ARCH 0030 Art in Antiquity: An Introduction
What went into the creation of the Parthenon? Who lived in the Tower of Babel? Why do we still care? This course offers an introduction to the art, architecture, and material culture of the ancient world. Things of beauty and of power will be explored, from Egyptian pyramids and Near Eastern palaces, to the 'classical' art of Greece and Rome. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. MWF 1-1:50pm. A/E/C: 2, 3, 4

ARCH 0113 Inequality in the Ancient World (RELS 0021)
Interested students must register for RELS 0021.
This course examines various forms of inequality in the ancient world as well as the range of responses to it by those who resist it and reject it. The axes of inequality we shall investigate vary from culture to culture, but often include the privileging of male/masculine over female/feminine, native over foreign, whole-bodied over “defective” or “blemished,” old over young, ritually pure over polluted, holy over common or profane, rich over poor, free over enslaved, honored over shamed, or the couplings of men and women over same-sex couplings. The course is comparative, with a primary focus on texts and artifacts from ancient Israel and coastal West Asia, Babylon and Assyria, Greece and Rome. Texts we will study include various passages from the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Laws, the Middle Assyrian Laws, the Iliad, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Instructor: Saul Olyan. W 3:00-5:30pm.

ARCH 0161 Arts of Asia (HIAA 0021)
Interested students must register for HIAA 0021.
From sacrificial cauldrons to sunflower seeds, and Roman Buddhas to five-toed dragons, this course introduces the incredible diversity of traditions that collectively constitute the arts of Asia. Organized around a series of case studies of exemplary objects, the course explores the temporal, geographic, material, and thematic range of Asian art through the life stories of individual things. Tracing histories of human ingenuity and value, we will examine the ways these things changed the people who saw them and were themselves changed in the process of being seen. And we will come to know them through the ways they change us. WRIT. Instructor: Jeffrey Moser. TTh 9-10:20am. WRIT A/E/C: 2, 5

ARCH 0309  Human Evolution​ (ANTH 0310)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0310.
Examination of theory and evidence on human evolution in the past, present and future. Topics include evolution and adaptation, biocultural adaptation, fossil evidence, behavioral evolution in primates, human genetic variation and contemporary human biological variation. Instructor: Andrew Scherer. MW 3-4:20pm. A/E/C 5; A6. 

ARCH 0396  Sacred Spaces: Ancient Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques (JUDS 0050P)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0050P.
In this seminar we will examine the architecture and art of synagogues, churches, and mosques from antiquity through the present. We will learn how different building traditions evolved over time, and how sacred spaces reflect beliefs and practices of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Of interest will be both unique regional and chronological trends—characteristics that are indicative of a specific religious community—but also the parallels and shared features common to all Abrahamic religions. Special attention will be given to questions of gendered space and the role of patriarchy and women’s agency in shaping religious architectures. Instructor: Katharina Galor. M 3:00-5:30pm

ARCH 0529 Swords, Sandals, and Saunas: The Roman Army in War and Peace (CLAS 0529)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0529.
The Roman legionary is often seen as synonymous with the power of the Roman Empire: heavily armored, spear and shield in hand, marching unrelentingly forward against enemies. But the military was more than a menacing State institution, and this class shifts the focus to the lives of the men who filled the ranks, exploring their languages, religions, clothing, equipment, and fighting styles. We will draw upon evidence of all sorts, including archaeological material from fortifications and battlefields, inscriptions on tombstones and other monuments, and iconographic depictions. MWF 11-11:50am. A/E/C: 4, 5

ARCH 0771 An Anthropology of Food (ANTH 0680)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0680.
An exploration of the human experience of food and nutrition from evolutionary, archaeological, and cross-cultural perspectives. The course will review the various approaches employed by anthropologists and archaeologists to understand diet and subsistence in the past and present. Starting with the evolutionary roots of the human diet in Plio-Pleistocene Africa, we will trace patterns of human subsistence to the present, including the social and health implications of the agricultural revolution. We will then explore modern foodways in cross-cultural perspective, focusing on the interplay of ecology, politics, technology, and cultural beliefs. Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. MWF 2-2:50pm. A/E/C 1, A6, E/C5

ARCH 1161 Museum Collecting and Collections (AMST 1510)
Interested students must register for AMST 1510.
This course will examine critically the collection of ancient objects. Through functional, historical, material and aesthetic lenses an analysis of the relationships between the cultural contexts of objects will be examined. Case studies, guest lectures and site visits (virtual and real) will be used to demonstrate evolving theory, practice, law and ethical implications of collecting archaeological objects. Instructor: Ron Potvin. TTh 10:30-11:50am. 

