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A broad introduction to archaeology-the study of material remains to answer questions about the human past. Case studies highlight the variability of ancient societies and illustrate the varied methods and interpretive frameworks archaeologists use to reconstruct them. This course can serve as a platform for both archaeology and anthropology undergraduate majors.

This introductory course surveys the archaeology of the ancient Greek and Roman world. Each week, we will explore a different archaeological discovery that transformed scholars' understanding of the ancient world. From early excavations at sites such as Pompeii and Troy, to modern field projects across the Mediterranean, we will discover the rich cultures of ancient Greece and Rome while also exploring the history, methods, and major intellectual goals of archaeology.

Mesopotamia is often defined by firsts: the first villages, cities, states, and empires. Archaeology has long looked to the region for explanations of the origins of civilization. The modern countries of the region, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, have also long been places where archaeology and politics are inextricably intertwined, from Europe's 19th century appropriation of the region's heritage, to the looting and destruction of antiquities in recent wars. This introductory course moves between past and present. It offers a survey of more than 10,000 years of human history, from the appearance of farming villages to the dawn of imperialism, while also engaging current debates on the contemporary stakes of archaeology in the southwest Asia. Our focus is on past material worlds and the modern politics in which they are entangled.

Throughout most of the human career, people survived by hunting and gathering wild foods. The advent of food production is one of the most profound changes in history and prehistory. This course examines the current evidence for the appearance and spread of agriculture - plant and animal domestication - around the world. We will consider definitions of agriculture and domestication, the conditions under which it arises, the consequences for those who adopt it, and why it has spread over most of the world.

This introductory course surveys archaeology's contributions to the study of American Indian cultural diversity and change in North America north of Mexico. Lectures and readings will examine topics ranging from the debate over when the continent was first inhabited to present-day conflicts between Native Americans and archaeologists over excavation and the interpretation of the past. We will review important archaeological sites such as Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, Lamoka Lake, and the Little Bighorn battlefield. A principal focus will be on major transformations in lifeways such as the adoption of agriculture, the development of political-economic hierarchies, and the disruptions that accompanied the arrival of Europeans to the continent.

The history of humankind is also a history of health and disease; the rise of agricultural societies, ancient cities, and colonial empires had wide-ranging effects on diet and nutrition, the spread of infectious diseases, and occurrence of other health conditions. This history has also been shaped by complex interactions between environment, technology, and society. Using archaeological, environmental, textual, and skeletal evidence, we will survey major epidemiological transitions from the Paleolithic to the age of European conquest. We will also examine diverse cultural experiences of health, illness, and the body. How do medical practices from pre-modern societies, such as the medieval Islamic world and the Inca Empire, challenge dominant narratives of scientific development? The implications of past health patterns for modern-day communities will also be explored.

An exploration of the archaeology and art of the Aegean region and of its neighbors during the Bronze Age, ca. 3000-1000 BCE: the origins and precursors of the Classical World. The course will investigate the emergence of the first complex societies in the Aegean region in the third millennium BCE, and then the development and story of the Minoan and Mycenaean worlds and their neighbors in the second millennium BCE. Topics will include: the Early Bronze Age and the first complex societies in the Aegean (Cyclades, Crete, Greece, Anatolia); the collapse and reorientation around 2200BCE and links with climate change; the first palace civilization of (Minoan) Crete; the Santorini (Thera) volcanic eruption and its historical impact in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean; the rise of the Mycenaean Greek palaces and the shift into proto-history; the development of an international east Mediterranean trade system; Ahhiyawa and the Hittites; the 'Trojan War'; and the collapse of the Late Bronze Age societies and links with climate change.

This course explores the multifaceted interactions between ancient Egypt and the Classical world, from the Bronze Age to the Roman Empire. We will look at both archaeological and textual evidence (in English translation) to ask what this entangled history can tell us about life in the ancient Mediterranean. Among many other topics, we will consider Greek merchants and mercenaries in Egypt; Egyptian influences on Greek and Roman art; the famous queen Cleopatra, and her seductive but threatening reputation in Roman literature; the appearance of Egyptian underworld gods on Greek and Roman magical gems and curse tablets; and the ways that Greco-Roman representations of Egypt have shaped modern conceptions of Egyptian civilization, from 19th-century Romanticism to 21st-century pop culture.

The emergence of what has come to be called civilization marks a profound transformation in human culture, society, politics, economy, and psychology. The first civilizations have been variously described as the point of origin for artistic achievement and the genesis of social struggle, a victory over the state of nature and the source of human neurosis, the genealogical root of social inequality and the foundation for the rule of law. In this course we will examine the rise and fall of ancient civilizations at the same time as we interrogate the rise and fall of the concept of civilization itself in modern historical thought. Our primary focus will be a comparative archaeological examination of five pivotal case studies of early civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and the Maya lowlands. Alongside our explorations of these early civilizations, we will undertake a critical examination of current key issues in political anthropology, including the nature of kingship, the origins of cities, and the role of coercion in the formation of early polities. The course will examine the spread of civilization, including the development of secondary states, early empires, and the first world systems. We will conclude the class with an examination of the concept of civilization itself, its historical roots and its current prominence in geopolitical thinking and policy making. The goal of the class is to provide students with an understanding of the nature of the world's first civilizations and the potency of their contemporary legacy.

Why did the ancient Egyptians build pyramids, and why did they stop building them? Why did they depict things in ways that seem stiff and unnatural? Is ancient Egyptian art “art”? These are some of the questions explored in this course, which spans late prehistory (c. 3500 BCE) to the Roman period (early centuries CE). We will take a thematic approach, progressing chronologically and introducing key genres where appropriate. First, we will explore central issues of symbolism, landscape, and materials through the architecture and furnishings of temples and royal tombs. Next come the social worlds of art. Can we speak of artists? How were gender, class, and ethnicity represented? Finally, we will survey the legacies of Egyptian visual culture in antiquity and the modern West.

Heritage typically conjures images of a glorified human past, and evokes sentiments of care for lost or endangered cultures that symbolize humanity's diversity. But heritage is also the foundation for a multi-billion dollar tourist industry and a basis for claims to national sovereignty. A closer look at heritage reveals institutions, places, and things possessed of extraordinary power. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this course attends to the complexities of heritage today. Topics include heritage ethics, tourism and the marketing of the past, approaches to preservation and management, disputed heritage and violence, heritage ideologies from nationalism to universalism, participation and inequality from the grassroots to the global, counterheritage, and the practice of public archaeology. Students apply insights gained by designing projects as heritage practitioners, engaged with heritage-scapes at Cornell and beyond.

This course examines the production and exchange of wine, beer, coffee and tea, and the social and ideological dynamics involved in their consumption. We start in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and end with tea and coffee in the Arab and Ottoman worlds. Archaeological and textual evidence will be used throughout to show the centrality of drinking in daily, ritual and political life.

Various American Indian civilizations and European cultures have altered the landscape to meet the needs of their cultures. Students learn how to interpret the Euro-American landscapes of a buried village excavated by Cornell students. The students will identify and date artifacts, stud soil samples, and create site maps.

An introduction to the origins and development of Western medicine in ancient Greece and Rome. We will read a variety of sources on the ancient theory and practice of medicine, including pre-Hippocratic works, the Hippocratic corpus, and the prolific and opinionated Galen. These texts will be complemented by secondary sources which will put them in scientific and social context, as well as by visual and material evidence. Questions to be considered will include the treatment of women, the relationship between medicine and magic, the evolving state of the arts of anatomy and physiology, and rival schools of thought about the right way to acquire medical knowledge.

