Anthropology at Indiana University: People

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Our program in archaeology supports learning, inquiry, and innovative field research in broadly-defined anthropological archaeology. This means that for our program, we seek students who are interested in doing archaeological research that asks anthropological questions about peoples living in the present and the past. We also encourage work on topics that could be studied using innovative methods and cutting-edge technology. We have strong geographic expertise in the Americas, including North America, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean; the Middle East; Central Asia; and Africa on topics ranging from culture contact and colonialism, identity, households, ethics, landscapes, complexity, craft production and consumption, gender, material culture, ancient foods and cooking technologies, lithic technologies, paleoanthropology, paleodiet and nutrition, and indigenous archaeology. Some of our methodological expertise includes ceramics analysis, lithic analysis, zooarchaeology, soil chemistry, geophysics, and computer modeling. Current requirements are listed in our graduate guide.

Further, as a group we are dedicated to scholarship that is both socially aware and keenly perceptive of the place and impact of archaeology in the present world, and we seek to train and support students who envision an important role for public archaeology. Our program in archaeology is closely affiliated with the PhD track in Archaeology and Social Context, and over half of the archaeology faculty are also core faculty in this program and are affiliated with the Center for Archaeology in the Public Interest.

We also offer a PhD in Archaeology with a specialization in Paleoanthropology . This program emphasizes an interdisciplinary perspective and program of training which encourages students to examine long-term dynamics of culture change within the context of evolutionary biology and ecological changes in prehistory. It is closely associated with the Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT) and Stone Age Institute .

Who are we?

The archaeologists at Indiana University are broadly trained anthropological archaeologists with current active field research in the Americas, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In North America, we have a strong focus on the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Plains, spanning the earliest complex civilizations of the Midcontinent into the present. Topics include craft production, complexity, and landscapes of ancient Cahokia (Alt), political organization in Mississippian period complex societies (Peebles), the fur trade, animal food processing, culture contact and colonialism in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Scheiber), historic period industrial archaeology in Indiana mill towns and lithic technologies (Sievert), and participatory research and collaboration in Native American communities of the Great Lakes (Atalay). Our research in Mesoamerican archaeology focuses on community based participatory action research on early cities, agriculture, consumer patterns, monumental architecture, forensic analysis, ceremonial deposits, and household organization among the ancient Maya and modern inhabitants of Belize, and the ethics of archaeological practice (Pyburn), and trade and exchange, the senses (sound), and microscale archaeological methods among the Zapotec, Mixe, Mixtec, and Chatino peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico (King). Both King and Pyburn share interests and expertise in gender, households, identity, and mortuary practices. In the Caribbean, our work explores native Taíno Indian culture - including sites around La Isabela, the first Spanish town in the Americas - and incorporates underwater archaeology at Taíno ceremonial centers and Columbus-era shipwrecks (Conrad). Research by archaeology faculty in Turkey, Khyrgystan, and Africa add an important Old World component to our program. This research includes topics of ceramics, foodways and cooking in the ancient Middle East (Atalay), Central Asian pastoralism, exchange, and mortuary practices (Pyburn), and identity in the present and the past. In Africa, our work focuses on paleoanthropology, including the origins and cognitive development of our earliest human ancestors, site formation processes (taphonomy) and stone tool production (Schick, Toth) and paleoecological modeling of proto-human diet and ranging behavior (Sept). Experimental archaeology is also an important component of many of our research programs. Whether working in the new world, or the old, many of us successfully integrate participatory research methods and collaboration with indigenous and local communities.

Our program attracts excellent student scholars and dedicated field researchers who are committed to empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated archaeology. We provide a collegial, supportive environment for students who wish to do innovative research, as well as access to a large, dedicated four-field anthropology program with numerous faculty who have overlapping geographic and topical interests. For example, we have a strong cohort of anthropologists working in Latin America (Brondizio, Conrad, Cook, Greene, King, Moran, Pyburn, Royce, Sterling, Suslak, Tucker, Wilk), including four anthropologists with research projects in Oaxaca, Mexico and three in Belize. Our program in Native North America includes faculty members and adjunct faculty covering all four subfields of anthropology and folklore, with particular strengths in the Southeast, Midcontinent, and Plains (Alt, Atalay, Cook, Delgado Shorter, DeMallie, Jackson, Kaestle, Lesourd, Parks, Peebles, Scheiber, Sievert). We also have a number of African specialists (Bahloul, Buggenhagen, Clark, Girshick, Hunt, Schick, Sept, Stoeltje, Toth). In addition, many other anthropologists in the department work on topics of interest to anthropological archaeologists, such as identity, race, politics, material culture, health, heritage, social memory, performance, migration, globalization, food, gender, consumption, and mortuary rites.

Archaeology graduate students benefit from this convergence of topical interests and research areas in the way that they are able to put together advising committees for their exams and dissertation work. Our graduate students are also active members of the Anthropology Graduate Student Association and national and international professional organizations, including the Society for American Archaeology , American Anthropological Association , and World Archaeological Congress , among others. Most of our students form strong cohorts with peers in all four subfields of anthropology and beyond. Current students sit on both national and international committees (WAC & SAA) and have received national recognition for service to the discipline.

Archaeologists at Indiana University have important links to unparalleled research centers, research programs, research laboratories, institutes, and associated museums based in anthropology and across campus, including the:

Center for Archeology in the Public Interest (CAPI)

William R. Adams Zooarcheology Laboratory

Glenn Black Laboratory of Archeology (GBL)

Mathers Museum of World Cultures

Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT) and Stone Age Institute (SAI)

American Indian Studies Research Institute (AISRI) and Center for the Documentation of Endangered Languages (CDEL)

Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT)

Ancient DNA Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology

Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC)

Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)

Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction

Underwater Science Program