Check Courses@Brown to see if any of the listed courses are being offered this semester.
ARCH 0155 - 'People Without History': Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the Diaspora
Too often 'Western' historical narratives consider Africans and African Diasporans as 'People Without History'. Such a notion also refers to peoples who cultures do not, or possess few formally written histories. This class employs archaeological evidence in order to dismantle the colonial library, exploring local histories that have been erased, silenced and marginalized, investigating histories of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, resistance and black nationalism.
ARCH 0230 - Myriad Mediterraneans: Archaeology, Representation and Decolonization
As debates rage about the Classical roots of Western society, the ancient Mediterranean itself is largely overlooked and continues to be seen in stereotypes. Because the ancient Mediterranean was not just white, male and colonizing, this course will explore the extensive archaeological evidence for cultural, gender, ethnic, economic and other forms of diversity during the first millennium BCE. Can archaeology contribute to current debates about decolonization? Conversely, can contemporary debates about indigenous ways of being shine a fresh light on ancient evidence? FYS.
ARCH 0317 - Heritage in the Metropolis: Remembering and Preserving the Urban Past
Urban heritage – from archaeological sites and historic architecture to longstanding cultural practices – is increasingly threatened by the exponential growth of cities around the globe. Most critically, the complex histories and lived experiences of the diverse communities who have inhabited and shaped cities are often in danger of being erased and forgotten today. This course examines how we might remember and preserve this urban past – and the tangible sites and artifacts that attest to it – in light of the social and political dynamics of cities in the present.
ARCH 0372 - Sex, Power, Goddess: Imagining the World of Ancient Iraq
Ancient Mesopotamians feared and respected the warlike goddess Ishtar – but how did this translate into attitudes about gender, sexuality, and power in their culture, religion, politics, and daily lives? This class will introduce students to the venerated and significant remains of this lost world, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Cyrus Cylinder. Through these archaeological finds, we will explore thousands of years of Iraq’s culture, power relations, religion, and science, and we will discuss how our own experiences color our understanding of their world.
ARCH 0528 - Living on the Edge: Communities of the Roman Frontier
The Roman Empire was surrounded by over 3,100 miles of frontier that marked the end of Roman territory. These regions are often discussed solely from a military standpoint, but soldiers were only a small part of a much larger frontier community that included women and children, locals and foreigners, and Romans and non-Romans. This course explores how these communities, often marked by asymmetrical power relationships between the Roman State and local communities, developed, investigating social structures, religion, art and architecture, and economies in order to understand what it was like to live on the edge of the Roman world.
ARCH 0676 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Scalawags, Sailors, and Slaves
Avast ye maties! Study the legendary bandits, mischievous scalawags, and barbarous buccaneers that roved the high seas of the Caribbean from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Through archaeological and historical scholarship, we will explore pirates’ everyday belongings, the goods they plundered, the hideaways they called home, the havoc they caused, and the legends they left behind -- including Blackbeard, Captain Morgan, and even Captain Jack Sparrow. We will also investigate the economics behind the rise of piracy, with an emphasis on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
ARCH 0680 - Water, Culture, & Power
Water is the source of life. In the midst of global climate change, environmental crises over water resources, and increasingly ubiquitous political debates over water, we are beginning to recognize humans' complete dependence on water. This course investigates our long-term attachment and engagement with water using archaeology, environmental history, and visual, literary and historical sources. From sacred spaces around springs to ancient cities by the sea, we will explore the cultural and political aspects of water beginning with the Last Ice Age and ending with late antiquity.
ARCH 0750 - Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Women represent half of humanity, but they have been greatly underrepresented in studies of past cultures. This course examines not only what women of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome actually did and did not do, but also how they were perceived in society. Focusing on material and visual cultures, but also incorporating historical and literary evidence, we will investigate the complexities of women’s lives in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as the roots of modern conceptions and perceptions of women.
ARCH 1170 - Community Archaeology in Providence and Beyond
Modern archaeology is about far more than just digging in the dirt. During this seminar, we will discuss how archaeologists can engage with the public—including collaborations with indigenous and local communities, increased multivocality in interpretations, the mass media, museums, educational outreach programs, and the use and abuse of the past by governments and others in power. The second half of this course will involve a hands-on project in the Providence public school system. Enrollment limited to 15.
