Depending on which project you choose (see below for examples), you will submit different amounts of supporting material with your final paper (e.g., graphs, charts, maps, appendices, illustrations, etc.).  Regardless of how many pages of supporting material you submit, be sure to turn in a five-to-six page write-up of your project.  Please also submit a topic proposal no later than April 19. This proposal should briefly outline the topic you wish to research, as well as the types of sources you think you will use.  Please submit this in the form of one type-written paragraph on a single sheet of paper.

In your write-up describe what you did (subject), why you did it (motivation), how you did it (methodology), and what you discovered (findings and conclusions).  Your final paper should follow any standard format for citation of sources; it should include both a bibliography and citations linked to your text (footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical citation).  The paper should be printed on one side only, with 1" margins on all sides, and font size no larger than 12 point.  Unclear grammar, spelling errors, or other stylistic preparation problems will be considered as part of the paper's grade. Papers turned in late will be penalized a letter grade for each day they are late.  Papers will be penalized for NOT following these guidelines.

(1) Garbage Project.  This project option allows you to analyze archaeological data yourself.  In it you will undertake actual fieldwork to observe and interpret patterns in material cultural in the world around you.  This project follows the groundbreaking work of archaeologist William Rathje who expanded our basic idea that the archaeological record consists mostly of human garbage (see Thomas textbook pp.168-175).  To better understand the relationship between people and their trash he studied the garbage of living people and compared his findings with informant interviews about what people actually say they use and throw away.  The incongruities between interviews and actual finds produces very interesting conclusions about consumption and ideologies in modern society.

For this project you will to identify a human subject (e.g., roommate, sibling, parent, neighbor) to observe both through their garbage and in their own words.  Exploring their garbage will allow you to produce an actual archaeological interpretation of material objects that can be traced to a living informant.  A key part of the exercise is to understand not only the objects and patterns, but how these articulate with what people actually think about themselves and their behavior.  Something to watch for is whether your informant challenges your interpretation of the meaning of their archaeological record.  You will have to clearly define your methodology-- do you collect garbage over a few days or only once?  Do you conduct one or multiple interviews with your subject?  What will be the form of the data and the categories you analyze.  You should use as a model your work on the Fugawiland project.   Be sure to create some sort of real database that represents the garbage itself.  You will then be able to compare the patterns you see in this garbage data with what you learn from your subject.  There are support materials for this assignment on e-reserve called RUBBISH: The Archaeology of Garbage.  Remember the code is anth5.
 

(2) Cemetery project.  This project option also allows you to analyze archaeological data yourself.  Following Deetz's research on patterns in New England headstones in terms of their materials, designs, and dates, you will undertake a research project to explore the social and cultural meanings expressed in cemetery material culture.  This exercise will give you direct interaction with historic artifacts.  You will first identify a cemetery or subset of a cemetery to explore and analyze (The sample should be at least 25 headstones with obvious material variety).  While gravestones will be the focus, all material objects in the cemetery will be considered (e.g., the landscape, memorials left on the graves, other markers not directly related to individual graves).  The point is to develop ways of seeing things and their material qualities as cultural markers that can speak simultaneously to demography, social status, and ideology.  A special focus will be to explore how gravestone style and materials change through time to reflect changes in social characteristics.  You will have to clearly define your methodology-- how do you decide what cemetery to study?  If your cemetery is large, how do you decide which graves to study.  Should you ask around in the town historical society for information about the history of the cemetery itself?  If not, be sure that your report isn't pure speculation.  You must find a way to ground your project in the historical world.  There are support materials for this assignment on e-reserve called Russell Barber: Doing Historical Archaeology.  Remember the code is anth5.
 

(3)  Magazine Survey and Analysis.  Choose a magazine published between 1880 and 1980. Be sure that it includes both editorial and advertising content; for the purposes of this paper it is probably best that it also include at least some illustration. Read 12 consecutive issues (a year for monthlies, 3 months for weeklies) of the magazine and study closely the material world described there. What implicit or explicit assumptions are the editors, writers, illustrators, and advertisers making? What is the target audience of the publication? How does or doesn’t the content of the magazine reflect the time in which it was published? Some possible selections include: Arthur’s Home Magazine, Business Week, DM: The Discount Merchandiser, Fortune, Life, Living Age, Munsey’s Magazine, National Magazine, New England Magazine, Newsweek, Outlook, Popular Science, Saturday Evening Post, and Senior Scholastic.  Once again, you have ample opportunity here to create a database of some sort--how many advertisements are there over time for shoes?  For special medicines?  What time of year do certain types of images appear in the Magazine?  Can you find a way to somehow capture the material essence of the time through the magazine?
 

(4) Archaeological Project Analysis.  This report is more like a traditional research paper where you will identify an archaeological topic and explore it further. The challenge of this assignment is to go beyond simple reporting of the discoveries to clearly lay out the principles of research that led up to and support the conclusions being made about the archaeological remains.  What questions were being asked?  What hypotheses were proposed?  What techniques were used to recover, identify, and organize the finds?  In other words, I want most of your discussion to be on the archaeological science that underlies the interest of the finds.  Feel free to offer insights about other ways that you imagine exploring the questions such as examining other sorts of artifacts or rethinking the implications of the hypotheses.  I recommend that you look at copies of Archaeology Magazine (available at Axinn Library) or Discovering Archaeology magazine from the last two years.  These popular recent journals cover new finds and research projects that should have ample additional resources available on-line or in the library that will give you the look-behind-the-glossy-pages that I am expecting you to develop.

Archaeological Frauds.  The past serves many functions in the present, but verifying what happened requires an understanding of several key factors.  Using one example from Chapters 5 - 11 in Kenneth Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archaeology (on library reserve), explain how archaeological remains have been used to support unverifiable explanatory theories.  Then, following the spirit of the critical thinking exercises at the end of the relevant chapter, pose a verifiable hypothesis about the archaeological past you have introduced.  You must then identify the implications of the hypothesis and how the archaeological record could be used to test these implications.  In other words, for your more likely explanation what must archaeologists discover?  I encourage you to review Feder’s discussion of the misinterpretation, but you must do additional research and thinking on your own to earn full credit for the assignment.