Teaching Statement

General Statement

Teaching is an integral part of academia and a source of inspiration for research. My teaching relates closely to my interests in archaeological theory and my experience in a variety of research areas. I teach classes on archaeological method and theory to graduate students and incorporate method and theory in the areal courses I teach at the undergraduate level. These areal courses focus on my specialization in the archaeology of the Americas and the circumpolar arctic and subarctic. My topical specialties include hunter-gatherer social evolution and maritime adaptations, although my teaching expands beyond these areas.

Undergraduate Courses

Archy 304: New World Archaeology. This class covers the archaeology of the New World from the Peopling of the Americas to the Euro-colonial period. This course integrates a historical/geographical survey of this broad topic with a sampling of theories about human adaptation and economic, technological, social and political evolution. Two weeks of this class are devoted to collaborative student projects culminating in the presentation of several conference-style posters on the archaeology of a particular phase in American prehistory. The posters are then mounted in an accessible place and become a resource for student exam preparation. In this way, students take responsibility as researchers and educators, gaining valuable skills in library research, synthesis, and presentation. This project is enthusiastically received by the students and is successful in engaging them in the subject early in the class.

Archy 477: Arctic Archaeology. This class explores the archaeological history of the North American and Eurasian arctic and subarctic regions. This class includes both upper division undergraduates and graduate students. Major topics include original human colonization of arctic environments, Beringia and the Peopling of the Americas, the Holocene culture histories of Eurasia, Beringia, and the Canadian/Greenlandic "high" arctic, and the effects of colonial expansion into the arctic over the past several centuries. These topics are infused with discussions about theoretical issues related to social adaptation, foraging theory, biogeography, and economic anthropology (e.g., World Systems Theory).

Archy 270/571: Field Course in Archaeology. For 4 years (1998, 1999, 2001, and 2003), I led an archaeological field school in Alaska’s Kodiak Archipelago, where 15 undergraduate students spent six weeks immersed in hands-on archaeological research. The class trained students in a wide range of scientific techniques for archaeological survey and excavation. A 15 lecture class component provided background information on the archaeology of the Kodiak area and a variety of archaeological methods. All students also learned basic lab skills in the camp lab, where cleaning, cataloging, and preliminary analysis of archaeological samples occur. I have no immediate plans to teach this course again, but I enjoyed it tremendously and would like to do it again in the future.

Archy 299:Archaeological Laboratory Techniques (sections ZN and ZO). The field school class fed directly into a lab class back at the University of Washington. Undergraduate students participate in the detailed collection and analysis of data from the field school excavation. As many as 17 students have participated in this lab class in any one quarter, and several opt for undergraduate research credit by conducting original research on some portion of the field school collection (section ZO). While I am no longer offering the field school, the lab continues to operate with a large backlog of data to be processed and analyzed.

Graduate teaching:

The graduate level classes I teach provide a critical context for students to develop the professional competence in archaeological theory and problem development. A scientific approach to the explanation of human evolution demands a rigorous engagement in explanatory theory from which hypotheses can be deduced and archaeological tests levied.

Archy 570 (formerly Archy 498): Archaeological Method and Theory II: Explanatory Theory picks up where Professor Wenke’s history of archaeological method and theory (Archy 497) leaves off and explores the epistemological and theoretical foundations of sound archaeological practice. The class traces several important debates in Americanist archaeology ranging from the logic of explanation and the philosophy of science to an exploration of several major paradigms in contemporary archaeology.

Archy 520: Principles of Archaeological Theory. This class builds on the foundations of Archy 497 and 498 and exams a single important theoretical problem approached archaeologically. In past years the problem examined has been the evolution of social inequality. Students approached this particular problem through readings in a variety of competing explanatory paradigms (cultural ecology, Marxism, practice theory, and evolutionary ecology) and simultaneously prepared unique case studies in the explanation of evolutionary sequences of their choosing. At the end of this class, students are well versed in a variety of archaeological approaches to theory, they have learned more about the applications of several theories to an important problem, and they have had to generate their own explanatory model complete with explicit test predictions applied to a particular archaeological case. Near the end of the quarter students present conference-style papers and turn in "articles" as final projects, thus assisting their professional development.

Archy 560: Advanced Seminar in Archaeological Method and Theory. This seminar, taught irregularly, provides graduate students an opportunity to explore emerging literature in archaeological method and theory. In consultation with the instructor, students select the topics to cover and meet once or twice per week to discuss a set of related articles or book chapters.

Archy 575: Archaeological Research Design. This class covers a variety of methods fundamental to the practice of field archaeology. Students develop skills in designing field research projects through exposure to common approaches of regional and local survey, excavation, data recording, mapping, photography, and chronological dating. Students learn traditional and emerging methods (and both low tech and high tech approaches). Emphasis is placed on employing methods that best address research goals, and because much of archaeological discovery is unpredictable, students are expected to develop or refine skills in on-site problem solving. Ethical dilemmas are a significant part of field archaeology and play an important role in this class as well. This course is targeted to intermediate level graduate students.

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