Professor Francesca Merlan, MA PhD NewMexico, FAHA
Archaeology and Anthropology are both concerned with discovering and analysing the variety of human cultural adaptations and societies -- the one in the past, the other in the present. The School has three discipline-based Programs: Archaeology, Anthropology and Biological Anthropology, and also coordinates the cross-disciplinary Aboriginal Studies Program and the Development Studies Program.
Graduate students participate in the Graduate Programs in Anthropology and in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology. The Archaeology and Biological Anthropology Programs form part of the cross-campus Centre for Archaeological Research (CAR).
Archaeology may be briefly defined as the study of the human past from its material remains. As a body of theory and associated techniques it may, of course, be applied to many different periods and aspects of the human past. So we have many archaeologies, e.g. prehistoric, classical, historical, maritime, just to mention a few. In this School we have a major focus on the archaeology of the prehistoric past. However, the comprehensive range of courses offered in prehistory and archaeology will equip students to specialise later in any branch of the discipline. The archaeology of culture contact, together with courses, which focus on the politics of the past and gender in archaeology and archaeological theory provide a framework for the consideration of how archaeology intersects with the contemporary world.
Anthropology is the study of human evolution, biology, society and culture. In the context of the School, most anthropology is socio-cultural; biological anthropology forms a separate program (see below). The anthropology program aims to describe, analyse and account for the similarities and differences among human populations and is, therefore, comparative and cross-cultural in outlook. It is also holistic, seeking to integrate knowledge about the whole range of human behaviours. In the past anthropologists were mainly interested in small-scale non-western societies. Today they also work in the first world and concern themselves with issues of change and empowerment in the relations between west and non-west, earlier and later "developed" parts of the world, as well as with description and analyses of particular cultures, both western and non-western. Historical anthropology, the interface between history, anthropology and archaeology is another recent focus.
Biological anthropology is concerned with human evolution in all its aspects and with the biology of present-day human populations (genetics, physiology, ecology, demography and growth), viewed comparatively and synthetically. It is also concerned with the non-human primates, and with current debates on the biological bases of human social behaviour.
The Indigenous Australian Studies Program enables students with an interest in Indigenous Studies to take a set of interrelated courses in different disciplines without the normal prerequisite required in each course. The major in Indigenous Australian Studies is an interdisciplinary program in which it is possible to combine anthropology, archaeology, art, English, history, linguistics, and music for a broadly based understanding of Indigenous Australian societies and cultures.
The Development Studies major is an interdisciplinary major designed to provide a broadly based understanding of theories of development processes through the "core" courses which are drawn from various social science disciplines. The "area" courses, designed to provide recent experience in at least one major geographical area, include Central Asia and the Middle East, China, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.
The pass degree courses within the School are not planned to provide specialised professional training, but to present students with an understanding of the past and the role of archaeology in its reconstruction, as well as a comparative view of the nature of human social organisation and culture. Honours courses offer specialist technical training and examine the theoretical bases of each discipline. Students considering the possibility of entering careers as professional social or biological anthropologists or archaeologists should plan their courses with a view to taking the degree with Honours. Special honours work begins in third year. As a School, comparable streams are offered in anthropology, archaeology and biological anthropology. A combined honours course may be arranged within the School.
The School offers graduate coursework and research degrees at the level of Graduate Diploma (coursework) Master of Arts (coursework and research), MPhil (research) and PhD (research).
