Anth 3301 World Prehistory

Class website: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~cbeekman/teaching/anth3301.html

Paper assignment – The description of the research paper assignment can be found at paper.html A description of the archaeological resources available at our library can be found at ArchaeologyJournals.html

COURSE OBJECTIVES

This course is an exploration of 2.6 million years of human cultural development that examines the prehistory of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. Patterns and processes that underlie various human cultural developments will be examined. Major episodes in human prehistory that will be discussed include the origins of human culture as an alternative to biological evolution, producing tools, houses, and social groups. The major transformations that follow include the beginnings of long distance trade, the domestication of animals and plants, and the process of settling down into towns and cities. The course is organized both chronologically and spatially, so that we will go from region to region in our course through world prehistory. But we will also discuss how the major theoretical paradigms of archaeology are applied to the archaeological record.

Thus the primary goals for this course are: 1) to introduce students to concepts of science and how they are applied to the study of human prehistory; 2) to produce students aware of the span of human culture prior to the widespread adoption of written records; and 3) to introduce students to the basics of research on topics relevant to world prehistory.

The only prerequisite for the course is Anth 1302, Introduction to Archaeology. Students who do not have the prerequisite should not take this course, but will need to drop themselves as you will not automatically be dropped from this course if you do not have the prerequisite. I will not be able to spend class time on archaeological techniques and approaches – this is why you need to have taken Anth 1302.

EVALUATION OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE

General policies and expectations – As with any course at UCD, there are certain basic policies with which students must comply. Do not bring pets, children, noisy laptops, or active cellphones/beepers to class. Students are responsible for making sure that they are actually enrolled in the course, and for completing coursework on time. This course involves outside reading and writing – usually 1 hour of class time will necessitate 3+ hours of work outside the class. In order to earn the credit that this course (or any other) is worth, you must be willing and able to invest the time that is required – everyone has outside commitments, jobs, and family life, so do not expect that academic standards will be relaxed just because you are overcommitted. Assignments turned in late will be docked one letter grade for each day they are late, i.e. a paper due Monday that is turned in Wednesday cannot get better than a “C”. Students with special needs should contact the AHEC Disability Service Office immediately to make arrangements, and I should also be informed as soon as possible.

CLAS policy re: incompletes is as follows. Incomplete grades (IW or IF) are not granted for low academic performance. To be eligible for an Incomplete grade, students must 1) successfully complete 75 percent of the course; 2) have special circumstances (verification may be required) that preclude the student from attending class and completing graded assignments; and (3) make arrangements to complete missing assignments with the original instructor.

Academic dishonesty is never tolerated, and students should familiarize themselves with the regulations on pages 30-31 of the current catalog. Plagiarism involves any attempt to pass off someone else’s ideas or data as one’s own, and this includes incorrect citation of sources in written work.

There will be three exams over the course of the semester (two midterms and a final), and each will be worth 25% of your grade. The final requirement for your grade will be a 10-15 page term paper about a specific topic the prehistory of a world region – this is intended to make sure students have experience in doing research and writing a research paper with professional sources and citations. Details will be provided in the second week of class. For this paper, you will first submit a one paragraph summary (March 14^th) and an outline (April 4^th), and together these will be worth 5% of your course grade. The paper itself will be due April 27^th, and will be worth the remaining 20% of your grade. I encourage students to submit the paper-related assignments to me at the email address listed above – this way I can make comments directly on the assignment and email them back to you.

REQUIRED READINGS

Robert J. Wenke. 1999. Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind’s First Three Million Years. 4^th edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford. I asked for the most recent edition, so it might just be more recent than 1999.

This is a 3000 level course, so you will be introduced to additional articles written on the topics to illustrate certain points and complement the main textbook. They are intended to demonstrate interpretations of real archaeological data, and most are written by professional archaeologists. The articles have been placed online at https://blackboard.cudenver.edu/ If you are a student enrolled in this course, you should be automatically given access to Blackboard, so check the website immediately to confirm this. The powers-that-be say that they “will enroll students into the classes based on the registration in SIS, using their new Student ID number as their username and initial password. Any non-UCDHSC students (MSCD, CCD, UC Boulder or UC Colorado Springs) will need to be manually enrolled by us.” If you fall into this latter category, you will need to give me “first and last names, new student ID numbers, and email address” so that I may enroll you in Blackboard.

Login to Blackboard, select this course, then select “Documents-Presentations”, and you should see the readings for this course.

