Archaeology
Archaeology is a really fun course. It involves lots of hands on activities and lots of time outside the classroom. At the Lancaster site you take three field trips to downtown Lancaster, The Penn Archaeology museum and to an actual dig site. There is one research project and one midterm. The curiculum included the book In Small Things Considered which is extremely boring. But overall the class is very entertaining.
CAN YOU SAY HOMINID 10 TIMES FAST?
Session 2 '06 ARCH classes had Molly as the instructor and Rosanna as the T.A. During session 1, there was a different instructor (Jenny?), but the same T.A. We were not required to read Small Things Considered but we had two or three excerpts from it to skim through. The following information is relevant to 06.2.
First of all, the performance that the Paleobiology kids did about hominid evolution and culture at the closing ceremony was really mostly about archaeology (study of past cultures and their physical remains), not paleobiology (a branch of paleontology that deals with the origin, growth and structure of fossil animals and plants as living organisms). The overwhelming majority of physical remains of hominids have been artifacts, not fossils, and most paleontologists stick to their own turf-- other animal and plant species that have mostly fossil remains-- dinosaurs, much?? They're mooching off of our syllabus!
The first field trip we took was to the UPenn Museum of Anthropology & Archaeology. It was a great museum and our tour guide was overly helpful. The Etruscan, Chinese, and Egyptian exhibits were particularly interesting. For lunch, we got to choose between ham and cheese sandwiches, turkey rolls, and spinach veggie wraps. In case anyone plans on choosing this course in the future: DO NOT GET THE VEGGIE WRAPS. They were nauseating. We also had to go to the museum auditorium and listen to a balding, scantily dressed old man who talked like a walrus educate us about Roman warriors and weaponry. The auditorium was full of kids from day care on a field trip, and the only point during the presentation that wasn't a waste of time was the part where little kids got to go on stage and play with the weapons and fight each other, and one of them accidentally drew blood.
The second field trip was to the Shenk's Ferry American Indian (We learned it's incorrect to say Native American because no people are native to America because australopithecus originated in Africa-- unless you believe the whole Noah and the flood shpiel-- don't want to offend anyone) dig site in Lancaster. We had some archaeologists show us artifacts they found and tell us about their excavation methods and mapping techniques. They had build a palisade around the settlement and reconstructed a longhouse, but most of the area looked like this:
I have other pictures, but I also have a strong feeling I'm getting too caught up into this.
The third trip was to Muncy, Pennsylvania, a town that had thrived during the Revolutionary and Civil War period thanks to their elaborate canal system and their strong mules. Our first stop was at the Muncy Historical Museum, which turned out to only have one toilet, but was otherwise very intelligently designed. Then we went to a dig site on the Susquehanna Riverbed and got to dig and sieve through some dirt (and worms). Here's one of the displays in the museum:
We watched a few movies. One was 45 minutes of a man sitting and chipping away at a rock trying to teach us to make Oldowan Clovis spearpoints. Even if everyone hadn't fallen asleep, we probably wouldn't have been able to do much better in the following lab where we had to make spearpoints and arrowheads from chunks of obsidian and flint. There is an actual very intelligent and difficult method to this. It's very frustrating and takes a lot of skill that no one hand and everyone's hands were bloody by the end because we had stupidly ditched our gloves (and safety goggles). We also watched a documentary about the Maya during the last week and "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc" on the last day while drinking Root Beer Floats.
We also learned about Howard Carson's discoveries in Motel of the Mysteries, a great entertaining book that you should read.
We also did independent research projects on a civilization of our choice, and spent a lot of time lugging books back and forth from the library and making posters. Then we got to "type up information for our posters and google pictures up", so we got to go on AIM.
We also had to conduct interviews and write ethnographies of CTY to demonstrate the point of ethnoarchaeology, which is to make inferences about past cultures based on the customs of the modern people who live in the geographical area or are direct descendents of the past band, tribe, chiefdom, or state.
Wow, I got pretty carried away here! In short, take this class! It rocks! Pun not intended!