In this course we will study the technologies - aqueducts, automata, catapults, concrete and more - that allowed the Roman Empire to prosper and expand. Technical and historical background will accompany hands-on work and discussion of philosophy of technology.

A survey of the history and development of ships and seafaring as revealed by shipwrecks, boat burials, texts, art, and other evidence. The role of nautical technology and seafaring among the maritime peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world-Canaanites, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans-and the riverine cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt is addressed. The survey stretches from the earliest evidence for Mediterranean seafaring around 10,000 bce to the first transatlantic voyages in the 15th century, including Arab, Viking, and European explorers, and the birth of modern capitalism in the Italian Maritime Republics. Along the way, economics, war, exploration, cult, life at sea, and colonization are discussed.

For thousands of years, people have believed that the world is ending imminently. In this course, we will examine the roots of apocalyptic thinking in the ancient world, especially among Jews and Christians. We will look at biblical apocalyptic texts as well as a wide array of other apocalyptic literatures, such as the books of Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse of Adam, the Apocalypse of Paul, and many others. These texts contain visions of end times, journeys to heaven and hell, and dramatic images of angels and demons, war and peace, and the natural and supernatural worlds. Our goal is to understand the circumstances that gave rise to apocalypticism and how disaster-thinking may have, paradoxically, provided comfort during crises. Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to the meaning of apocalypse as revelation, an unveiling, a discovery.

The course surveys the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt from its prehistoric origins down to the early first millennium bce. Within a chronological framework, the following themes or topics will be considered: the development of the Egyptian state (monarchy, administration, ideology), social organization (class, gender and family, slavery), economic factors, and empire and international relations.

Following the conquests of Alexander, the ancient civilization of Egypt came under Greek rule. This period is best known for its famous queen Cleopatra, the last independent ruler of ancient Egypt. But even before Cleopatra's life and death, the Egypt that she governed was a fascinating place - and a rich case study in cultural interactions under ancient imperialism. This course explores life in Egypt under Greek rule, during the three centuries known as the Ptolemaic period (named after Cleopatra's family, the Ptolemaic dynasty). We will examine the history and culture of Ptolemaic Egypt, an empire at the crossroads of Africa, the Near East, and the Mediterranean. We will explore the experiences of Egyptians, Greeks, and others living in this multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-linguistic society. Finally, we will investigate the ways that Ptolemaic Egypt can shed light on modern experiences of imperialism, colonialism, and globalization.

The art of Ancient Greece and Rome has a complex legacy within western culture that is inseparable from ideas about power, beauty, identity, and knowledge. As such, 'Classical' art has been appropriated for all kinds of ends, many of them deeply problematic. But what did ancient statues, paintings, vessels, or buildings mean for the cultures that originally created, viewed, and lived alongside them? How were they embedded within political and social structures, religious practices, and public or domestic spaces? What can they tell us about practices of representation and story-telling? How might they help us access ancient attitudes to gender, ethnicity, or social status? And why is any of this still relevant today? This course on Greek and Roman art and archaeology will address all these questions. Covering the time span from the Bronze Age (3rd millennium BCE) to the late Roman Empire (4th century CE), we will focus on one object or monument each lecture, considering how it can be considered exemplary for its time. Where possible, we will engage with artefacts in our collections at Cornell, including the plaster-casts, as we develop skills in viewing, analyzing, and contextualizing material evidence.

Who lived in the Ithaca area before American settlers and Cornell arrived? Where do these indigenous peoples reside today? This class explores the history and culture of the Gayogoho:no (Cayuga), which means people from the mucky land. We will read perspectives by indigenous authors, as well as archaeologists and historians, about past and current events, try to understand reasons why that history has been fragmented and distorted by more recent settlers, and delve into primary sources documenting encounters between settlers and the Gayogoho:no. We will also strive to understand the ongoing connections of the Gayogoho:no to this region despite forced dispossession and several centuries of colonialist exclusion from these lands and waters.

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

What was it like to live in the Roman world? What did that world look, taste and smell like? How did Romans raise their families, entertain themselves, understand death, and interact with their government? What were Roman values and how did they differ from our own? This course takes as its subject the everyday lives of individuals and explores those lives using the combined tools of archaeology, architecture and art, as well as some primary source readings. In doing so, it seeks to integrate those monuments into a world of real people, and to use archaeology to narrate a story about ancient lives and life habits. Some of the topics explored will include the Roman house; the Roman family, children and slaves; bathing and hygiene; food; gardens, agriculture and animals.

These seminars offer an introduction to the humanities by exploring historical, cultural, social, and political themes. Students will explore themes in critical dialogue with a range of texts and media drawn from the arts, humanities, and/or humanistic social sciences. Guest speakers, including Cornell faculty and Society for the Humanities Fellows, will present from different disciplines and points of view. Students will make field trips to relevant local sites and visit Cornell special collections and archives. Students enrolled in these seminars will have the opportunity to participate in additional programming related to the annual focus theme of Cornell's Society for the Humanities and the Humanities Scholars Program for undergraduate humanities research.

Did ancient Egyptians believe in the existence of souls? Why did they mummify the dead? Was the body of a pharaoh different from that of an ordinary person? This course sets the famous mortuary practices of ancient Egypt alongside treatments of living bodies and their immaterial components. We will read translated excerpts from ancient Egyptian texts—from magical spells recited for ancestors, to poetry on sex and death—while learning about items taken to the grave and monuments set up for posterity. In the process, we will reflect on contemporary representations of the past and evaluate the assumptions behind modern treatments of ancient artifacts and human remains.

This course offers a survey of the art and culture of China from the Neolithic period to the twenty-first century to students who have no previous background in Chinese studies. The course begins with an inquiry into the meaning of national boundaries and the controversial definition of the Han Chinese people, which will help us understand and define the scope of Chinese culture. Pre-dynastic (or prehistoric) Chinese culture will be presented based both on legends about the origins of the Chinese and on scientifically excavated artifacts. Art of the dynastic periods will be presented in light of contemporaneous social, political, geographical, philosophical and religious contexts. This course emphasizes hands-on experience using the Chinese art collection at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art for teaching and assignments. In addition to regular sections conducted in the museum, students are strongly encouraged to visit the museum often to appreciate and study artworks directly.

An introduction to the history and theory of writing systems from cuneiform to the alphabet, historical and new writing media, and the complex relationship of writing technologies to human language and culture. Through hands-on activities and collaborative work, students will explore the shifting definitions of writing and the diverse ways in which cultures through time have developed and used writing systems. We will also investigate the traditional divisions of oral vs. written and consider how digital technologies have affected how we use and think about writing in encoding systems from Morse code to emoji.

This introductory course explores the roles of amulets, love potions, curse tablets, and many other magical practices in ancient Greek and Roman societies. In this course, you will learn how to invoke the powers of Abrasax, become successful and famous, get people to fall desperately in love with you, and cast horrible curses on your enemies! We will also examine a range of ancient and modern approaches to magic as a concept: what exactly do we mean by magic, and how does it relate to other spheres of activity, like religion, science, and philosophy? When people (in ancient times or today) label the activities of others as magic, what are the social and political consequences of that act? As we investigate the practices that Greeks and Romans considered magical, we will also explore what those practices can teach us about many other aspects of life in the past, such as social class, gender, religion, and ethnic and cultural identity.

Undergraduate students pursue topics of particular interest under the guidance of a faculty member.

