Archaeology Giza Pyramids

Anth230 Final project guidelines

Archaeological site presentation: Each student will create a presentation on a well-known archaeological site (selected from a list) to share with the class during Weeks 12-15.

Presentations should be about 10-12 minutes long and may include any kind of media that we can use in the classroom, but must include some visual component.

Here is an outline of the process:

1) Choose an archaeological site that interests you personally – even if it’s not one that we covered in class.

2) Identify at least two outside (beyond textbook) scholarly references related to your site, cite them, and apply them in your presentation.

3) Address the following questions in your presentation. These are just general guidelines, not questions that have to be formally answered in any particular order:

a. What have archaeological methods and theories revealed about the lives and behavior of the site’s inhabitants? How can you visually express this information with images, charts, graphs, embedded videos, etc.?

b. Most importantly, provide specific details about how we know what we know about the site? What scientific evidence is our knowledge based on? In other words, not “the author says the site is 5000 years old,” but “multiple charcoal samples from the occupation layers were radiocarbon dated to 4986 +/- 200 years Before Present.”

c. How does your site relate to larger regional and cultural groups? For example, if your site is Chavín de Huantar in Peru, why is that site relevant to South American prehistory as a whole?

d. Is the site well known? Why or why not? Why were you especially interested in this site?

e. Is there any pseudoarchaeological interest in the site, e.g., has anyone ever proposed that it was built by aliens? If so, is there any basis for a supernatural/paranormal interpretation?

f. What does this site contribute to our understanding of the human past? Does it reflect patterns seen in other parts of the world?