Unearthing the Environment: Archaeology of Human-Environment Interactions

For the entirety of our history, humans have been interacting with, responding to, and shaping our environment. In this course, we will discuss how archaeologists study and think about the ways in which people across the globe have engaged with their environments. We will begin with an overview of how archaeologists and anthropologists have theorized about human-environmental interactions. The course will then focus on three methodological frameworks used by archaeologists to study these interactions: geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany. Students will have the opportunity to study how archaeologists employ these methods together to better understand the relationships between people and the environments in which they live.