This course tells the history of the Roman empire through the urban development of its capital from the early 1st millennium BCE to the advent of Christian emperors in the 4th century CE. What does the archeology reveal about how the geography and environment of this site, its society and political systems, military conquests, economy, infrastructure, resources, and technologies interacted to create the center of an empire? Special focus is on how the appropriation of other peoples and cultures shaped the metropolis itself. Did it manage to integrate individuals from Africa, the Near East, from North of the Alps and Britain, and if so, how? The history of excavations and the reception of the city's architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries will provide a critical lens for analyzing some of the master narratives associated with ancient Rome and its ruins.

Introduction and training in dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and its applications in archaeology, art history, climate and environment through lab work and participation in ongoing research projects using ancient to modern wood samples from around the world. Supervised reading and laboratory/project work. Possibilities exists for summer fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Mexico, and New York State.

This course provides students with an orientation to the new technologies reshaping the effort to preserve cultural heritage. The course introduces students to the tools that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing (especially aerial and satellite imaging) provide for advancing heritage preservation and detecting cultural erasure. Our focus will be on contexts where heritage has emerged as a site of conflict, from Bosnia to Syria to Ukraine. Students will develop proficiency in a range of spatial technologies and their application to the human past. The course will culminate in projects that use new technologies to save heritage at risk.

This lecture class centers on the formative periods of ancient Greek culture, the centuries from about 800-300 BCE. Its aim is to place Greece within the cosmopolitan networks of the Mediterranean and beyond, while simultaneously looking at specific local traditions. Only within this complex glocal frame will it become clear what is unique about Greek art. In surveying major genres such as architecture, ceramics, sculpture and painting we will also investigate the question of whether and how changing resources and modes of production, various political systems (such as democracy or monarchy) and situations (war, colonization, trade), gender, or theories of representation had an impact on the art of their time. Some of the particular themes to be discussed are: the role of the Near East for the development of Greek visual culture; city planning; images in public and private life; visualizing the human body and the individuum; Greek art in contact zones from the Black Sea to Southern Italy and Sicily; foreign art in Greece; the concept of art; reception of Greek art in modern times.

Human-animal relationships are often seen in utilitarian, nutritional terms, particularly in archaeology. But animals and meat have significance far beyond their economic value. This course focuses on a broad range of these non-dietary roles of animals in human societies, past and present. This includes the fundamental shift in human-animal relations associated with domestication; the varied meanings of wild and domestic animals; as well as the importance of animals as wealth, as objects of sacrifice, as totems or metaphors for humans, and as symbols in art. Meat can be used in feasting and meat sharing to create, cement, and manipulate social relationships. This course is open to students of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and other disciplines with an interest in human-animal relations.

Archaeology has never operated in a vacuum. This course examines the political context of the study of the past, and the uses to which accounts of the past have been put in the present. Archaeology is often implicated in nationalist claims to territory, or claims of ethnic, racial, or religious superiority. Museum exhibits and other presentations to the public always have an agenda, consciously or otherwise. Archaeologists are increasingly required to interact with descendent communities, often in the context of postcolonial tensions. The antiquities trade and the protection of archaeological sites connects archaeologists to commercial and law enforcement sectors. We will also consider the internal politics of the practice of archaeology in various settings, including the implications of the funding sources that support archaeological work. This course is open to students of archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, history, and other disciplines with an interest in the past.

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.

This course considers the possibility of connections between the America and the Old World before the Spanish discovery not only as an empirical question, but also as an intensely controversial issue that has tested the limits of the scholarly detachment that archaeologists imagine characterizes their perspectives. We will consider the evidence for several possible episodes of interaction as well as the broader issue of how long-distance interaction can be recognized in the archaeological record. Transoceanic contact is a common element in popular visions of the American past, but most professional archaeologists have rejected the possibility with great vehemence. The issue provides an interesting case study in the power of orthodoxy in archaeology.

This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective. Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.

An introduction to ancient Mesoamerica, focusing on the nature and development of societies that are arguably the most complex to develop anywhere in the precolumbian Americas. The course provides a summary of the history of the region before the European invasion, but the emphasis is on the organization of Mesoamerican societies: the distinctive features of Mesoamerican cities, economies, political systems, religion. We begin by considering Mesoamerican societies at the time of the Spanish invasion. Our focus will be on descriptions of the Aztecs of Central Mexico by Europeans and indigenous survivors, in an attempt to extract from them a model of the fundamental organizational features of one Mesoamerican society, making allowances for what we can determine about the perspectives and biases of their authorsWe then review the precolumbian history of Mesoamerica looking for variations on these themes as well as indications of alternative forms of organization. We will also look at such issues as the transition from mobile to sedentary lifeways, the processes involved in the domestication of plants and animals, the emergence of cities and states, and the use of invasion-period and ethnographic information to interpret precolumbian societies in comparative perspective.

This course is a survey of the rise and decline of civilizations in the Andean region of western South America before the European invasion. We begin with a consideration of Andean environments and an overview of some of the common features of Andean societies, then examine the organization and interrelationships of social relations, economic patterns, political institutions, and ecology in the best understood precolumbian society in the Andes, the invasion-period Inka. We will then look at Andean prehistory in chronological sequence, with an eye to recognizing the emergence of these patterns in pre-Inka material remains. We will also consider issues of general theoretical interest - the use of invasion-period texts and ethnographic information to interpret precolumbian societies, the emergence of settled farming life, the development of cities and states - in comparative perspective.

Kingship plays an outsize role in Asian countries today, in both democratic and authoritarian countries. Even in countries that abolished the monarchy, the legacy of kingship is very much at play. In this course we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, with attention to both tradition and present-day modern states. Focusing on kingship as both ideology and practice, we will study how states and monarchic traditions first came to be, including as Stranger-Kings, Buddhist monarchs, secondary state formation, local adaptations of foreign models, and more. We will examine examples such as China, from the ancient states and early empires to the legacy of empire there today; Cambodia and its Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions; as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, and other parts of Asia. Using readings, films, lectures and guest presentations, we will re-examine the role of kingship in Asia so as to enable a new understanding of both ancient, historical, and contemporary Asia.

The Purpose of this course is to trace the development of Monotheism from its origins in Israelite/Canaanite polytheism. We will examine worship of the God, Yahweh and other deities in ancient Israel, and will trace the long and complicated process by which Yahweh became the sole deity to be formally accepted within Judaism. Using biblical evidence as well as inscriptional and archaeological evidence from Israel and elsewhere in the ancient Near East, we will address the question of why the Israelites eventually rejected deities such as Baal, Asherah, El and others, and how imagery associated with these deities informs biblical descriptions of Yahweh. We will explore the ways in which a small group of Jerusalem elites helped shape the monotheistic tradition that has been inherited in the West, and will consider the political, social and theological implications of this transformation.

This course introduces students to the arts of the ancient Americas from circa 2000 BC to the Spanish invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries. The term pre-Columbian refers to the span of time during which indigenous cultures flourished before Christopher Columbus’ voyage of 1492. This course covers the arts of indigenous Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras), the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the Greater and Lesser Antilles), and Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile). Students will become familiar with the history, archaeology, and visual arts of the earliest cultures that populated these regions up through the Inca, Aztec, and Maya cultures that encountered the Spaniards. This course also explores the legacies of pre-Columbian cultures among contemporary Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x artists in the United States.

The purpose of the course is to place the Bible within the context of a larger ancient world that can be explored by systematic excavation of physical remains. Students will become familiar with archaeological excavations and finds from ancient Syria-Palestine from 10,000 bce to 586 bce. We will explore this archaeological evidence on its own terms, taking into consideration factors such as archaeological method and the interpretive frameworks in which the excavators themselves work, as well as the implications of this body of evidence for understanding the complexity and diversity of biblical Israel.

