Archaeology Program

Archaeology is the discipline most directly concerned with the understanding and explanation of past societies through the study of their material remains. The reconstruction of those societies and their environments  through the interpretation of material culture permits archaeology to span both the prehistoric and the historic periods. While certain Archaeology courses originate within the program, others are cross-listed in the departments of Anthropology, Art and Art History, Classical Civilization, American Studies, and History, as well as in the Medieval Studies Program. Students are encouraged to participate in archaeological field projects, and to engage in the hands-on study of ancient materials.

Archaeology is excited to welcome two new scholars to campus this fall!

Dr. Jayson Gill, Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology, is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in Pleistocene hominin behavior, lithic technologies and digital methods. His research brings together cultural evolutionary theory in tandem with optimality modeling from behavioral ecology to understand both how and why technologies change. Dr. Gill is also the Director of the Pleistocene Behavioral Landscape field project in northern Armenia. He comes to use from Boise State and will be teaching courses on ancient technology, archaeological pseudoscience, and experimental archaeology.

Dr. Bettina Arnold, Visiting Scholar, is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Adjunct Curator of European Archaeology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Her research interests include late Iron Age mortuary practices – particularly the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages, – and archaeological interpretations of gender, among other fields. While at Wesleyan, she will be working on a book about the votive deposit complex at the Iron Age site of La Tène in Switzerland, analyzing La Tène collections housed at several East coast museums.