ARCH 1175 - Archaeology Matters! Past Perspectives on Modern Problems
This is not the first era to face many of today’s global problems — rising temperatures, sea-level change, sustainability, pollution, fire, water scarcity, urban blight, social violence, and more. Archaeology is more than the understanding of peoples long ago and far away, but a discipline whose long-term perspective could offer potential solutions to current crises. Through case studies and discussion of key issues, this class asks how archaeology – and archaeologists – might just change the world. Enrollment limited to 15.
ARCH 1177 - Occupy Archaeology! Interrogating Inequality, Past and Present
We are the 99%! Black Lives Matter! These rallying cries bring inequality to the front-and-center of western political and media discourses. Yet a social system dividing the haves and have-nots is hardly a modern phenomenon. This course considers injustice diachronically and on a global scale, examining ways in which the material world studied by archaeologists creates — and is created by — social divisions, and critiquing the ways that archaeology as a discipline is a part of the problem. Enrollment limited to 15.
ARCH 1178 - Archaeology and Social Justice: Un-disciplining the Past, Changing the Present
The contemporary world is at a breaking point. Deepening social inequality, environmental crises, and neo-colonialism exacerbate global injustices. The stories that archaeologists tell about the past, more often than not, contribute to these injustices. In this course, we will use global case studies to explore the possibilities for other, decolonial archaeologies which can liberate the material past from its colonial/racial disciplinary straightjacket, and at the same time provide essential tools for the necessary struggles for social justice today.
ARCH 1200H - Islamic Landscapes: Cities, Frontiers, and Monuments
This course will examine the built environments of the Islamic Period Middle East through the growing archaeological and historical record of its cities, frontiers, and monuments. How has the landscape of this region become transformed under by its relationship with a dynamic Islamic tradition? Key issues examined are the notion of the “Islamic city”, sacred space, and the spatiality of Muslim/non-Muslim relations. Enrollment limited. Written permission required.
ARCH 1494 - Southeast Asia’s Entangled Pasts: Excavated, Curated, and Contested
Behind the caricature of Southeast Asia as an exoticized land of temples and tradition lies a conflicted past entangled with competing claims to power, identity, and territory. This course explores the history of that region (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines), examining how ancient ruins were used to justify postcolonial national states; how museums and monuments have bolstered authoritarian regimes and sparked democratic protests; and how circulation of artifacts and artworks sets off diplomatic disputes and connects diasporic communities. Students will also engage with relevant material cultures and artistic practices in the Providence area.
ARCH 1525 - Struggle and Domination in the Prehistoric Mediterranean: Sex, Power, God(s)
Humans seek to survive, adapt, develop, and thrive. Yet our species is also prone to power struggles, violence, and domination. This strife can be seen in the findings of the latest archaeological and ethnographic research – which casts doubt on the peaceful, egalitarian societies sometimes imagined in the prehistoric past. This course will examine power and inequality in the prehistoric Mediterranean, considering such vectors as religion, human-nonhuman relationships, monument building, technological innovations, death, and sexuality.
ARCH 1537 - Archaeological Heritage between Politics, Tourism and Local Identities in the Mediterranean and the Middle East
This course explores the developing fields of public archaeology, heritage studies and archaeological ethnographies with case studies drawn from the Mediterranean world and the Middle East. The tensions between archaeological sites and landscapes, their local communities, local governments and archaeological research teams will be studied while tourism and commercial endeavors to make archaeological heritage relevant to global and local audiences will be discussed.
ARCH 1538 - Archaeology of Divided Places: From Conflict to Understanding, Memory, and Reconciliation
This course examines the intricate relationships between history and contemporary archaeology in divided places such as Cyprus, Jerusalem, Kosovo, and Belfast. Discussions will include the political and moral issues entangled in cultural heritage preservation, biases inherent in the archaeology of divided places, the use of archaeology to legitimize division, and ethics of archaeological research of places of conflict. How can we reconfigure imbalances resulting from decades of hiatus in archaeological research in divided places? How can archaeology contribute to fostering reconciliation?
