Renewing the Undergraduate
Archaeology Curriculum

Proposal Submitted by the Society for American Archaeology

National Science Foundation
Division of Undergraduate Education
Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement Program
Educational Materials Development

Tobi Brimsek, Executive Director
900 Second Street NE #12
Washington, DC 20002-3557
202-789-8200

Project Title: Renewing the Undergraduate Archaeology Curriculum

Co-Principal Investigators: K. Anne Pyburn, Ph.D., Indiana University; and George S. Smith, M.A., Southeast Archeological Center, NPS

Cover Sheet (In form kit, NSF form 1207)

A. Project Summary

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA), the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) have acknowledged a crisis in current approaches to the training of undergraduate archaeology students. Funding shortages and shifts from academic to private sources, dramatic increases in site destruction and looting worldwide, emerging political activism among descendant and local communities, complex new government oversight and regulation, technological innovations, and dramatic increases in the scientific knowledge base (Pyburn 2000) have outpaced the ability of educators to accommodate these changes with their teaching strategies. To address this issue the SAA established an intersocietal Task Force on Curriculum and provided support for a workshop made up of a diverse and committed set of educators from across the nation. This Task Force produced a set of core principles and guidelines for teaching archaeology that are crucial to the survival of the discipline of archaeology into the twenty-first century (Bender and Smith 2000). The Task Force has been given a mandate from the organizations involved to initiate implementation of these guidelines across the discipline with renovated curricula as rapidly as possible. Bender and Smith (2000) have summarized these principles as Stewardship, Diverse Interests, Social Relevance, Ethics and Values, Written and Oral Communication, Basic Archaeological Skills, and Real-World Problem Solving.

This proposal outlines a three-year pilot project to design, test, and evaluate core aspects of a new curriculum based on these principles at eight academic institutions across the United States and to produce a complete set of flexible course materials suitable to replace or implement extant curricula in any higher educational setting. The goal is to make recommended course content and proven teaching techniques available as efficiently as possible without cost to the broadest possible audience of educators. Participants were chosen who have demonstrated a commitment to both education and research, as representatives of particular fields of expertise foregrounded by the principles, as representatives of a variety of educational formats (community colleges, state-funded four-year programs with and without graduate programs, and private colleges), and to provide regional diversity (eight different states are represented). In addition, an Advisory Board of eight archaeologists who each specialize in the area of one or more of the Task Force principles and three pedagogical specialists will assist with course development and assessment. Student evaluators will also be included in crucial stages of the project.

Each participant will develop and teach two separate courses at their home institution. As a result of this project 16 different courses will be designed, taught, and evaluated that will impact some 700-1,200 students over the three-year course of the pilot program at the participating institutions. In addition, course materials will be made available to undergraduate programs nationwide, including some 340 institutions which offer undergraduate majors or minors in anthropology or coursework in archaeology. This has the potential to impact all 30,000 declared undergraduate anthropology majors enrolled yearly nationwide, and an estimated 500,000-600,000 students who take undergraduate anthropology classes yearly as electives (American Anthropological Association 2000).

B. Table of Contents (In form kit, NSF form 1359)

C. Project Description (NTE 30 pages, double-spaced for this section)

Background

The profile of the American archaeologist (Zeder 1997), the profile of the American student, and the newly articulated priorities of the discipline (Lynott and Wylie 1995) diverge sharply from the targets and contents of most archaeology programs across the United States. Students are not getting the preparation they need to take up the reins of a newly renovated and rapidly changing field, practitioners cannot get the support they need to retool and rethink courses as rapidly as is needed, and important constituencies for archaeological careers and knowledge are not being reached.

Stewardship, Diverse Interests, Social Relevance, Ethics and Values, Written and Oral Communication, Basic Archaeological Skills, and Real-World Problem Solving: these issues are at the very core of archaeology as the evolving, dynamic discipline that it is, and must be, in order to understand, interpret, manage, and protect the past. The profession and the people who practice it, in all its diverse applications, are and have been influenced by shifting paradigms and changing levels of understanding. We now use, every day, terms and technology that did not exist just a few short years ago. The discipline is changing. In addition to research, archaeology is now being called upon to provide data to manage, in the public interest, the nonrenewable resource we call our nation's heritage. This brings with it additional responsibilities which require new and/or modified skills, knowledge, and abilities to meet these new challenges (McGimsey and Davis 2000).