ARCH 1283 The Fragility of Life in Ancient Greece​ (CLAS 1130)
Interested students must register for CLAS 1130.
This interdisciplinary course explores the fragility of life in the Ancient Greek city-state form multiple perspectives: those of state-building, the population stress in the city, the capacity for the family to maintain and sustain itself, to those of the individual: man, woman, and child, whose life experiences left them vulnerable to disease and economic hardship. This course explores Ancient Greek socio-economic history addressing health, disease, fertility and childbirth, migration, mobility, and population and family ‘management’ as well as topics fundamental to historical demography (mortality, birth rates, and growth) over the longue durée approach (Archaic through Roman Imperial eras). Instructor: Graham Oliver. TTh 9:00-10:20am.

ARCH 1711 Iconoclasm: Destroying Images in the Near East and Beyond​ (ASYR 1090)
Interested students must register for ASYR 1090.
What drives someone to smash, erase, or otherwise obliterate the image of another? Why do the portraits (and sometimes even the names) of people become targets of destruction? Who has engaged in systematic violence against images and why? If images are inert, why have people repeatedly felt the need to kill them as if they were alive? What does iconoclasm have to do with social memory and forgetfulness? Through a series of detailed case studies we will survey the intentional destruction of images, monuments, and texts in the Near East over many millennia. In thinking about the religious, political, and aesthetic motivations that once incited ancient iconoclasm, we will also consider more recent and even contemporary incidents during which people have found the monuments around them to be deserving of annihilation. Instructor: Felipe Rojas. TTh 1:00-2:20pm.

ARCH 1769 Unearthing the Body: History, Archaeology, and Biology at the End of Antiquity (HIST 1835A)
Interested students must register for HIST 1835A.
How was the physical human body imagined, understood, and treated in life and death in the late ancient Mediterranean world? Drawing on evidence from written sources, artistic representations, and archaeological excavations, this class will explore this question by interweaving thematic lectures and student analysis of topics including disease and medicine, famine, asceticism, personal adornment and ideals of beauty, suffering, slavery, and the boundaries between the visible world and the afterlife, in order to understand and interpret the experiences of women, men, and children who lived as individuals—and not just as abstractions—at the end of antiquity. Instructor: Jonathan Conant. MWF 2:00-2:50pm. A/E/C 10; A6,7,8,9

ARCH 1771 Archaeology of Death (ANTH 1623)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1623.
Examines death, burial, and memorials using comparative archaeological evidence from prehistory and historical periods. The course asks: What insight does burial give us about the human condition? How do human remains illuminate the lives of people in the past? What can mortuary artifacts tell us about personal identities and social relations? What do gravestones and monuments reveal about beliefs and emotions? Current cultural and legal challenges to the excavation and study of the dead are also considered. Instructor: Patricia Rubertone. MWF 10-10:50am. A/E/C 10; A6,7,8,9

ARCH 1822 Anthropology of Place (ANTH 1910B)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1910B.
The anthropology of place serves as a unifying theme for the seminar by bridging anthropology’s subdisciplines and articulating with other fields of knowledge. Through readings and discussion, students will explore how place permeates people’s everyday lives and their engagement with the world, and is implicit in the meanings they attach to specific locales, their struggles over them, and the longings they express for them in rapidly changing and reconfigured landscapes. Instructor: Patricia Rubertone. W 3-5:30pm. A6,7,8,9,10 E/C5,10

ARCH 1900  The Archaeology of College Hill  
A training class in field and laboratory techniques.  Topics include the nature of field archaeology, excavation and survey methodologies, archaeological ethics, computer technologies (such as GIS), and site and artifact analysis and conservation.  Students will act as practicing archaeologists through the investigation of local historical and archaeological sites in the College Hill area  (e.g. the First Baptist Church of America and the John Brown House). Instructor: Candace Rice. W 3-5:30pm. A/E/C1, A7,8 E/C5

ARCH 2006  Principles of Archaeology (ANTH 2501)  
Examines theoretical and methodological issues in anthropological archaeology. Attention is given to past concerns, current debates, and future directions of archaeology in the social sciences. Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. T 9:30-11:50am. 