This winter course on site in Cambodia will focus on Cambodian heritage past and present - how it's been created in the past, including the city of Angkor, and how that heritage and history is understood and engaged today. We will visit historical sites as well as museums and other relevant sites, including performances, where history is remembered and engaged. There will be lectures, including by Cambodian experts, as well as film showings. The course will be based in Siem Reap, in collaboration with the Center for Khmer Studies, and there will also be excursions to Phnom Penh, the capital.

What is religion, and how can we use material culture to investigate ancient beliefs and rituals? This course (1) explores major themes and problems in the archaeology of ancient Greek religion, and (2) compares and critiques selected theoretical and methodological approaches to the archaeology of cult more generally. Students will examine ritual artifacts, cult sites, and other aspects of religious material culture, as well as primary textual sources (in translation).

This class examines the history and holdings of Cornell's teaching collection of ancient Greek and Roman objects. Designed to start a systematic inventory of the collections, it requires hands-on engagement with the objects (defining their material, age, function etc.) as much as archival work. Questions concerning the ethics of collections and calls for decolonizing museums will play a central role as we ultimately think about how to make use of and display the objects in our custody.

We live in a world of ruins. Our planet is damaged. Cities grapple with urban decay caused by deindustrialization and other socio-economic problems. Capitalism, socialism, and imperialism have left a trail of detritus - the remnants of colonialism, extraction, industry, and failed utopian projects. For their part, 20th century dictatorships left behind the material traces of repression and mass violence. All the while, for centuries the ruin has evolved as a poignant allegory, representing such abstractions as history, the nation, the universal human, and even our emancipation from the destructive forces of capitalism. In conversation with philosophy and cultural geography, this course explores anthropological and archaeological approaches to modern ruins and ruination.

This seminar immerses students in the diverse painting traditions of colonial Latin America (1500s-1800s), with a focus on artistic practice in Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and the Hispanophone Caribbean. Themes include the pluralism and material makeup of devotional images, aesthetic constructions of race and class, the development of artistic workshops, and the role of rebellion and revolution in art. Students will participate in the curatorial development of Cornell's first exhibition of colonial Latin American art, scheduled to open in June 2024. They will research the paintings selected for the exhibition; devise the installation layout and design; write wall texts; and collaborate on the development of educational programming. Activities will also include a field trip to Buffalo State University observe scientific analysis of select paintings from the exhibition.

Community-engaged archaeology brings together knowledgeable communities located within and beyond academic institutions who collaborate to produce higher-quality accounts of the past. In this course, students will build their archaeological fieldwork and laboratory skills while contributing to strong university-community relationships in the local area. Drawing on historical documents, previous scholarship, expert collaborators, and archaeological investigation, students in this course contribute to the understanding of regional sites and landmarks. The topic for Fall 2022 addresses the Underground Railroad through a partnership between Ithaca's historic St. James AME Church, the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, and local schools. Students in this course will study archaeological evidence related to the everyday experiences of people who formed part of a congregation active in the Underground Railroad during the early- to mid-19th century.

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

In little more than a century the Inkas created an empire stretching thousands of kilometers along the Andean spine from Ecuador to Chile. This course focuses on the political and economic structure of the empire and on its roots in earlier Andean prehistory. Archaeological remains, along with documents produced in the aftermath of the Spanish invasion, will be used to trace the history of Inka territorial organization, statecraft, and economic relationships and the Colonial transformation of Andean societies.

What is the role of ethics in archaeology today? What principles shape the discipline's response to serious dilemmas? What is the relationship between ethics and politics in archaeology? This seminar provides an in-depth exploration of these questions across a range of subfields, from indigenous, public, and postcolonial archaeologies, to critical heritage studies, conflict archaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary past. We will learn the normative ethics of Western archaeology, with its concern for best practices, multiculturalism, and the politics of identity, as well as radical alternatives centered on hard politics, oppression, and justice. We will also explore the ethics of the profession, as it pertains to equity and inclusion. This course traverses the terrain of moral right and wrong in archaeology.

Critical approaches to embodiment compel bioarchaeologists to consider how social norms and institutional inequalities are enacted and materialized through the body. This course contributes a deep archaeological perspective on the lived experience of inequality and the historically contingent nature of sexuality, gender, and violence. Drawing upon the study of human skeletons, social theory, and a rich comparative literature in cultural anthropology, we will theorize bones as once-living bodies and explore topics such as body modification and mutilation, masculinity and performative violence, gender and sexual fluidity, and sickness and suffering in past societies. We will not only consider privilege and marginalization in lived experience, but also in death, examining how unequal social relationships are reproduced when the dead body is colonized as an object of study.

What is authenticity and why does it matter? Connoisseurship-the expertise required to make discerning judgments-involves assessments of quality,authenticity, historical and cultural significance, and many other issues. This course focuses on connoisseurship in the fine arts, archaeology, and ethnography in both academic contexts and the art world. Emphasis is on developing a nuanced understanding of authentication, at the core of the art market and an important determinant of relevant data for academic art historians and archaeologists. Topics include the role of authenticity in assigning value; looting and faking in relation to antiquities markets; technical analysis and forgery detection.

Topics Rotate. Fall 2024 topic: Funerary Culture in the Greco-Roman East. Tombs, grave goods, and funerary rituals are often thought to offer traces into the world of the living (the tomb as a house being a prominent metaphor), their concepts of the body, or their emotions. How, if at all, did such traditions change under imperial rule? Focusing on the Greek and Roman East means to zoom in to areas such as Greece, Anatolia, the Levant to the Middle East, or Egypt that feature century- if not millennia-old traditions which, if at all, transformed to different degrees under Roman rule. This seminar investigates opportunities and challenges of researching such constellations. Analysis of different traditions of scholarship that to this day shape our records will be critical, as well as discussion of scientific (and contested) methodologies of how to deal with human remains.

This is an intensive laboratory course in the study of human skeletal remains. A detailed knowledge of skeletal anatomy is fundamental to forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, and the medical sciences. This course teaches students how to identify all 206 bones and 32 teeth of the human skeleton, in both complete and fragmentary states. Students will also learn osteological methods for establishing a biological profile and documenting skeletal trauma and pathological lesions. Hands-on laboratory training will be supplemented by case studies that demonstrate the importance of human osteology for criminal investigations in the present and the study of health and violence in the past. The ethics of working with human remains are also discussed.

This seminar provides a higher-level general introduction to, and survey of, contemporary theories, methods, and approaches in the archaeology of the Mediterranean world. Rather than focusing on a specific geographical sub-region or chronological period, this course examines and critically assesses the practice and distinctive character of Mediterranean archaeology more broadly.

An introduction to belief systems in ancient Mexico and Central America, emphasizing the blending of religion, astrology, myth, history, and prophecy. Interpreting text and image in pre-Columbian books and inscriptions is a major focus.

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology.

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. We will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While we will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. You will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 4264/ARKEO 4264) offered in the spring.

This course follows from last semester's Zooarchaeological Method. We will shift our emphasis here from basic skills to interpretation, although you will continue to work with archaeological bones. We will begin by examining topics surrounding the basic interpretation of raw faunal data: sampling, quantification, taphonomy, seasonality. We will then explore how to use faunal data to reconstruct subsistence patterns, social structure, and human-animal relations.

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the empire of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.

