The archaeology and history of eastern North America. Topics to be explored include Indigenous population movements, human-environment interactions, cultural differentiation and ethnogenesis, economy and exchange systems, mortuary practices, social organization and stratification, European exploration, settler colonialism and enslavement, and how archaeology intersects with contemporary social and political issues.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate student performance is evaluated according to higher standards. Graduate students will also be expected to produce an additional research paper on a topic relevant to their scholarly objectives.
Athena Title
Archaeology Eastern North Amer
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will be able to describe the history of human occupation in eastern North America.
Students will be able to explain the co-development of human societies and environmental and ecological landscapes.
Students will examine the core theories and methods shaping the contemporary practice of archaeology in eastern North America.
Students will situate current foci in the archaeology of eastern North America within larger disciplinary conversations in anthropological archaeology.
Students will produce a literature review on a topic relevant to this field of study.
Topical Outline
1. Archaeological practice: methods, evidence, and interpretation
2. Geography and cultural ecology
3. Peopling of eastern North America
4. Pleistocene-Holocene climate change, diversity, and regional adaptations
5. Late Archaic lifeways: Early villages, monumentality, and plant domestication
6. Early and Middle Woodland networks and mortuary customs
7. Late Woodland regionalism: the first farmers
8. Northern Iroquoian and Algonquin societies
9. The Mississippian world
10. Pericolonialism: European explorers, missionaries, and Indigenous responses
11. Early colonial encroachment: Forts, outposts, and the shatter zone
12. Enslavement and plantation economies
13. Postbellum and industrial archaeology and history
14. Archaeologists, descendant communities, and cultural heritage management
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