For general enquiries contact the School Administrator Ms Susan Fraser on (02) 6125 3309 (telephone), 6125 2711 (fax) or on email Susan.Fraser@anu.edu.au
Further details about the School can be found at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/AandA/home.htm
Further archaeological information can be found on the "Archaeology World" web site:
http://artalpha.anu.edu.au/web/arc/arcworld.htm
The Centre for Archaeological Research web site (incorporating monthly news of archaeology at the ANU) is at:
http://car.anu.edu.au
Archaeology: Dr Peter Hiscock <Peter.Hiscock@anu.edu.au>
Biological Anthropology: Professor Colin Groves
<Colin.Groves@anu.edu.au>
Development Studies: Dr Patrick Guinness
<Patrick.Guinness@anu.edu.au>
Indigenous Australian Studies: Dr Ian Keen
<Ian.Keen@anu.edu.au>
Convener of the Graduate Program in Anthropology: to be advised
Convener of the Graduate Program in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology: To be advised
Anthropology is the study of societies and cultures throughout the world. It explores ways of describing, analysing and accounting for the similarities and differences among human populations and is, therefore, comparative in outlook. It is also holistic, seeking to integrate knowledge about the whole range of human behaviours. A central assumption is that there is little that is inevitable in the way in which people anywhere live and conduct their lives. Rather the variety of human social practices and beliefs is a measure of our creativity and flexibility as a species. Our realities are socially constructed and because of this anthropology pays considerable attention to the creation of meaning, the power of symbolism, ritual and religion. These domains of human activity and thought are interwoven with economic and political circumstances, which they in turn influence, giving rise to complex interactions and constantly changing ways of life.
In the past anthropologists were mainly interested in small-scale non-western societies; today they also work in the first world and are as much concerned with issues of development, change and empowerment as they had been previously with social organisation and the exotic. Despite the great diversity of interests and approaches found amongst anthropologists, all are committed to the centrality of the concept of culture and to the belief that socially just relations among people must be based on understanding their divergent constructions of everyday reality.
The pass degree courses are not planned to provide specialised professional training, but to present students with a comparative view of the nature of human social organisation and culture. Some major themes represented within courses include:
Honours courses offer specialist technical training and examine the theoretical bases of each discipline
Students considering the possibility of entering careers as professional social anthropologists should plan their courses with a view to taking the degree with honours. Special honours work begins in third year.
(a) First year Anthropology courses to the value of 12 units: Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002 and Global and Local ANTH1003. Normally these are taken in sequence; plus
(b) Later-year courses to the value of 30 units, chosen from the following courses. In some circumstances, the major may consist of 48 units at later-year level.
Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (3 units)
Animals, Plants and People: Ethnobiology and Domestication ARCH2108
Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Social Life ANTH2053
Anthropology and the Urban Experience ANTH2054
Anthropology C Honours (Honours only) ANTH3013
Anthropology of Emotion ANTH2034
Anthropology of Emotion: Further Studies ANTH3034 (3 units)
Anthropology of Modernity and Post Modernity ANTH2055
Anthropology of New Guinea and Melanesia ANTH2006
Belonging, Identity and Nationalism ANTH2056
Contemporary Australian Cultures -- An Anthropological View ANTH2058
Culture and Development ANTH2009
Culture and Development: Further Studies ANTH3009 (3 units)
Culture and Person: Further Studies ANTH3057 (3 units)
Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics BIAN2120
Culture Matters: An Interdisciplinary Approach GEND2000
Cultures of Reproduction ANTH2001
Drugs in a Changing World Order ANTH2063
Exploring Youth Cultures ANTH2061
Filming Cultures: Further Studies ANTH3049 (3 units)
Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective ANTH2025
Genes, Memes and Cultural Difference ANTH2127
Human Society and Animal Society: Comparisons and Relationships BIAN2124
Indigenous Australians and Australian Society ANTH2017
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures ANTH2005
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures: Further Studies ANTH3005 (3 units)
Medical Anthropology: Further Studies ANTH3026 (3 units)
Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN2119
Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Populations ARCH2039
`Race' and Human Genetic Variation BIAN2115
Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology BIAN3120 (3 units)
Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation BIAN3115 (3 units)
Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN3119 (3 units)
Religion and Society in India ANTH2033
Religion, Ritual and Cosmology ANTH2004
Southeast Asia: Contemporary Issues in Anthropological Perspective ANTH2060
Supervised Research in Anthropology ANTH3010
Technology Culture and Evolution ANTH2125
Themes in Anthropology I ANTH2050
Themes in Anthropology II ANTH2051
Two lecture hours and one tutorial hour each week. Repeat evening lectures will be given.
Syllabus: Anthropology is the study of different ways of life, focusing on the similarities between them as much as the differences. In this course, students will be introduced to a range of cultures from around the world, and in the process will develop an informed and critical perspective on their own lives and those of other people. We will explore core concepts such as 'nature', 'culture' and 'society', and critically examine the basic approaches, theories and debates found within anthropology. We will cover a range of issues including race and racism, sex and gender, magic and myth, symbolism and representation, and the role of knowledge as power within anthropology. In the process students will learn how to apply anthropological understanding to the world around them.