Topic Spring 23: Portraiture.Byzantine artists produced a wide variety of images that modern interpreters have recognized as portraits. These images illuminate individual identity and visual representation in Byzantium. On the one hand, the constituent elements of a portrait (such as physiognomy, gesture, dress, and attributes) illuminate cultural understandings of personhood. On the other hand, those elements are assembled and displayed through means (composition, medium, and context) that illuminate cultural understandings of images and their ability to extend personal energy. We will focus on the primary sources, including preserved monuments (manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, etc.) and literary witnesses (epigrams, historians' accounts, etc.), supplemented by selections from the secondary literature on identity, individuality, and subject formation in Byzantium.Seminar topics rotate each semester. Previous topics include: Ravenna, Hagia Sophia, Byzantine Iconoclasm, Spiral Relief Columns.

Situated at the crossroads between the Mediterranean in the West and the Anatolian plateau in the East, Sardis successively belonged to the Lydian, Persian, Seleucid, Roman, and Byzantine empires. An urban center from at least the 7th century BCE onwards, the city developed a very particular fabric of peoples and traditions over the long time of its existence. The seminar follows the history of the site and the changing relationship of city and hinterland from the bronze age to the Byzantine period, focusing on its major civic, religious, military and funerary monuments. Debates in heritage and a critical analysis of the site's exploration and excavation in modern times, including the first expedition organized by Princeton University and the current Harvard-Cornell led excavations, form an integral part of the class. The seminar includes excursions to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Sardis Archive at Harvard University.

A seminar on the archaeology of the Byzantine Empire, from the late Roman through to the early modern periods. Topics to be covered include: long-term changes in settlement patterns and urban development; the material traces of state and monastic control over productive landscapes; the idea of the border and the nature of its defense; and the fraught relationship between Byzantine and classical archaeologies.

Several major and minor kingdoms situated around the Eastern Mediterranean basin flourished during the 14th-12th centuries BCE before a widespread violent collapse occurred around 1175. Thousands of cuneiform and other documents speak to two major socioeconomic processes of the age: the creation of the first international system in world history, and the collapse of that system after about two hundred years. Our course uses archaeological evidence, paleoclimate studies, and textual analysis (in translation) to address several related issues. We look at how networks of information, wealth accumulation, and political power were created and what role they played in globalization and destabilization. We consider whether the key players were aware of the coming collapse, what if any counter-measures were deployed, and how some polities were more resilient than others and created even greater networks post-collapse. We analyze a variety of related sources, with close attention paid to the Amarna Letters and other Egyptian texts from the Ramesside era. Several Bronze Age and Iron Age shipwrecks are examined for their evidence of maritime connectivity. And throughout the course students will become familiar with the history, economy, cult, laws and daily life of Ugarit (Tell Ras Shamra, Syria), a cosmopolitan coastal kingdom whose unparalleled archaeological and textual record affords a particularly close view of the transformative moments of the Late Bronze Age.

This course examines the fixity of Bible's representations of Israel as it relates to the fluidity of Israel's social, political, and religious experience as revealed in archaeology and texts from outside the Bible. We will use the tools of biblical criticism (philological, archaeological, literary historical) and methods drawn from such disciplines as History, Political Science, Anthropology, and Literary Criticism, to examine four biblical narrative traditions: The Joseph story; the exodus from Egypt; the Israelite conquest of Canaan; and the Song of Deborah, a text widely regarded as the oldest in the Hebrew Bible. Each of these played an essential role in the process of fabricating biblical Israel. As works of biblical historiography, each functioned to create a shared sense of a Jewish past in light of the urgencies of the present. Each is also witness to a creative process that unfolded when the past was still malleable, the terms not yet rigid. We will focus on the modes and materials of textual production and on how modern historians engage biblical narrative in fabricating their own narrative histories of ancient Israel. We will also consider how ancient and modern historical writing on ancient Israel has been put into the service of contemporary political discourse on boundaries and borders in Israel-Palestine.

Early states emerged when select groups gained control over wealth and power and institutionalized that control. How this was accomplished is a question of political economy that we can approach from archaeological, anthropological, and sociological perspectives. The course introduces students to the intellectual development of historical materialism in Smith, Marx, and Weber, among others, and traces their influence on later socioeconomic historians such as Polanyi and Finley. More recent approaches deriving from world-systems, gender studies, post-colonial studies, game theory, and network theory are then applied to case studies that include the emergence of a Mesopotamian state ca. 3400 BC, the Akkadian and Ur III empires, Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian trade, pharaonic Egypt, the international Late Bronze Age world, Aegean palatial civilization, and the Phoenicians. Students are welcome to present and write on other topics also. Monroe will provide context and clarification to assist with the specialist literature, but prior coursework in ancient studies will be advantageous in critically evaluating and writing about all the course readings.

How can a small sculpture produce monumental effects? Recent shifts in metal-detecting and excavation practices have transformed our understanding of the scope of figural art after the Roman empire's collapse; the field is newly flooded with evidence of toys, puppets, and other tiny bodies. Working across the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and gender studies, this course investigates how figurines shaped space, ritual, and concepts of personhood in the early medieval world.

“Staffage” is a term in the history of landscape painting. It refers to little figures who populate the scene, invariably dwarfed by their surroundings. The few critics who noticed them assigned them various roles: to illustrate “the benefits which nature affords to creatures living in the region” (Goethe, 1800); or, alternatively, “to lend the landscape its specific poetic character” (Fernow, 1806). From landscape, staffage migrated into archaeological documentation and architectural illustration. Here, tiny figures gain additional roles: to convey the scale of the monuments depicted, and the societies that inhabit them. Our study of staffage alternates between close looking at a wide range of pictures, and readings from the historical and theoretical literatures on the aesthetics and politics of landscape painting.

This seminar examines long-term colonialist processes of erasing Indigenous histories, and recent attempts to bring this heritage back to visibility. We will read texts by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Jean O'Brien, Patrick Wolfe, Keith Basso, Andrea Lynn Smith, and others. Students will engage in critical analysis of primary sources, Indigenous histories, and monuments related to the American 1779 Sullivan-Clinton invasion of Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Confederacy) territory and also the post-1779 Haudenosaunee reoccupations after the devastation. Student projects will focus on local Indigenous heritage and can include artwork, videos, counter-monument designs, poetry, and prose fiction, as well as more traditional academic research papers.

Independent work under the close guidance of a faculty member.

The student, under faculty direction, will prepare a senior thesis.

Graduate students pursue advanced topics of particular interest under the guidance of faculty member(s).

This course engages students in Archaeology and related fields in a semester-long discussion of the craft of archaeology with the faculty of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies. Each week, a different faculty member will moderate a conversation on the professional skills vital to the modern practice of archaeological research and the tools key to professionalization. Seminar topics include developing a research project and working with museum collections to matters of pedagogy and career development.

This course tells the history of the Roman empire through the urban development of its capital from the early 1st millennium BCE to the advent of Christian emperors in the 4th century CE. What does the archeology reveal about how the geography and environment of this site, its society and political systems, military conquests, economy, infrastructure, resources, and technologies interacted to create the center of an empire? Special focus is on how the appropriation of other peoples and cultures shaped the metropolis itself. Did it manage to integrate individuals from Africa, the Near East, from North of the Alps and Britain, and if so, how? The history of excavations and the reception of the city's architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries will provide a critical lens for analyzing some of the master narratives associated with ancient Rome and its ruins.

