Digging for Answers: 5 Big Questions of Our Time

The aim in this course is to explore the archaeological evidence for long-term change with regard to 5 major questions of our time: Where do we come from? Has inequality increased? Have we become more violent? Why do we have so much stuff? What is the relationship between humans and climate change? You will be introduced to recent publications for class debate, and will also be introduced to the ways in which archaeologists use evidence in order to explore the 5 themes. We will go to Stanford¿s archaeological collections so that you can have hands-on experience of artifacts and will be able to problem solve using data from the instructor¿s own excavations. We will also visit labs (archaeological and genomic for example), local museums and local archaeological excavations.