Students taking this course are advised to combine it with the course Global and Local ANTH1003.
Two lecture hours, one film hour and one tutorial hour each week. Repeat evening lectures will be given.
Syllabus: The emergence of global industrialisation and consumer cultures, world political and religious forces, and international migration have posed a new challenge to anthropology. Anthropologists from their `traditional' viewpoint of the small rural community now apply their insights to the nature and impact of global forces, particularly in their local context, whether that be a remote village or a cosmopolitan city. In this course we will examine just how relevant anthropology is to contemporary issues. We will examine a range of issues including the articulation of local production within the world economy, consumerism in its local forms, world religions and local religious revitalisation, industrial and urban subcultures and contemporary ethnic (including indigenous) identities, international tourism and labour force movement in their local impact, world health and population concerns and local responses, development and local poverty, and global and local environmental movements. This course will introduce students to the theories, concepts and practices anthropologists have developed to address problems of inequality, discrimination, and cultural and economic imperialism in the world today.
Students taking this course are advised to combine it with Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology; (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: After an examination of the characteristics of different kinds of anthropological and archaeological observations, we look at procedures for recording and storing information. Methods of quantitative analysis are described, using examples from archaeology, biological anthropology, and social anthropology.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Mr Farrington and Professor Groves
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The course examines the relationships between the human and the plant and animal worlds. Particular attention will be given to the concept of domestication, to the wild precursors of domesticates, and to the exploitation, manipulation and transformation of selected plant and animal species.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology
Syllabus: The course surveys the variety of approaches to the description and analysis of human social life in social/cultural anthropology through lectures and the close examination of selected readings. It does so by tracing the development of anthropological theory through the twentieth century, and with reference to its intellectual origins. It begins with the emergence of the idea of society as an object of study, outlines and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the main paradigms and problematics structure and function, transactionalism, structuralism, the concept of culture, ecological approaches, neo-marxist anthropology, practice theory and post-structuralism, feminist anthropology, history and anthropology, and post-modernism.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH); or History; or Political Science or Sociology
Syllabus: In this course, we will conduct a survey of social science writings on cities, focusing on the evolution of various theoretical perspectives and identifying key elements of these perspectives. These perspectives include the cultural analysis of urban communities, scenes and subcultures, comparative urbanism, the rural/urban dichotomy, social network analysis, situational analysis, cultural geography, symbolic interactionism and political economy. In examining this history, we will be seeking to distil those elements that will be of most use in shaping an anthropological view of cities, especially those that will aid us in understanding how identities and social relations are constructed in contemporary urban life. Ethnographic accounts from diverse cultures (eg, those in Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America) will provide the material through which the course will analyse identities and social relations based on ethnicity, lifestyle, social class, gender, occupation, kinship and residence.
Prerequisites: Permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This is a required course for intending honours students. Please see Honours School in Anthropology for further information, or enquire at the School Administration Office.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or Art History.
Syllabus: The course sets the anthropology of art in a wider sociological and historical context, with a focus on the appropriation of objects and forms from colonised and post-colonial peoples into the western category of art, the invention of the categories primitive art and tribal art, and processes of commoditisation. There will be some emphasis on Aboriginal art. A major theme of the course will be the plurality of significance accorded to the same object as it moves from one cultural context to another. In order to appreciate this movement we begin with an analysis of the institution of art in western societies, and then examine the creation and significance of visual forms in a range of cultures, drawing on perspectives in the anthropology of art, the sociology of art, and related disciplines.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units in any Faculty or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: examination of key sources on emotion in the social sciences. Topics covered include components of emotion, the cultural construction of emotion, the social ontology of emotion, and the role of emotion in the agency of the body in society. Includes discussion of individual emotions such as love, shame and envy. Also discussed are the place of emotion in the analysis of religion, politics, and health and illness.