The discipline of archaeology has been and is continually assessing itself in terms of education and training. For example, in 1977 the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) published The Management of Archeological Resources: The Airlie House Report (McGimsey and Davis 1977), the result of a series of seminars held to deal with the growth of archaeology due to various pieces of legislation and the need to identify individuals and institutions who could assist in meeting these new legal responsibilities.

In 1989 and again in 1994 the SAA convened "Save the Past for the Future" working conferences to examine various issues facing the profession (SAA 1990, 1995). In 1995 the SAA forum on "Restructuring American Archaeology" and the resulting "Renewing our National Archaeological Program" conference examined increasing professional knowledge and expertise at all levels of archaeological resource management (Lipe 2000; Lipe and Redman 1996). At the 1989 Chacmool conference in Alberta, Canada, a session was held on dealing with our professional responsibility to the public (Bender 1995). In 1997 a conference sponsored by the Professional Archaeologists of New York City examined changing career paths in archaeology and the training needed to meet these career opportunities (Schuldenrein 1998a, 1998b). These are some of the recent benchmarks in our effort to reexamine our profession. To be sure there were others that took place at regional and departmental levels. If one thing can be drawn from these efforts, it is that archaeology has changed considerably in the latter part of the twentieth century and that many students are not receiving the education and training needed to compete for and successfully perform the majority of jobs currently available to archaeologists entering the profession.

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Reflecting on archaeology as we enter the new millennium was the focus of the SAA's 1998 Wakulla Springs workshop, "Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century." The 24 archaeologists that attended were very aware that much previous discussion had preceded them and in fact had set the groundwork for this workshop. This was verified by the fact that when contacted by the SAA and asked if they were interested in supporting this effort, the Society for Historical Archaeology, Canadian Archaeological Association, American Anthropological Association, Archaeological Institute of America, and the National Association of State Archaeologists wholeheartedly endorsed the workshop and program, which was funded by the National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and the National Association of State Archaeologists. These organizations in some form or another were grappling with the same issues.

For this proposal we are considering what has changed and what needs to change. What has changed is that research, teaching, and publishing are only part of what archaeologists do today. This is because during the past two decades, archaeological practice has been transformed by forces both internal and external to the profession. These transformations include a blurring of the distinctions between prehistoric and historic archaeology; a growth of the market in antiquities, accompanied by unprecedented site destruction; the threatening of our archaeological heritage by construction and development activities; the implementation of cultural resource legislation and the subsequent growth of the cultural resource management profession; the passage of legislation regulating access to human burials and artifact collections; and a heightened popular interest in archaeology, including the growing interest of descendant communities in their archaeological pasts. These forces have required archaeologists to develop new skills and ethical principles for professional practice (Bender and Smith 1998; Bender and Smith 2000; Blanton 2000; Byrd 2000; Byrd and Elia 2000; Elia 2000; White 2000).

While the social, political, and employment contexts of practicing archaeology have changed over the past 20 or so years, curriculum structure and content have been relatively unaltered. One reason for this can be found in the development of archaeology in the United States itself. For over 100 years, archaeology has been a formal academic discipline taught as one of the four classic subdisciplines of anthropology (Krass 2000). As such, the traditional outlet for most archaeologists has been the academy (Michaels 1996:192).

However, given how archaeology is currently practiced, it has, by necessity, expanded beyond the academy. In fact, the majority of archaeologists in the United Sates are now employed in governmental and private sector settings (Zeder 1997).

This brings up to the question of what skills are needed to accommodate these changes in the profession and how they can be incorporated at the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels. We need look no further than recommendations from the conferences and workshops previously mentioned. All recommend improved education and training. They report that students are not prepared for jobs that require understanding and application of historic preservation laws, ethics, cultural resource management strategies, resource evaluation, National Register evaluations, proposal writing, personnel management, and business practices (Blanton 1995). They stress the need for instruction in public relations; writing for the public; working with land owners, developers, governmental officials, and teachers and students in grades K-12; promoting cultural diversity; understanding current education methods and trends; protecting archaeological resources; site stabilization; and working with descendant communities and avocational archaeological groups (Anderson 2000; Bense 2000; Fagan 1998, 2000; Lynott and Steponaitis 2000; Lynott and Wylie 1995; McManamon 1991, 2000; Miller 2000; Pyburn 2000; SAA 1995; Schuldenrein 2000; Schuldenrein and Altschul 2000; Smith et al. 1995; Watkins, et al. 2000; White and Weisman 1995).