Human-animal relationships are often seen in utilitarian, nutritional terms, particularly in archaeology. But animals and meat have significance far beyond their economic value. This course focuses on a broad range of these non-dietary roles of animals in human societies, past and present. This includes the fundamental shift in human-animal relations associated with domestication; the varied meanings of wild and domestic animals; as well as the importance of animals as wealth, as objects of sacrifice, as totems or metaphors for humans, and as symbols in art. Meat can be used in feasting and meat sharing to create, cement, and manipulate social relationships. This course is open to students of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and other disciplines with an interest in human-animal relations.

Archaeology has never operated in a vacuum. This course examines the political context of the study of the past, and the uses to which accounts of the past have been put in the present. Archaeology is often implicated in nationalist claims to territory, or claims of ethnic, racial, or religious superiority. Museum exhibits and other presentations to the public always have an agenda, consciously or otherwise. Archaeologists are increasingly required to interact with descendent communities, often in the context of postcolonial tensions. The antiquities trade and the protection of archaeological sites connects archaeologists to commercial and law enforcement sectors. We will also consider the internal politics of the practice of archaeology in various settings, including the implications of the funding sources that support archaeological work. This course is open to students of archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, history, and other disciplines with an interest in the past.

Topics Rotate. Fall 2024 topic: Funerary Culture in the Greco-Roman East. Tombs, grave goods, and funerary rituals are often thought to offer traces into the world of the living (the tomb as a house being a prominent metaphor), their concepts of the body, or their emotions. How, if at all, did such traditions change under imperial rule? Focusing on the Greek and Roman East means to zoom in to areas such as Greece, Anatolia, the Levant to the Middle East, or Egypt that feature century- if not millennia-old traditions which, if at all, transformed to different degrees under Roman rule. This seminar investigates opportunities and challenges of researching such constellations. Analysis of different traditions of scholarship that to this day shape our records will be critical, as well as discussion of scientific (and contested) methodologies of how to deal with human remains.

Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Like forensic scientists at the scene of the crime, bioarchaeologists search for clues embedded in human bone and mummified tissues to reconstruct how ancient peoples lived and died. As a dynamic living system, the human skeleton responds not only to hormones that govern human development but also to physiological stress brought on by disease, malnutrition, and trauma. The human body is also an artifact molded by cultural understandings of gender, prestige, self-expression, and violence. In this course, students will learn the scientific techniques for estimating skeletal age and sex, diagnosing pathology, and reconstructing diet and migration patterns. This course emphasizes the critical integration of biological and cultural evidence for understanding past individuals and societies.

This course considers the possibility of connections between the America and the Old World before the Spanish discovery not only as an empirical question, but also as an intensely controversial issue that has tested the limits of the scholarly detachment that archaeologists imagine characterizes their perspectives. We will consider the evidence for several possible episodes of interaction as well as the broader issue of how long-distance interaction can be recognized in the archaeological record. Transoceanic contact is a common element in popular visions of the American past, but most professional archaeologists have rejected the possibility with great vehemence. The issue provides an interesting case study in the power of orthodoxy in archaeology.

This course provides a long-term overview of the indigenous peoples of Cornell's home region and their neighbors from an archaeological perspective. Cornell students live and work in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois, and this class will help residents to understand the deep history of this place. We will examine long-term changes in material culture, settlement, subsistence, and trade; the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; indigenous responses to European and American colonization; the practicalities of doing indigenous-site archaeology in New York State; and contemporary indigenous perspectives on archaeology. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.

This studio-style seminar provides an in-depth examination of the principles and practices of archaeological research design. We will examine all aspects of the research process, from concept formation, to methodology, to ethical practice and data management. Over the course of the semester, students will undertake a series of projects that will build incrementally into a research proposal. We will focus on developing the skills vital to designing archaeological research, starting with the formulation of a question and continuing through the exploratory process of defining proper sites, assemblages, analytical techniques, and presentation of findings. Class sessions will focus on designing research projects examining case studies drawn from world archaeology and student research projects.

An introduction to ancient Mesoamerica, focusing on the nature and development of societies that are arguably the most complex to develop anywhere in the precolumbian Americas. The course provides a summary of the history of the region before the European invasion, but the emphasis is on the organization of Mesoamerican societies: the distinctive features of Mesoamerican cities, economies, political systems, religion. We begin by considering Mesoamerican societies at the time of the Spanish invasion. Our focus will be on descriptions of the Aztecs of Central Mexico by Europeans and indigenous survivors, in an attempt to extract from them a model of the fundamental organizational features of one Mesoamerican society, making allowances for what we can determine about the perspectives and biases of their authors. We then review the precolumbian history of Mesoamerica looking for variations on these themes as well as indications of alternative forms of organization. We will also look at such issues as the transition from mobile to sedentary lifeways, the processes involved in the domestication of plants and animals, the emergence of cities and states, and the use of invasion-period and ethnographic information to interpret precolumbian societies in comparative perspective.

This course is an exploration of Maya understandings of their own history as it is reflected in ancient texts. We will begin by looking at episodes in Colonial and recent history to illustrate some of the ways Maya thinking about history may differ from more familiar genres. We will then review basic aspects of precolumbian Maya writing, but we will focus mainly on analyzing texts from one or more Classic period Maya cities.

Seminar topics rotate each semester. Topic for Spring 2023: Portraiture.Byzantine artists produced a wide variety of images that modern interpreters have recognized as portraits. These images illuminate individual identity and visual representation in Byzantium. On the one hand, the constituent elements of a portrait (such as physiognomy, gesture, dress, and attributes) illuminate cultural understandings of personhood. On the other hand, those elements are assembled and displayed through means (composition, medium, and context) that illuminate cultural understandings of images and their ability to extend personal energy. We will focus on the primary sources, including preserved monuments (manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, etc.) and literary witnesses (epigrams, historians' accounts, etc.), supplemented by selections from the secondary literature on identity, individuality, and subject formation in Byzantium.Previous topics include: Ravenna, Hagia Sophia, Byzantine Iconoclasm, Spiral Relief Columns.

A seminar on the archaeology of the Byzantine Empire, from the late Roman through to the early modern periods. Topics to be covered include: long-term changes in settlement patterns and urban development; the material traces of state and monastic control over productive landscapes; the idea of the border and the nature of its defense; and the fraught relationship between Byzantine and classical archaeologies.

Kingship plays an outsize role in Asian countries today, in both democratic and authoritarian countries. Even in countries that abolished the monarchy, the legacy of kingship is very much at play. In this course we will study Asia's kingdoms, states, and empires, with attention to both tradition and present-day modern states. Focusing on kingship as both ideology and practice, we will study how states and monarchic traditions first came to be, including as Stranger-Kings, Buddhist monarchs, secondary state formation, local adaptations of foreign models, and more. We will examine examples such as China, from the ancient states and early empires to the legacy of empire there today; Cambodia and its Angkor empire modeled on Indian traditions; as well as Burma, Thailand, Japan, and other parts of Asia. Using readings, films, lectures and guest presentations, we will re-examine the role of kingship in Asia so as to enable a new understanding of both ancient, historical, and contemporary Asia.

This winter course on site in Cambodia will focus on Cambodian heritage past and present - how it's been created in the past, including the city of Angkor, and how that heritage and history is understood and engaged today. We will visit historical sites as well as museums and other relevant sites, including performances, where history is remembered and engaged. There will be lectures, including by Cambodian experts, as well as film showings. The course will be based in Siem Reap, in collaboration with the Center for Khmer Studies, and there will also be excursions to Phnom Penh, the capital.

Introduction to the theory, history, and practice of Historic Preservation Planning in America, with an emphasis on understanding the development and implementation of a preservation project. The course discusses projects ranging in scale and character from individual buildings to districts to cultural landscapes; as well as topics such as preservation economics, government regulations, significance and authenticity, and the politics of identifying and conserving cultural and natural resources.