ARCH 1540 - Cultural Heritage: The Players and Politics of Protecting the Past
From Antarctica to Zimbabwe, cultural heritage encompasses the very old and the still in use, the man-made and the natural, the permanent and the ephemeral -- even the invisible and the edible. This course will explore issues of modern threats to cultural heritage such as tourism and development, questions of authenticity and identity, and archaeology's intersection with law, ethics, public policy, and economics.
ARCH 1670 - The Beginning of the End? Neolithic "Revolutions" and the Shaping of the Modern World
How did the first farmers and settled human communities live their lives? How did they reshape the landscape, invent new forms of elaborate dwelling, and establish new relationships with plants and animals? And are the roots of some of our contemporary problems, including social inequality and patriarchy, to be found in the Neolithic? These are some of the questions we will be exploring in this course, using material from the European and Anatolian Neolithic and other, global, contexts.
ARCH 1680 - Of Chiefs, Princesses and Warriors: Exploring Different Iron Ages
This course is about the Mediterranean Iron Age. It examines indigenous communities of the first millennium BC in order to assess critically conventional representations of Iron Age societies. Themes to be explored include the ever increasing social complexity of chiefdoms and states, princely burials and warriors, and urban settlements and monumental architecture that allegedly mark the transfer of 'civilization' from East to West.
ARCH 1780 - Violence and Civilization: A Deep History of Social Violence
Why do we do violence to one another? This course will foster a sustained and critical reflection on social violence, history and humanity. We will explore social orders through time, together with their practices and moral economies of permissible and impermissible violence. Different conceptions of violence (‘symbolic’, ‘structural’, and ‘routine’) will be considered, in conjunction with their intersections with the many, ambivalent meanings of ‘civilization’. No prerequisites required.
ARCH 1792 - The Archaeology of Slavery
No one would question that slavery leaves invisible and painful marks on all individuals and societies touched by it. But slavery leaves behind many physical, recoverable traces as well: plantations, slave forts, slaving wrecks, burial grounds. From such evidence, this course will explore four centuries of slavery in the Atlantic world, asking not only about how people coped in the past, but about the legacy of slavery in our world today.
ARCH 1810 - Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle East
Present-day political ideologies profoundly impact our understanding of the past. Here we will explore the use and abuse of archaeological pasts in the modern nation states of the Middle East. What do pharaohs mean to modern Egyptians? Why did Saddam Hussein consider himself the last Babylonian king? This course will explore the role of imagined ancient pasts and cultural heritage in the making of collective identities and state ideologies.
ARCH 1821 - (De)Constructing the Other: The Subjectivity of Objects
Archaeologists rely on interpretation of material remains to construct conceptions of humans in the past. This course explores this creation of archaeology’s subjects, with a critical eye toward the inherently political nature of this inventive process. Topics include the deconstruction of the “pots to people” analogy, racial and gendered disciplinary bias, and exposing the problems of unequal representation in the discipline. In connecting past, present, and future, this course seeks to develop strategies for building a more equitable and inclusive brand of archaeological method and thought.
ARCH 1867 - Pastoralism and Power: Lush Lives of Arid Landscapes
Deserts are often viewed as harsh, unwelcoming landscapes. However, human activity flourishes on these arid margins of civilization. Beginning with the physical landscape – the geology, geography, and hydrography – this class will then trace its influence on deserts’ social and political landscapes: communities, kinship and tribes, pastoral nomadism, trade, and territorial power struggles. Through case studies from the Negev, Sinai, and Arabian Deserts, we will explore how archaeology and archaeological science inform us about desert people, their world views and ideologies, and their strategies for thriving in arid landscapes.
ARCH 1875 - Sustainability Past and Present
Global warming and climate change are increasingly urgent realities in our daily lives. However, ours is not the first society that has struggled with issues of conservation, governance, infrastructure, and resilience. This course will introduce students to the social and ecological challenges of sustainability, past and present, through the lens of archaeology and the emerging discipline of political ecology -- including scientific, technological, and social strategies for sustainability. This includes asking the crucial question, "sustainable for whom?" -- who benefits from (or is most harmed by) environmental policies and transformations?
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).