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The SAA's 1998 Wakulla Springs workshop was convened to examine these very issues and based on an action item identified at the Education Workshop by the Professional Involvement Working Group at the SAA's 1994 "Save the Past for the Future" working conference, which was sponsored by the SAA's Public Education Committee. Planning for the workshop began with the selection of a group of archaeologists who would be representative of the diverse stakeholders in such a curricular change: the teachers and future employers of our students. Conference participants were thus drawn from the ranks of diverse faculty at community colleges, four-year liberal arts colleges, and university departments of anthropology (private and public). Similarly, potential employers were represented by professionals practicing archaeology in federal, state, and local agencies as well as consulting firms—either for-profit or affiliated with a university department. Moreover, representatives from the American Anthropological Association, Society for Historical Archaeology, Archaeological Institute of America, and the American Cultural Resources Association were invited to encourage dialogue beyond the boundaries of the SAA membership. Input from current students was solicited through the SAA's Student Affairs Committee as well as a student representative at the workshop. It was recognized that meaningful reform could proceed only from a dialogue in which the wide variety of practicing archaeologists could see their concerns represented.

Prior to the workshop, participants drafted position papers responding to issues dealing with curricular reform. These papers indicated that the first task would be to reach agreement on the core principles for curricular reform, in light of a widespread sense that in general, current curricula do not contain many of the important issues affecting archaeological practice today. Moreover, the papers revealed that the task must be accomplished in a format that responded to the needs and constraints of a diverse profession without privileging or stereotyping any one sector. The second pre-workshop initiative was a survey of departments of anthropology to assess levels of interest in and impediments to the type of curricular reform contemplated. Perhaps the most important result of this survey was that it provided a sense that a majority of the responding departments were interested in integrating applied archaeology into their curricula if they did not already do so.

On the other hand, when asked to identify obstacles to teaching applied archaeology, the most common chosen response at both the graduate and undergraduate levels was that "other courses take priority." This was clarified in a number of cases to reflect faculty size and the need to cover general anthropology courses. At both the graduate and undergraduate levels, departments reported "lack of faculty interest" as the most frequent reason for not teaching applied courses, followed by "lack of faculty training," "lack of student interest," and "inappropriate in their academic setting" (Krass 1998; Smith and Krass 2000).

The results of the SAA's student survey, taken through the Student Affairs Committee, indicates that almost two-thirds of the students responding were preparing for jobs as university professors, while on-third were working towards employment in the governmental or private sectors (Smith and Krass 2000). A few were hedging their bets and preparing for both. It is not surprising that the majority of those seeking positions in the academy were those enrolled in Ph.D. programs while the majority of non-academic job seekers were M.A. degree candidates. Given that the majority of the respondents were preparing for academic positions it is interesting to note that two-thirds of them saw the need for incorporating applied archaeology into the curriculum. Ph.D. and M.A. degree-seeking students agreed that the vast majority of them would not find employment as university professors and that they would, at least during some part of their careers, find employment in the applied field in private and/or governmental sectors and need the skills to compete for and be successful at those jobs.

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Workshop discussion began by defining principles for curricular reform: Stewardship, Diverse Pasts, Social Relevance, Ethics and Values, Written and Oral Communication, Basic Archaeological Skills, and Real-World Problem Solving (Bender 2000). It was felt that these provided the most succinct and encompassing statement of the context in which archaeological practice must operate in the twenty-first century. In addition, workshop participants recognized that a number of skills that should be fostered through curricular reform were clearly imbedded in the traditions of a liberal education and were thus seen as a powerful rationale for curricular reform.

