Classes

[brigdh]

Prehistory of the Near East and Egypt II Prof. Wright (My advisor!)
Our focus is the Near East and Egypt during the pre- and proto-historic periods, from the beginnings of plant and animal domestication and continuing to the end of the third millennium BC, ie in Mesopotamia to the Third Dynasty of Ur, and in Egypt to the Old Kingdom. Principal topics will be the Neolithic, early villages and towns in Upper and Lower Egypt and northern Mesopotamia, urbanism and state development. A rational for studying the two cultures in one course is to develop a comparative view of early civilizations.

The second half of the course I had last semester; I'll much prefer it this time. I only care about people once they invent cities. Homo habilis and Homo erectus and whatever are boring.

Faunal Analysis Prof. Crabtree (Another member of my committee!)
Faunal analysis or zooarchaeology is one of the fastest growing subdisciplines within anthropological archaeology. This course will survey the major methods and techniques used in archaeological faunal analysis. In addition, the course will examine the ways in which faunal data have been used to reconstruct early hominin subsistence strategies (hunting vs scavenging), to trace the process of animal domestication, and to study trade, social status, and ethnicity in complex societies. Topics that will be covered include: the identification of mammal, bird, reptile, and fish bones from archaeological sites, the determination of age at death in mammals, bone measurements, taphonomy, animal domestication, and the use of faunal remains in the study of complex, urban societies.

AHHH. This class terrifies me. I can't look at a bone and announce, "Yes, clearly we have a juvenile female goat humerus." I don't even know what a humerus is! Okay, I do. But not what a goat one looks like.

Lingustic Anthropology Prof. Schieffelin (Someone I don't know!)
In this course we explore the ways in which the study of language and the study of culture have mutually influenced each other in terms of theories, methods and substantive issues. Topics include the relationship among language, thought and culture, including: the role of language in social interaction, language and speech in ethnographic perspective, language ideology, language genesis, maintenance and change, and the acquisition of linguistic and social knowledge.

Well, it was this or Archaeological Statistics. I might be good at math, but that doesn't mean I don't hate it.



In other academia news, I'm not going to Syria this summer. Not because anyone was less than fascinated and enthralled with me, but because the entire project has been delayed to next year for political reasons. Dammit, terrible humanitarian tragedies that will have ramifications for decades, quit being inconvenient for me.

I have to find a new project, now. Today I had to come up with an explanation for why I hadn't yet gotten around to reading some information my advisor had sent me without using the phrase, 'but I was really busy discussing the possibilities of Swordspoint BDSM porn'. People, you know who I blame for this!

But yeah. The options at the moment are: Mongolia, Peru, Arizonia, Cyprus, Japan, Israel, and several others I can't remember. Um, right. I'll let you know when that narrows down.

Comments

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

It's posted! (Though I don't go into much detail.) There's a bunch of other stuff too.

Should I finish The Fall of the Kings before checking the post out? I'm only a little more than halfway through.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Whooo!

There's one thread near the bottom where we talk about the implications of the ending, and what it means for the characters, but I think that'll be pretty obvious and easy to avoid. All the rest of The Fall of the Kings discussion is generally things, like 'what are wizards supposed to do?' and 'what do Richard and Basil have in common?'. Or, of course, you could stick to the threads about Richard/Alec, which is where all the BDSM stuff is anyway.