COURSE ORGANIZATION AND READINGS

Week	Date	Topic	Readings
1	Jan. 17 (T)	Introduction and sketch of the course
	Jan. 19 (R)	An overview of archaeological approaches to world prehistory	Wenke Chs. 1, 2
2	Jan. 24 (T)	Australopithecine and early Homo culture	Wenke Ch. 3
	Jan. 26 (R)	The human expansion across the Old World Hand out paper information	Wenke Ch. 4, Balter 2004
3	Jan. 31 (T)	The Middle Paleolithic in Europe and the Near East	Chase and Dibble 1987
	Feb. 2 (R)	The Upper Paleolithic transition	Pringle 2005
4	Feb. 7 (T)	Colonization of New Worlds – The Pacific and the Americas	Wenke Ch. 5, pp. 552-556
	Feb. 9 (R)	Early sedentary communities in the Near East
5	Feb. 14 (T)	The origins of domestication in the Near East	Wenke Ch. 6
	Feb. 16 (R)	The costs of civilization: health and social impacts of sedentism and agriculture	Wenke Ch. 7, Vallee 2005
6	Feb. 21 (T)	Exam
	Feb. 23 (R)	The emergence of complex society in the Near East	Wenke Ch. 8
7	Feb. 28 (T)	The emergence of complex society in the Near East II	Anonymous 1999
	March 2 (R)	Pre-Dynastic and Old Kingdom Egypt	Wenke Ch. 9, Harkhuf 1975, Anonymous 1975
8	March 7 (T)	Sub-Saharan Africa	Wenke pp. 548-550, Connah 1987
	March 9 (R)	Central and Western Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages	Wenke pp. 536-548. Tilley 1996, Dickson, et al. 2005
9	March 14 (T)	Minoan Crete and Mycenae: Predecessors to Classical Greece Abstract due
	March 16 (R)	Indus Valley	Wenke Ch. 10, Jansen 1989
10	March 21 (T)	Spring Break - No Class
	March 23 (R)	Spring Break - No Class
11	March 28 (T)	China	Wenke Ch. 11, Xueqin, et al. 2003
	March 30 (R)	Midterm Exam
12	April 4 (T)	New sets of rules – How sedentism and agriculture happened in the New World Paper Outline due	Wenke pp. 653-667
	April 6 (R)	North American Indian cultures	LeBlanc 2005, Woods 2004
13	April 11 (T)	The Olmec and Maya of Lowland Mesoamerica	Wenke pp. 562-575, 584-600, Martin and Grube 2000
	April 13 (R)	Teotihuacan and the Aztecs of Highland Mesoamerica	Wenke pp. 575-584, 600-608
14	April 18 (T)	Early developments in South America	Mann 2005
	April 20 (R)	The Moche and early states of the Andean area	Wenke pp. 622-638, Alva and Donnan 2005
15	April 25 (T)	Tiwanaku and Inca Empires	Wenke pp. 638-645, deMenocal 2001
	April 27 (R)	The end of prehistory. Paper due.	Marcus 2005, Arnold 2005
16	May 1-5	Dead week – no class
17	TBA	Final Exam

Readings

Balter, Michael. 2004. Earliest signs of human-controlled fire uncovered in Israel. Science 304: 663-665.

Chase, Philip G. and Harold L. Dibble. 1987. Middle Paleolithic Symbolism: A Review of Current Evidence and Interpretations. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 6: 263-296.

Pringle, Heather. 2005. New Women of the Ice Age. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 78-83. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Vallee, Bert L. 2005. Alcohol in the Western World. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 140-145. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Anonymous. 1999. Tablet XI. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, pp. 88-99. Translated with an Introduction by Andrew George. Penguin Books, London.

Harkhuf. 1975. The Autobiography of Harkhuf. In Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, edited by Miriam Lichtheim, pp. 23-27. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Anonymous. 1975. From the Pyramid Texts of Unas. In Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, edited by Miriam Lichtheim, pp. 29-40. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Connah, Graham. 1987. A question of economic basis: Great Zimbabwe and related sites. In African Civilizations. Precolonial cities and states in tropical Africa: An archaeological perspective, pp. 183-213. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Tilley, Christopher. 1996. The Powers of Rocks: Topography and Monument Construction on Bodmin Moor. In World Archaeology 28(2): 161-176.

Dickson, James H., Klaus Oeggl, and Linda L. Handley. 2005. The Iceman Reconsidered. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 49-54. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Jansen, M. 1989. Water supply and sewage disposal at Mohenjo-Daro. World Archaeology 21 (2): 177-192.

Xueqin Li, Garman Harbottle, Juzhong Zhang, Changsui Wang. 2003. The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China. Antiquity 77 (295): 31-44.

LeBlanc, Steven A. 2005. Prehistory of Warfare. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 45-48. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Woods, William I. 2004. Population nucleation, intensive agriculture, and environmental degradation: The Cahokia example. Agriculture and Human Values 21: 151-157.

Martin, Simon and Nikolai Grube. 2000. Selections. In Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens, pp. 8-21. Thames and Hudson, London.

Mann, Charles C. 2005. Unraveling Khipu’s Secrets. Science 309: 1008-1009.

Alva, Walter and Christopher B. Donnan. 2005. Tales from a Peruvian Crypt. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 180-183. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

deMenocal, Peter B. 2001. Cultural responses to climate change during the Late Holocene. Science 292: 667-673.

Marcus, Amy Dockser. 2005. Land can be divided, Histories cannot. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 190-192. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Arnold, Bettina. 2005. Germany’s Nazi Past. The Past as Propaganda. In Annual Editions. Archaeology, 7^th edition, edited by Linda L. Hasten, pp. 193-196. McGraw-Hill/Duskin, Dubuque.

Spring 2006 Registration and Academic Deadlines

· CLAS students must always have an accurate mailing and e-mail address: http:/www.cudenver.edu/registrar

· Students are responsible for completing financial arrangements with financial aid, family, scholarships, etc.

· January 12, 2006 (5:00 pm) Payment plan deadline for students registering by December 16, 2005. Students who have not applied for financial aid are administratively dis-enrolled for non-payment on January 13, 2006.

· January 19, 2005 (midnight) Last day to be added to the wait-list for a closed course.

· January 17 – January 27, 2006 Students are responsible for verifying an accurate Spring 2006 registration via SMART.

· January 26, 2006 (midnight) Last day to add courses via the web SMART system.

· February 1, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day to add 16-week structured courses without a written petition for a late add.

This deadline does not apply to independent study, internships, and late-starting modular courses.

· February 1, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day to drop a spring 2006 course for tuition refund and no transcript notation.

· February 1, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day for undergraduates and graduates to apply for May 2006 graduation.

· April 3, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day for students to drop a spring 2006 course without college approval.

· April 14, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day for CLAS students to drop a spring 2006 course. Treated as an absolute deadline.

· May 1, 2006 (5:00 pm) Last day to withdraw (drop all courses) without a written petition.

Consult the Academic Calendar for details on registration/payment deadlines: http://www.cudenver.edu/registrar

Final Exam