Machu Picchu urban zone hanan + hurin d.JPG

Course Goals

Ancient Peoples and Places is mainly about how archaeologists think about and interpret the past -- the kinds of questions they pose about the past and the kinds of information they use to answer them. It is not an overview of world prehistory. We will look at several particular places and times, not to celebrate specifics, but to highlight the variability of ancient societies and to illustrate some of the methods and concepts archaeologists use to understand them.

Using written documents as a window on the past seems natural to most of us, but using material remains to understand the past involves thinking in different, unfamiliar ways. How do the things people leave behind them reflect the activities they engaged in and how they organized themselves? Dealing with ancient things -- food remains, bones, broken tools, campsites, agricultural terraces, buildings, cities, deforested landscapes -- and the contexts in which they were deposited and found can involve complex analytical methods. We will consider what can (and cannot) be learned from some of the most important analytical techniques archaeologists use, but the focus will not be on technical details.

Welcome

Course syllabus

Course structure: how to organize your participation

Assignments and grading

Contact information



		John Henderson - Instructor
		Perspectives on the Past	office hours: Thursday 1:30 - 3:00
		jsh6@cornell.edu	email for appointments at other times
		225 McGraw


		Marcos Ramos Valdés - TA
		msr278@cornell.edu	office hours: Friday 12:05 - 1:30
		B45 McGraw	email for appointments at other times.