This course will examine contemporary perspectives in cultural anthropology, particularly recent reframings of the relationship between culture and history, innovations in ethnographic writing, and moves toward a politcally engaged anthropology. We will concentrate our attention on three ethnographies all of which take history into account but in different ways. Each of these ethnographies disturbs some well traveled ideas about culture as they have been familiarized through classic ethnographies, nationalist ideologies, and popula media. Each of the texts is also concerned with the ways the concepts of culture are deployed toward political ends within historically specific relations of power. An important goal of this class will be to understand some of the ways that culture is conceptualized and represented within a historically oriented anthropology.
Students work through the material in a laboratory setting during the semester.
Students may contact the department for information. The purpose of this course is to present an overview of the archaeology of northern Europe from the Late Bronze Age around 1000 BC, through the Iron Age and Roman Period and into the Early Middle Ages, to the time of the Vikings, around AD 1000. The emphasis is on understanding broad patterns of change during these times, including development of towns, effects of the Roman Empire on peoples of northern Europe, and formation of early kingdoms in the medieval period. Lectures will present the evidence from specific archaeological sites and discuss how we can interpret the material record to yield information for understanding change. The course will also consider the formation of some of the familiar culture groups of the period, including Celts, Germans, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings.