Historical Archaeology

Course Description and Objectives: The goal of this course is to provide a solid background in the field of historical archaeology. We will establish the basic history of the discipline, from its birth in the 1930s, to its identity crisis in the 1950s and 1960s, to the present day. Along with more theoretical papers, specific case studies will be used to address a variety of topics such as Material Culture, Artifact Patterning, Consumerism and Socioeconomics, Ethnic Identity, Ideology, etc. Our view of Historical Archaeology will be both particularistic and global.

2. James Deetz 1996 In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Anchor (Revised and Expanded edition)

3. Electronic documents, comprising key articles and book chapters, may also be posted and downloadable as pdfs from a university server.

Requirements: Participation in class discussions is expected, and each student’s input will be crucial. Students are expected to have read the readings for that day, prior to coming into the classroom, and prepared to discuss them.

There will be three non-cumulative exams, the format of which will be a mixture of objective questions (e.g., true false, multiple choice, etc), and short answer or essay questions. There will also be a final exam, following this same format, but comprehensive and cumulative.

Synopses of Readings:
For some key readings, a synopsis (i.e., a critical summary) ranging from two to five paragraphs – not to exceed one (double-spaced 1 inch margins) page in length – for each reading) will be required and due at the beginning of each class, before we begin the discussion. Readings requiring synopses will be denoted by three bold X’s (e.g., XXX).

For the take-home seriation exercise, students will download the materials from the course web site. The exercise will be posted on-line no and will include all necessary instructions. Students are welcome to team-up with classmates to work through the exercise, but each student is expected to submit their own work. Submitting a literal copy of a classmate’s work is prohibited and will be treated as an act of plagiarism.

The seriation exercise is designed to illustrate basic methods of data collection and analysis using paper examples of actual artifacts. The exercise is essentially a mock version of the same analytical methods archaeologists use to measure, organize, and interpret archaeological remains. It is designed to be both instructive and challenging, but also enjoyable. The take-home exercise is worth 5% of the total grade. Points will be deducted for late seriations.

A final letter grade will be assigned at the end of the semester, according to this scale:

A (93-100%)

A- (90-92%)

B+ (88-89%)

B (83-87%)

B- (80-82%)

C+ (78-79%)

C (73-77%)

C- (70-72%)

D+ (68-69%)

D (63-67%)

D- (60-62%)

E (59% or below)

Attendance: Regular attendance is expected. Excessive unexcused absences will detract from the student’s final grade (see above).

Make-up Exams:

If an exam is missed, and the absence was pre-arranged, or in the event of illness accompanied by a physician’s note, a make-up exam will be given. No make-up exams will be given for students who miss the testing period due to unexcused absences.

Accommodating Students with Disabilities:

Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student, who in turn must provide this documentation to me when requesting accommodation.

Academic Honesty:

The University reminds every student of the implied pledge of Academic Honesty:

“on any work submitted for credit the student has neither received nor given unauthorized aid.”

THIS REFERS TO CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM, WHICH WILL NOT BE TOLERATED IN THIS CLASS

Consult the Student Guide at http://www.dso.ufl.edu/sccr/honorcodes/conductcode.php for further information. To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use another person’s idea, opinion, or theory; any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings (any pieces of information) that are not common knowledge; quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

Students caught cheating will be referred to the University administration for disciplinary action, the consequences of which can include failure of this course, and possible expulsion from the University.

Material Culture

Cabek, Melanie, Mark D. Groover, and Scott J. Wagers
1995 Health Care and the Wayman A.M.E. Church. Historical Archaeology 29(2):55-76. (Synopsis required - 2)XXX

Seriation exercise distributed (due Wednesday -- October 3) download HERE: SERIATION

+++++Exam 1 --- Wednesday October 10 (over materials from weeks 1 thru 5)+++++

Warren Perry and Robert Paynter
1999 “Artifacts, Ethnicity, and the Archaeology of African Americans.” In “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, edited by Theresa Singleton, pp. 299-310. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Wylie, Alison
1991 Gender theory and the archaeological record: why is there no archaeology of gender? In Engendering Archaeology: Women in Prehistory, edited by M. Conkey and
J. Specter, pp. 31-54. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Bullen, Adelaide K. And Ripley P. Bullen
1945 Black Lucy’s Garden. Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 6(2):17-28.

Wurst, LouAnn and Robert Fitts
1999 Why confront class? Historical Archaeology 33(1):1-7.

Conflict Archaeology

McGuire, Randall H. and Paul Reckner
2005 Building a Working Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project. In Industrial Archaeology, Future Directions, edited by Eleanor Conlin Casella and James Symonds, pp. 217-241. Springer Press: New York. (Synopsis required -8)XXX

+++++Exam 3 --- Friday November 16 (over materials from weeks 9 thru 12)+++++

Week 14 (November 19 – 23) NO CLASS Wednesday through Friday -- Thanksgiving

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
ANT 4930 (Section 1B51)

Material Culture

Conflict Archaeology

Conflict Archaeology (continued)

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY ANT 4930 (Section 1B51)

Material Culture

Conflict Archaeology

Conflict Archaeology (continued)

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
ANT 4930 (Section 1B51)