Offered in the same semester as the prerequisite unit.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in ANTH2034, or previous completion of ANTH2034 Anthropology of Emotion.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to pursue in greater depth topics in the anthropology of emotion through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials, extra reading and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Biological Anthropology major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology or Sociology
Syllabus: How may social change best be understood? In this course we will consider socially and culturally specific examples of change in people's relationship to places, the social organisation of time, and relationships between generations. These issues will be considered in relation to western ideas of modernity, the set of concepts through which many philosophers and social analysts have attempted to capture the dynamism of western history and social experience, and which form an increasingly important part of ordinary peoples self-understanding, both in the West and elsewhere.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology.
Syllabus: Few regions of the world can match Melanesia in the diversity and richness of the cultures it encompasses. This course, through a mixture of general characterisations and intensive study of particular contexts, seeks to provide students with an understanding of the range of cultures found in Melanesia.
We will also consider just what that variation encompasses in terms of subsistence, exchange, social organisation, cosmology, conceptions of personhood and historical transformations.
The region has also been a crucial part of the theoretical developments within the discipline of anthropology. Not only does the course aim to give the student a deeper appreciation of the various peoples who live so close to Australia, but it also highlights the debates that the ethnography of Melanesia has given rise to and the contributions these have made to the broader field of anthropology.
11 hours lectures, 22 hours workshop
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology; or Archaeology; or Geography; or Sociology; or Political Science, or permission of lecturer.
Syllabus: This course will introduce students to a number of employment possibilities for anthropologists outside academia: working in or for business or industrial corporations, development agencies, government departments, mining companies, non-government organisations, land councils, cooperatives, health organisations. We will examine the range of possible political positions, from cooperation with state planners to advocacy, client oriented research and radical anthropology, and examine the ethical issues involved. Where possible anthropologists involved in such work will be invited to share their knowledge and experience with us.
With these applications in mind we will address the practical and methodological skills that anthropology offers. Practical skills include how to gather both quantitative and qualitative data, how to conduct interviews, how to work within time frames and agenda set by commissioning agencies, how to manage fieldwork relations, how to present findings in appropriate forms. We will put these skills into practice by undertaking a class project.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology; or Sociology; or one first year ANTH or SOCY course and another in a cognate discipline
Syllabus: This course aims to introduce students to concepts of identity and belonging, and the complexity and flexibility, but also strength, of forms of identity at a variety of levels. The course will place some emphasis upon identities at the national level, and practices of nationalism; but also, upon the question why and how other forms of ethnic, sub-national and indigenous identity have gained strength over the last several decades.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in Anthropology or Sociology
Syllabus: Anthropologists have traditionally pursued research in 'small-scale', 'non-Western' societies and, in doing so, have created a distinction between 'Us' and the 'Exotic Other'. In recent decades, however, anthropologists have increasingly begun to collapse this distinction, partly by conducting anthropology 'at home'. This course will address the theoretical and methodological issues arising from the conduct of ethnography at home, and will consider how anthropological approaches to a culturally and socially complex society such as Australia may differ from, complement and supplement some of the approaches commonly employed by scholars from other social sciences. In this course, these issues will be considered in the light of anthropological and other social science research on various aspects of 'settler' (i.e. non-indigenous) Australia. (Aspects of contemporary indigenous Australian cultures are examined in ANTH2017). These aspects include 'mateship', rural and urban communities, the Anzac Day commemorations, youth subcultures, the use of alcohol and other drugs, and ethnicity. The substantive material will be used to explore a range of approaches to the study of Australian cultures. The move from primarily geographically based concepts of 'community' to those developed in order to examine social relations in urban settings, the influence of Cultural Studies, and the recent postmodernist turn, will all be considered.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the Arts Faculty or the Centre for Asian Societies and Histories, or Economics or Economic History.
Syllabus: This course examines mainstream and alternative concepts of development by focusing on development issues and case studies located in so-called Third World countries. It examines the historical background to development ideas and practices, and the cultural presuppositions and assumptions on which they are consequently based, as well as the ways in which they impact on different cultures throughout the world. Of particular interest will be alternative concepts of development, such as people-centred development, gender and development, equity in development, local knowledge and values, sustainable development, and participation and empowerment in development.
Proposed assessment: one tutorial paper, one essay and one in-class test.
Offered in the same semester as the prerequisite unit.