Having agreed on the principles, participants were divided into work groups, each of which was charged with envisioning how the principles might be suffused throughout the curriculum to create a new learning environment for students. Three work groups were convened: undergraduate education, graduate education, and post-graduate education/professional development. The latter group was impaneled because it was recognized that at least two sectors of the profession would need to be served as a result of the reform being contemplated: the faculty who will teach the new curricular elements and professionals who may not have had the opportunity to keep abreast of the field's rapidly changing sociopolitical and technological contexts. Based on the results of this workshop, the SAA established the Task Force on Curriculum.

Accomplishments of the Task Force to date have included preparing articles which have appeared in the SAA Bulletin (SAA 1998, 1999a, 1999b), establishing an electronic bulletin board to foster a national dialogue on Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century, sessions at professional meetings, articles in professional journals, and the preparation of this proposal to help redesign introductory-level courses using modern teaching techniques to develop student's analytical skills while incorporating the profession's newly articulated ethical principles.

Based on the information from the Wakulla Springs workshop, sessions at professional meetings, and the comments and recommendations from the national dialogue on the electronic bulletin board, the Task Force on Curriculum prepared a special report, Teaching Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century (Bender and Smith 2000) that was distributed to all SAA members and departments of anthropology nationwide. Preparation and distribution of this report was made possible by a grant from the Getty Foundation. Additional articles, reports, and sessions will be prepared based on the results of the undergraduate course development pilot program.

Based on the various efforts to examine archaeology and prepare ourselves, and our students, for the twenty-first century, we are at a point where we must collectively decide where the profession is heading and chart that course into the new millennium and beyond. What has been discussed here may sound, to some, as only an issue for those practicing archaeology in the governmental and private sectors. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very nature of the public financing of all but a very minute segment of archaeology, our responsibilities to the archaeological resource base and the public, and the need to educate and train students in all aspects of the discipline while they are still at the academy requires the dedication and participation of all practicing archaeologists.

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Undergraduate Archaeology Curriculum

During the past two decades archaeological practice has been transformed by forces both internal and external to the profession. This has required archaeologists to develop new skills and ethical principles for the practice of archaeology in all its applications. In order to prepare archaeologists for the challenges of the twenty-first century, it is critical that these ethical principles be infused into the undergraduate curriculum, enhanced at the graduate level, and continued as part of post-graduate education and professional development. For this proposal, the undergraduate curriculum is the focus. With the completion of the undergraduate pilot program, efforts will be made to address the same issues at the graduate level.

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Principles for Curriculum Reform and their Application to Undergraduate Courses

The Seven Principles for Curriculum Reform, as discussed here, reflect the SAA's Principles of Archaeological Ethics. The Seven Principles are: (1) Foster stewardship by making explicit the proposition that archaeological resources are nonrenewable and finite; (2) Foster the understanding that archaeological remains are endowed with meaning, and that archaeologists are not the sole proprietors or arbitrators of that meaning because there are diverse interests in the past that archaeologists study. Archaeologists, therefore, share their knowledge with many diverse audiences and engage these audiences in defining the meaning and direction of their projects; (3) Recognize diverse interests in the past; (4) Promote awareness of the social relevance of archaeological data and its interpretations; (5) Infuse the curriculum with professional ethics and values that frame archaeological practice; (6) Develop fundamental liberal arts skills in written and oral communication and computer literacy; and (7) Develop fundamental disciplinary skills in fieldwork and laboratory analysis and promote effective learning via the incorporation of problem solving, either through case studies or internships (Bender 2000).

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Stewardship

In considering archaeological resources, students need to understand the nonrenewable nature of archaeological sites and associated material. The information content of such material and value of the data in interpreting and understanding human behavior should be emphasized. Once the information has been removed from the ground, whether through archaeological excavation or as a result of looting, development, erosion, or other processes, the site itself is gone. When archaeological investigations are conducted, the information from the ground is transformed into archaeological data in the form of collections, records, and reports that are used to interpret and explain the past.

As part of this discussion, the damage caused by looting sites and trafficking artifacts should be presented in the context of the loss of information and ability to interpret the data. Examples of looted sites such as Slack Farm or the impact of vandalism on many sites in the Southwest can be discussed. Students can evaluate the loss of information that has occurred as a result of these actions and what can now never be learned about these sites and the people who occupied them.