ARCH 2102 Trace and Absence: Comparative Perspectives on the Past in Things (HMAN 2402E)
Interested students must register for HMAN 2402E. 
Long before there were archaeologists, there were people who knew how to interpret traces of the past. Those traces have always been in flux, subject to changing cultural, environmental, and technological factors. While stone carvings, bones, ruins, and other durable objects have long encouraged reflections about the beings who created them, there are also those who have considered smells, flowers, dreams, and other seemingly ephemeral phenomena to be traces of distant pasts. What can be a trace of the past? How have people followed these traces? And how might the insights and oversights of these past ways of knowing the past inform our own efforts to identify or create traces for an uncertain future? This course explores some of the many ways in which individuals and communities have found and followed traces of earlier times. Instructors: Jeffrey Moser and Felipe Rojas. W 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 2105 Ceramic Analysis for Archaeology
The analysis and the interpretation of ceramic remains allow archaeologists to accomplish varied ends: establish a time scale, document interconnections between different areas, and suggest what activities were carried out at particular sites. The techniques and theories used to bridge the gap between the recovery of ceramics and their interpretation within anthropological contexts are the focus of this seminar. Instructor: Peter van Dommelen. Th 4-6:30pm. 

ARCH 2232 Moving in the Mediterranean: Mobility in Archaeology, Science, and Text 
Human mobility presents one of the key issues for archaeology — not to mention contemporary culture and politics. This seminar will explore theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of human mobility and its role for Mediterranean societies, from long-distance migration to intra-regional population circulation. We will do so through a multidisciplinary lens incorporating material-based, scientific, and textual approaches, to grapple with the question of how different sources of information – collected, analyzed, and theorized – can be integrated. Case studies such as Greek “colonization”, mercenaries in Egypt, and businesswoman in the Aegean will guide our discussions. Instructor: Jana Mokrisova. M 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 2412 Space, Power, and Politics (ANTH 2590)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2590.
This course critically examines the politics of space and landscape from an interdisciplinary perspective. After reading key texts in political philosophy and cultural geography, we explore themes in recent scholarship including the spatial production of sovereignty, capital, and political subjectivity and the evolving role of digital cartography in public culture and politics. Case studies are drawn from archaeology, art history, ethnography, cultural geography, and history. Instructor: Parker VanValkenburgh. F 9-11:20am.

ARCH 2556 Museum of Possibilities (HIAA 2930)
Interested students must register for HIAA 2930.
The 2025 Practicum will consider the history and possibilities of the museum with the artist Dayanita Singh, a renowned photographer, book- and museum-maker. The course will refract from a simple question: what is a museum? Often a museum contains four qualities: a space defined by architecture, a valuable collection, a mechanism for display, and a reserve or storehouse for objects. From this framework, we will consider value, permanence, scale, curation, memory, archives, form, and intimacy, among other topics. Over the term, we will imagine what museums are and can be through a series of projects, including writing essays, making shoe-box museums, and developing a two-week syllabus on the museum. Our final project will culminate in an exhibition on the possibilities of museums, scheduled for the Cohen Gallery in Fall 2026. Instructor: Holly Shaffer. Th 12:00-2:30pm.

ARCH 2720  Abydos: The Layered Pasts of a Sacred Site
The site of Abydos in southern Egypt played a pivotal role at almost every period of Egyptian history: burial place of the first kings, location of the earliest monumental temples and — centuries later — beautifully decorated New Kingdom temples, pilgrimage site for followers of Osiris, an urban center, nurturing home for early Christian monasticism. This seminar allows students to learn deeply the material culture of a single place of singular importance over time, to examine the layered effects of various pasts upon the ideas and practices around the study of ancient Egypt. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. W 3-5:30pm.