Several major and minor kingdoms situated around the Eastern Mediterranean basin flourished during the 14th -12th centuries BCE before a widespread violent collapse occurred around 1175. Thousands of cuneiform and other documents speak to two major socioeconomic processes of the age: the creation of the first international system in world history, and the collapse of that system after about two hundred years. Our seminar uses archaeological evidence, paleoclimate studies, and textual analysis (in translation) to address several related issues. We look at how networks of information, wealth accumulation, and political power were created and what role they played in globalization and destabilization. We consider whether the key players were aware of the coming collapse, what if any counter-measures were deployed, and how some polities were more resilient than others and created even greater networks post-collapse. We analyze a variety of related sources, with close attention paid to the Amarna Letters and other Egyptian texts from the Ramesside era. Several Bronze Age and Iron Age shipwrecks are examined for their evidence of maritime connectivity. And throughout the course students will become familiar with the history, economy, cult, laws and daily life of Ugarit (Tell Ras Shamra, Syria), a cosmopolitan coastal kingdom whose unparalleled archaeological and textual record affords a particularly close view of the transformative moments of the Late Bronze Age.

Introduction to core readings in Greek and Roman art and archaeology.

How can a small sculpture produce monumental effects? Recent shifts in metal-detecting and excavation practices have transformed our understanding of the scope of figural art after the Roman empire's collapse; the field is newly flooded with evidence of toys, puppets, and other tiny bodies. Working across the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and gender studies, this course investigates how figurines shaped space, ritual, and concepts of personhood in the early medieval world.

“Staffage” is a term in the history of landscape painting. It refers to little figures who populate the scene, invariably dwarfed by their surroundings. The few critics who noticed them assigned them various roles: to illustrate “the benefits which nature affords to creatures living in the region” (Goethe, 1800); or, alternatively, “to lend the landscape its specific poetic character” (Fernow, 1806). From landscape, staffage migrated into archaeological documentation and architectural illustration. Here, tiny figures gain additional roles: to convey the scale of the monuments depicted, and the societies that inhabit them. Our study of staffage alternates between close looking at a wide range of pictures, and readings from the historical and theoretical literature on the aesthetics and politics of landscape painting.

An introduction to the story of how human history from the earliest times through to the recent period interrelates with changing climate conditions on Earth. The course explores the whole expanse of human history, but concentrates on the most recent 15,000 years through to the Little Ice Age (14th-19th centuries AD). Evidence from science, archaeology and history are brought together to assess how climate has shaped the human story.

An introduction to the field of Dendrochronology and associated topics with an emphasis on their applications in the field of archaeology and related heritage-buildings fields. Course aimed at graduate level with a focus on critique of scholarship in the field and work on a project as part of the course.

Archaeology studies the past through its material remains. In doing so, it builds on wide-ranging theories and methods to develop its own disciplinary toolbox. This graduate seminar explores this toolbox, treating a topic of broad theoretical and/or methodological interest such as emerging topics in archaeological thought, the history of archaeological theory, key archaeological methods, themes that tie archaeology to the wider domain of the humanities and social sciences, or some combination of the above. The seminar is taught by various members of the Archaeology faculty, each of whom offers their own version of the seminar. The seminar is required for incoming CIAMS M.A. students, and needed for CIAMS membership for Ph.D. students.

This class examines the history and holdings of Cornell's teaching collection of ancient Greek and Roman objects. Designed to start a systematic inventory of the collections, it requires hands-on engagement with the objects (defining their material, age, function etc.) as much as archival work. Questions concerning the ethics of collections and calls for decolonizing museums will play a central role as we ultimately think about how to make use of and display the objects in our custody.

We live in a world of ruins. Our planet is damaged. Cities grapple with urban decay caused by deindustrialization and other socio-economic problems. Capitalism, socialism, and imperialism have left a trail of detritus - the remnants of colonialism, extraction, industry, and failed utopian projects. For their part, 20th century dictatorships left behind the material traces of repression and mass violence. All the while, for centuries the ruin has evolved as a poignant allegory, representing such abstractions as history, the nation, the universal human, and even our emancipation from the destructive forces of capitalism. In conversation with philosophy and cultural geography, this course explores anthropological and archaeological approaches to modern ruins and ruination.

This seminar immerses students in the diverse painting traditions of colonial Latin America (1500s-1800s), with a focus on artistic practice in Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and the Hispanophone Caribbean. Themes include the pluralism and material makeup of devotional images, aesthetic constructions of race and class, the development of artistic workshops, and the role of rebellion and revolution in art. Students will participate in the curatorial development of Cornell's first exhibition of colonial Latin American art, scheduled to open in June 2024. They will research the paintings selected for the exhibition; devise the installation layout and design; write wall texts; and collaborate on the development of educational programming. Activities will also include a field trip to Buffalo State University observe scientific analysis of select paintings from the exhibition.

Community-engaged archaeology brings together knowledgeable communities located within and beyond academic institutions who collaborate to produce higher-quality accounts of the past. In this course, students will build their archaeological fieldwork and laboratory skills while contributing to strong university-community relationships in the local area. Drawing on historical documents, previous scholarship, expert collaborators, and archaeological investigation, students in this course contribute to the understanding of regional sites and landmarks. The topic for Fall 2022 addresses the Underground Railroad through a partnership between Ithaca's historic St. James AME Church, the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, and local schools. Students in this course will study archaeological evidence related to the everyday experiences of people who formed part of a congregation active in the Underground Railroad during the early- to mid-19th century.

In little more than a century the Inkas created an empire stretching thousands of kilometers along the Andean spine from Ecuador to Chile. This course focuses on the political and economic structure of the empire and on its roots in earlier Andean prehistory. Archaeological remains, along with documents produced in the aftermath of the Spanish invasion, will be used to trace the history of Inka territorial organization, statecraft, and economic relationships and the Colonial transformation of Andean societies.

What is the role of ethics in archaeology today? What principles shape the discipline's response to serious dilemmas? What is the relationship between ethics and politics in archaeology? This seminar provides an in-depth exploration of these questions across a range of subfields, from indigenous, public, and postcolonial archaeologies, to critical heritage studies, conflict archaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary past. We will learn the normative ethics of Western archaeology, with its concern for best practices, multiculturalism, and the politics of identity, as well as radical alternatives centered on hard politics, oppression, and justice. We will also explore the ethics of the profession, as it pertains to equity and inclusion. This course traverses the terrain of moral right and wrong in archaeology.

Critical approaches to embodiment compel bioarchaeologists to consider how social norms and institutional inequalities are enacted and materialized through the body. This course contributes a deep archaeological perspective on the lived experience of inequality and the historically contingent nature of sexuality, gender, and violence. Drawing upon the study of human skeletons, social theory, and a rich comparative literature in cultural anthropology, we will theorize bones as once-living bodies and explore topics such as body modification and mutilation, masculinity and performative violence, gender and sexual fluidity, and sickness and suffering in past societies. We will not only consider privilege and marginalization in lived experience, but also in death, examining how unequal social relationships are reproduced when the dead body is colonized as an object of study.

What is authenticity and why does it matter? Connoisseurship-the expertise required to make discerning judgments-involves assessments of quality,authenticity, historical and cultural significance, and many other issues. This course focuses on connoisseurship in the fine arts, archaeology, and ethnography in both academic contexts and the art world. Emphasis is on developing a nuanced understanding of authentication, at the core of the art market and an important determinant of relevant data for academic art historians and archaeologists. Topics include the role of authenticity in assigning value; looting and faking in relation to antiquities markets; technical analysis and forgery detection.