A third part of the discussion is explaining the conservation ethic, i.e., how the past can be preserved. Once students understand the value of the resources, and also their fragile nature, they need to examine methods of conservation. Conservation, or the wise use of resources, can include stabilizing an archaeological site, preserving it in place, excavation, or promoting public understanding of the information content of the resources through site development and interpretation. Examples of sites that have been the focus of conservation methods can be discussed (e.g., those developed sites such as Cahokia or Mesa Verde; ongoing site interpretation such as at Alexandria, Virginia; site protection through Site Stewards). In addition, it should also be noted that as part of the movement toward conservation, in recent years there has been an increase in the employment of archaeologists as cultural resource managers. This segment of the profession, now comprising over half of all employed archaeologists, emphasizes stewardship of the archaeological record. As part of this responsibility, archaeologists now work with many different sectors of the public to communicate the value and importance of archaeological data. Again, part of this discussion, and appropriate for more advanced courses, would be a discussion of preservation laws such as the National Historic Preservation Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

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Diverse Interests

In presenting archaeology courses to undergraduate students, the instructor should make students aware that archaeologists no longer have exclusive rights to the past, but that various publics have a stake in the past (Watkins et al. 2000). No one truly "owns" the past; rather, we all share common roots in that past which bear different fruits. Diverse groups such as descendant communities; state, local, and federal agencies; and others (salvors, "metal detectors") compete for and have vested interests in the nonrenewable resources of the past. Students must also be made aware of basic preservation laws so that they may gain an understanding of the importance archaeology places on the protection of our common heritage. They should also be made aware that relationships can be enhanced through the development of partnerships with these diverse groups. By examining the ways that the products of the past have been used to further political and national interests, students can also be made aware of the social implications of our discipline. By recognizing that our differing views rise from common roots, we can understand the relationships we share, extend our influence beyond our individual reach, and unite to attain our common goals.

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Social Relevance

If we are to justify archaeology's existence as a discipline—in terms of both public support and public interest—we must effectively articulate the ways in which it benefits our society. In the past, archaeologists considered these benefits to be self-evident. Teachers simply presented the "substance" of our field and assumed that students would intuitively see its value. This complacent view can no longer govern the way archaeology is taught. Given the existence of diverse interests in the past (some of which may prefer to see archaeology disappear), those of us who teach archaeology in the twenty-first century must convey to our students why we believe that archaeology is important.

One way to convey archaeology's relevance to today's students is to highlight ways in which we can use the past to help us think productively about the present and the future. As we teach archaeology, particularly in introductory and large-enrollment courses, it is essential that we show our students how understandings gained from archaeology may be relevant to the issues we face today. For convenience, we may call this approach "Lessons from the Past." Here are some examples:

Discussing the role of the environment on the development of past societies, including the effects of environmental degradation.

Discussing the history and role of warfare in relation to politics, economy, and other historical circumstances.

Discussing the history of cities and urban life and the many forms these took in the past.

Discussing how archaeological techniques can be applied directly in matters of public policy and the law, such as in the case of forensic studies (Bosnia) and the University of Arizona's "Garbage Project."

Discussing past systems of social inequality and drawing connections to and contrasts with the present.

Discussing the history of human health and disease.

Design a set of courses based around the Seven Principles identified by the SAA Task Force on Curriculum that use innovative materials and effective teaching and learning strategies.

Design and evaluate these courses in collaboration with a varied set of professional archaeologists, pedagogical experts, and students.

Design courses that will appeal to a larger audience by incorporating technological advances in teaching and learning through Web design and the Internet.

Design courses that include multi- and interdisciplinary materials and are applicable to a wide variety of two- and four-year institutions.

Design courses that target students who may not be pursing careers in archaeology (the vast majority), while at the same time providing the basis for those students pursuing undergraduate degrees (Associate and Baccalaureate) and preparing those who pursue graduate degrees (Masters and Doctorate) in the discipline.

Design courses that broaden participation of underrepresented groups and take into consideration diverse backgrounds and career aspirations, including students preparing to teach grades K-12, minorities, women, disabled students, part-time students, and students who may be changing careers.

Design courses that acknowledge that most professional archaeologists work in the governmental and private sectors, and attempt to bridge the widening gap between research and the discipline as practiced in all its diverse applications.

Produce, promote, and distribute resulting course designs, syllabi, and teaching materials to a wide national audience utilizing print and electronic media and professional meetings and journals.