ARCH 0033 Past Forward: Discovering Anthropological Archaeology (ANTH 0500)
Interested students must register for ANTH 0500.
This course offers a broad journey through the human past, from material culture crafted by our evolutionary ancestors to the remnants of the recent historic past. To facilitate this journey, the class explores the methods, concepts, and theories that anthropologists employ in the study of past peoples, places, and things. Case studies stretch across the globe. As a hands-on endeavor, archaeology focuses on tangible evidence. In this course, small-group discussion, laboratory, and field exercises will complement lectures, leading to an understanding of how anthropologists study the past and how that knowledge affects the present. Instructor: Jordi Rivera Prince. MWF 10-10:50am.

ARCH 0207 Curators, Hoarders, and Looters: The Long and Curious History of Collecting (HIST 0150K)
Interested students must register for HIST 0150K.
What does it mean to collect? What drives human cultures to amass, hoard, steal, select, separate and display objects? This undergraduate lecture course – at the intersection of anthropology, geography, history, and museum studies – examines forms and practices of collecting from antiquity to the present. We will explore museums, archives, libraries, and other less formal institutions from around the globe, probing in the process the disciplinary boundaries by which scholars have sought to understand the implications of collections in different times and distant territories. We will unpack libraries, visit early modern cabinets of curiosities, and gain insights into Indigenous collections: from Polynesia to Mashantucket. And we will address the fraught yet fascinating relationship between the collection, the catalogue, and the archive – and the gathering, registering, and organizing that constitute them. Instructor: Neil Safier. MWF 1-1:50pm.

ARCH 0313 Sacred Bodies (RELS 0420)
Interested students must register for RELS 0420.
How did ancient Christians understand physical holiness? What did the bodies of saints demonstrate or reveal? How was bodily sanctity represented in actual practices, and in literary, artistic, or ritual expressions? We will consider three broad categories of saints: desert heroes, holy women, and virtuosos (pillar saints, holy fools). Instructor: Susan Ashbrook Harvey. W 3:00-5:30pm.

ARCH 0520 Roman Archaeology and Art
Anyone who has ever watched “Gladiator”, “Spartacus”, “Life of Brian”, or “Bugs Bunny: Roman Legion Hare” has some image of Rome, the Romans and their empire.  This course, while exploring and assessing these influential popular preconceptions, introduces a more balanced view of Roman archaeology and art, examining not only the “eternal city” of Rome, but its vast and diverse imperial domain. Instructor: Candace Rice. MWF 1-1:50pm.

ARCH 0530 Hannibal ad Portas! Fact and Fiction on Carthage and the Punic World
"Hannibal stands at the gates": Roman parents would terrify their children with these words. And many others have been haunted by Hannibal Barca: the Carthaginian general still fascinates the European imagination, not least his epic trek over the Alps with three dozen elephants. This course explores fact and fiction about Hannibal and his world, holding up historical and mythical records against hard archaeological evidence. Instructor: Peter van Dommelen. MWF 2-2:50pm.

ARCH 0770 Food and Drink in Classical Antiquity
Everybody eats - but patterns of eating (and drinking) vary dramatically from culture to culture. This course traces the mechanics of food production and consumption in the ancient Mediterranean world, considers how diet marked symbolic boundaries and gender differences, and in general explores the extent to which the ancient Greeks and Romans "were what they ate." FYS. Instructor: Yannis Hamilakis. TTh 9-10:20am.

ARCH 1621  Pyramids, Power, Propaganda (EGYT 1430)
Interested students must register for EGYT 1430.
A survey of the history and society of ancient Egypt from prehistoric times to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 5000-1300 BC). Readings include translations from the original documents that serve as primary sources for the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian history. WRIT. Instructor: Laurel Bestock. MWF 11-11:50am.

