of Violence
 * Creating Families
 * Critical Ethnography
 * Culture, Mind &amp; Brain
 * Culture, Religion &amp; Environmentalism
 * Disease, Famine &amp; War
 * Europe &amp; the World (1500-1800):
 * Travelogues, Colonization, Ethnography
 * Field Methods in Bioarchaeology: Forensic Anthropology
 * Gifts, Sex &amp; Commodities
 * Global Ethnography
 * Intro to Ethnomusicology &amp; Music
 * Ethnography
 * Music &amp; Ritual
 * Nutritional Anthropology
 * Sex, Death &amp; Teeth: Life Stories Recorded in Teeth
 * Storytelling, Mind &amp; Culture
 * Women &amp; Politics in Africa

Through the Consortium

 * The Anthropology of Food (AC)
 * Anthropology of Museums (SC)
 * Archaeology and Prehistory (UMass)
 * Cultural Performances (MHC)
 * Evolution &amp; Culture (AC)
 * History of Anthropological Theory (SC)
 * Human Diversity (AC)
 * Human Nature (UMass)
 * Medical Anthropology (MHC)
 * Research Methodology (UMass)

Facilities and Resources
The study of anthropology is greatly enriched by the presence of a large and varied range of scholars at the five campuses who meet regularly, share their research, and lecture in each other’s classes. A weekly newsletter, Megamemo, issued by the UMass Department of Anthropology, keeps students and faculty alike informed about new courses, lectures, and films at the campuses, as well as major events being sponsored here and elsewhere. As part of a wider collaborative effort to expand the opportunities for undergraduate study and field work in medical anthropology and related areas, the anthropologists helped to develop a Five College Certificate Program in Culture, Health, and Science. One of their newest collaborations is a day-long Five College symposium each year in which undergraduates present their research to the faculty and to their peers at all the campuses.

Through the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department ofAnthropology, Five College students are able to participate in local archaeological digs each summer, or enroll in the field program in European Studies. The field studies training program works on the principle of small group collaborative learning. Participants move through a three-semester course sequence as a group, sharing their ideas and experiences with each other. In this way, participants learn from each other and the faculty instructor who guides them through the process from beginning to end. Participants are free to choose the research site and topic that most suits their interests. Students develop these ideas into full-fledged research projects—taking the project through the various stages of design, data collection, analysis, and report/publication. The idea is to experience the challenge of individual field research with the advantage of close guidance and support.

Dependent upon individual academic focus, concentrators at Hampshire in anthropology or archaeology may also qualify for the Five College Certificate Programs in Native American Studies, African Studies, or Latin American Studies.

The School of Natural Science at Hampshire College houses an Osteology Trauma Laboratory that has received funding for enhancement and instrumentation from the Foundation for Psycho-Cultural Research, Sherman Fairchild, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. It is the site of several major research projects that cover topics in skeletal biology, bioarchaeology, and forensics.

Information Quoted From: http://www.hampshire.edu/admissions/anthropology.htm