This is an intensive laboratory course in the study of human skeletal remains. A detailed knowledge of skeletal anatomy is fundamental to forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, and the medical sciences. This course teaches students how to identify all 206 bones and 32 teeth of the human skeleton, in both complete and fragmentary states. Students will also learn osteological methods for establishing a biological profile and documenting skeletal trauma and pathological lesions. Hands-on laboratory training will be supplemented by case studies that demonstrate the importance of human osteology for criminal investigations in the present and the study of health and violence in the past. The ethics of working with human remains are also discussed.

Explores the ways Mesoamericans understood the world and their place in it, and the ways they constructed history as these are reflected in the few books that have survived from the period before the European invasion. Examines the structure of writing and systems of notation, especially calendars, and considers their potential for illuminating Mesoamerican world views and approaches to history. Primary focus is detailed analysis of five precolumbian books: Codex Borgia, a central Mexican manual of divinatory ritual; Codex Boturini, a history of migration in central Mexico; Codex Nuttall, a Mixtec dynastic history; and two Maya books of astrology and divination, Codex Dresden and Codex Madrid.

This seminar provides a higher-level general introduction to, and survey of, contemporary theories, methods, and approaches in the archaeology of the Mediterranean world. Rather than focusing on a specific geographical sub-region or chronological period, this course examines and critically assesses the practice and distinctive character of Mediterranean archaeology more broadly.

This course asks how anthropologists articulate the relevance of our work in theoretical and political terms by staging an encounter between three disparate strands of scholarship: anthropology of the contemporary, engaged/public anthropology, and anthropology of everyday violence and ordinary affects. Designed to bring together pre-fieldwork and post-fieldwork graduate students, this seminar functions as a laboratory for expanding existing conversations and exploring further articulations of engaged anthropology of the contemporary. Participants will reflect on how their political commitments, ethnographic and other sensibilities, and theoretical perspectives inform each other, and will invigorate their research design, writing, and analytical frameworks in light of these reflections and engagement with course texts. The course is open to students from across the disciplines.

This advanced seminar focuses on the archaeological study of houses, households, families, and communities. How is the study of domestic life transforming our understanding of ancient societies? How can we most effectively use material evidence to investigate the practices, experiences, identities, and social dynamics that made up the everyday lives of real people in antiquity, non-elite as well as elite? To address these questions, we will survey and critically examine historical and current theories, methods, and approaches within the field of household archaeology. This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates with some previous background in archaeology, material culture studies, or related fields.

This is a hands-on laboratory course in zooarchaeological method: the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. It is designed to provide students with a basic grounding in identification of body part and taxon, aging and sexing, pathologies, taphonomy, and human modification. The course will deal only with mammals larger than squirrels. While students will work on animal bones from prehistoric Europe, most of these skills are easily transferable to the fauna of other areas, especially North America. This is an intensive course that emphasizes laboratory skills in a realistic setting. Students will analyze an assemblage of actual archaeological bones. It is highly recommended that students also take the course in Zooarchaeological Interpretation (ANTHR 7264/ARKEO 7264) offered in the spring.

This course follows from last semester's Zooarchaeological Method. We will shift our emphasis here from basic skills to interpretation, although you will continue to work with archaeological bones. We will begin by examining topics surrounding the basic interpretation of raw faunal data: sampling, quantification, taphonomy, seasonality. We will then explore how to use faunal data to reconstruct subsistence patterns, social structure, and human-animal relations.

Examines the structure and history of the largest polity in ancient Mexico, the empire of the Aztecs, using descriptions left by Spanish invaders, accounts written by Aztecs under Colonial rule, and archaeological evidence. Explores Aztec visions of the past, emphasizing the roles of myth, religion, and identity in Aztec statecraft and the construction of history.

An exploration of the archaeology and art of the Aegean region and of its neighbors during the Bronze Age, ca. 3000-1000 BCE: the origins and precursors of the Classical World. The course will investigate the emergence of the first complex societies in the Aegean region in the third millennium BCE, and then the development and story of the Minoan and Mycenaean worlds and their neighbors in the second millennium BCE. Topics will include: the Early Bronze Age and the first complex societies in the Aegean (Cyclades, Crete, Greece, Anatolia); the collapse and reorientation around 2200BCE and links with climate change; the first palace civilization of (Minoan) Crete; the Santorini (Thera) volcanic eruption and its historical impact in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean; the rise of the Mycenaean Greek palaces and the shift into proto-history; the development of an international east Mediterranean trade system; Ahhiyawa and the Hittites; the 'Trojan War'; and the collapse of the Late Bronze Age societies and links with climate change.

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.

Situated at the crossroads between the Mediterranean in the West and the Anatolian plateau in the East, Sardis successively belonged to the Lydian, Persian, Seleucid, Roman, and Byzantine empires. An urban center from at least the 7th century BCE onwards, the city developed a very particular fabric of peoples and traditions over the long time of its existence. The seminar follows the history of the site and the changing relationship of city and hinterland from the bronze age to the Byzantine period, focusing on its major civic, religious, military and funerary monuments. Debates in heritage and a critical analysis of the site's exploration and excavation in modern times, including the first expedition organized by Princeton University and the current Harvard-Cornell led excavations, form an integral part of the class. The seminar includes excursions to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Sardis Archive at Harvard University.

This course examines the fixity of Bible's representations of Israel as it relates to the fluidity of Israel's social, political, and religious experience as revealed in archaeology and texts from outside the Bible. We will use the tools of biblical criticism (philological, archaeological, literary historical) and methods drawn from such disciplines as History, Political Science, Anthropology, and Literary Criticism, to examine four biblical narrative traditions: The Joseph story; the exodus from Egypt; the Israelite conquest of Canaan; and the Song of Deborah, a text widely regarded as the oldest in the Hebrew Bible. Each of these played an essential role in the process of fabricating biblical Israel. As works of biblical historiography, each functioned to create a shared sense of a Jewish past in light of the urgencies of the present. Each is also witness to a creative process that unfolded when the past was still malleable, the terms not yet rigid. We will focus on the modes and materials of textual production and on how modern historians engage biblical narrative in fabricating their own narrative histories of ancient Israel. We will also consider how ancient and modern historical writing on ancient Israel has been put into the service of contemporary political discourse on boundaries and borders in Israel-Palestine.

This seminar examines long-term colonialist processes of erasing Indigenous histories, and recent attempts to bring this heritage back to visibility. We will read texts by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Jean O'Brien, Patrick Wolfe, Keith Basso, Andrea Lynn Smith, and others. Students will engage in critical analysis of primary sources, Indigenous histories, and monuments related to the American 1779 Sullivan-Clinton invasion of Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Confederacy) territory and also the post-1779 Haudenosaunee reoccupations after the devastation. Student projects will focus on local Indigenous heritage and can include artwork, videos, counter-monument designs, poetry, and prose fiction, as well as more traditional academic research papers.

What is religion, and how can we use material culture to investigate ancient beliefs and rituals? This course (1) explores major themes and problems in the archaeology of ancient Greek religion, and (2) compares and critiques selected theoretical and methodological approaches to the archaeology of cult more generally. Students will consider and analyze ritual artifacts, cult sites, and other aspects of religious material culture, as well as primary textual sources (in translation).

Students, working individually with faculty member(s), prepare a master's thesis in archaeology.

Students, working individually with faculty member(s), prepare a master's thesis in archaeology.