ARCH 1765 Pandemics, Pathogens, and Plagues in the Greek and Roman Worlds
Terror of mass illness is nothing new; as long as there have been humans, there has been disease. These pandemics and plagues have had mortal impacts on past societies, much as contemporary plagues affect today’s economies, social and political structures, and populations. This class considers disease and society in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, beginning with the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and continuing to the outbreak of the ‘first pandemic’ of bubonic plague in AD 541. We will examine these case studies through archaeological material, written accounts, DNA analysis, palaeoclimate reconstruction, and palaeopathology. Instructor: Tyler Franconi. TTh 10:30-11:50am.

ARCH 1772 The Human Skeleton (ANTH 1720)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1720.
More than simply a tissue within our bodies, the human skeleton is gateway into narratives of the past--from the evolution of our species to the biography of individual past lives. Through lecture and hands-on laboratory, students will learn the complete anatomy of the human skeleton, with an emphasis on the human skeleton in functional and evolutionary perspective. We will also explore forensic and bioarchaeological approaches to the skeleton. By the course conclusion, students will be able to conduct basic skeletal analysis and will be prepared for more advanced studies of the skeleton from medical, forensic, archaeological, and evolutionary perspectives. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first year students. Instructor permission required. Instructor: Andrew Scherer. MWF 2-2:50pm.

ARCH 1869 Environmental Archaeology: Sustainability, Catastrophe, and Resilience (ANTH 1560)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1560.
How did people in the past respond to environmental crisis? How did they modify their environments to suit their needs - sometimes to long-term detriment? How did they engage in sustainable practices, and build resilience into their local ecologies? In this course you will learn how archaeologists reconstruct paleoenvironments using multidisciplinary approaches, including botanical analyses, soil studies, and GIS modeling. You will learn how archaeologists tackle the problem of identifying ethnoecological relationships in the deep past, and how they track the impacts of these relationships on human history and the environment. Key case studies will be drawn from ancient societies in the Mesopotamia, Polynesia, West Africa, the American Southwest, Western China, the North Atlantic, and the Maya area. Instructor: Shanti Morell-Hart. TTh 2:30-3:50.

ARCH 1881 An Introduction to GIS and Spatial Analysis for Anthropologists and Archaeologists (ANTH 1201)
Interested students must register for ANTH 1201.
This course serves as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and (to a lesser extent, the histories) that motivate geographic information systems and their employment in anthropological and archaeological scholarship. GIS brings together traditional cartographic principles, computer-assisted analytical cartography, relational database design, and digital image processing and analysis to enable people to develop geospatial databases, analyze those databases, and use maps and other visual representations as part of this analysis. No previous work in GIS or computer programming is necessary. Previous computer experience with MS Windows operating systems is helpful. Instructor: Parker VanValkenburgh. TTh 9-10:20am. 

ARCH 2000 Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeologies: Research Traditions and Practices
This course offers an overview of the history and practice of archaeology in and of the Mediterranean and Near East for the past two centuries. What impact have national and linguistic boundaries, foreign schools, and colonialism had on how archaeology in the region? Through surveys of research and analysis of original publications (site reports, syntheses, autobiographies, etc.) and primary documents (personal letters, diaries, photographs, sketches, notes, etc.), students will be exposed to the theories, methods, and purported goals of archaeological endeavors in the Mediterranean, as well as to the major academic and political debates that have shaped the field. Instructor: Felipe Rojas. W 3-5:30pm. 

ARCH 2153 Archaeological Ethnography: A Multi-Temporal Contact Zone
In this course, we will examine the emerging field of archaeological ethnography, a shared space of interaction between social anthropologists and archaeologists, and between scholars and the various local communities around archaeological sites. Our main focus will be the Sanctuary of Poseidon on the island of Poros in Greece, the epicenter of a long-term archaeological ethnography project, started in 2007. We will place the site in global comparative perspective, and debate together the challenges in producing an archaeological ethnography monograph. Instructor: Yannis Hamilakis. Th 4-6:30pm. 

ARCH 2041 Mesoamerican Archaeology and Ethnohistory (ANTH 2520)
Interested students must register for ANTH 2520.
Seminar focusing on current issues in the archaeology and history of Mesoamerica, including Mexico and Northern Central America. Draws on rich resources at Brown, including the John Carter Brown Library. Instructor: Stephen Houston. F 3-5:30pm.