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in, or previous successful completion of ANTH2009 Culture and Development.
Syllabus: This course offers the opportunity to research a topic relevant to Culture and Development in depth through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3000-word research essay
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Development Studies major.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology or Gender Sexuality and Culture.
Syllabus: This course explores conceptions of the person across a wide range of cultural and historical settings. It pays particular attention to the differences that occur between contemporary Western understandings and experiences of personhood and those found in other settings, and to the consequent contingency of much of what we take to be natural products of our humanity. Case studies used include sexuality and sexual identity, witchcraft, madness and time/space. A primary aim of the course is to problematise many of the givens of conventional anthropological practice and to raise the question as to the ethnocentric character of a range of key anthropological concepts (including individual, society, culture, autonomy, agency, private/public) and their consequent utility in cross-cultural research. The work of a number of theorists including Mauss, Foucault, Bourdieu and Strathern is considered, as well as a large body of cross-cultural ethnographic material.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Gender, Sexuality and Culture major.
Offered in the same semester as the selected prerequisite unit
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in ANTH2057, or previous completion of ANTH2057 Culture and Person.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to research in depth a topic relevant to issues examined in the prerequisite unit. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3000-word research essay.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Gender, Sexuality and Culture major.
30 hours in lectures and tutorials
Lecturers: Professor F. Merlan and Dr R. Kennedy (Humanities)
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology or Gender, Sexuality and Culture.
Syllabus: The modern concept of culture, which was developed out of earlier intellectual currents, is one of the most important concepts in the humanities and social sciences today. It is also widely used in non-academic contexts. We hear, for example, of global culture, consumer culture, high and low culture, organisational culture, enterprise culture and even police culture.
This course will consider the origins and development of the concept in the social sciences and the humanities. After introducing some foundational theories of culture, the course will survey the relatively new fields of cultural studies, postcolonial theory and globalisation theory. The course will also consider changing divisions of intellectual labour, both outside the academy and within it, through an examination of the social position of the main producers and consumers of contemporary images of culture and difference.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures and 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the Division of Botany and Zoology, or enrolment in the Population Studies major.
Syllabus: The potential of human populations to grow, stabilise or decline is realised through events, which are often strongly marked culturally and always crucial for individuals: birth, migration and death. The prospects and hazards of survival, mobility, marriage and raising a family vary greatly between populations, and are often related to sociocultural factors including religion, education, gender roles, valuation of children, political organisation and economy. Yet if sociocultural factors are to influence the dynamics of fertility and mortality, they must do so through their effects on those very biological events, such as giving birth and dying. This course explores in an anthropological context the complex interplay between culture and biology in producing population dynamics of different kinds, as well as the implications of those population dynamics for the societies in question.
Course topics include: population size and structure in the past and present; the biology of natural fertility; social factors controlling fertility; mortality and the impact of varying life expectancies; population pressure on resources and consequences for migration; marital mobility, marriage practices, kinship systems and sex ratios; the demography of small-scale societies; health, nutrition and the demographic effect of epidemics; demographic implications of warfare; change, development and demographic transitions. Quantitative demographic techniques are introduced but not pursued in depth. Examples are drawn mainly from the mass societies of Asia and the small-scale indigenous societies of the Australia-Pacific region.
The course is designed on the premise that what is distinctive about the anthropological (in the broad sense) approach to population is its concern with the processes that lie behind population numbers more than the numbers themselves, and its comparative perspective across cultures and from the distant past to the present.
Incompatibility: PRAN2020 Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Human Sciences or Population Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology
Syllabus: It is a truism in anthropology that kinship has a central place in the social life of small scale societies because it plays a key role in the organisation of social activities. Frequently everybody in a person's social universe is defined as a relative, so that people work, marry, play and fight with kin. Kinship is also crucial to personhood and identity, the allocation of rights and resources, and their transmission from one generation to another. But what makes someone a kinsperson is a question to which the world's cultures have given many answers. Significantly, it is also a question posed in the west by the advent of new reproductive technologies, which have given rise to several celebrated legal cases. Is the biological or surrogate mother the 'real' mother, and what are their respective rights in the child? What are the implications of sperm donorship for the child's sense of identity? Can parents both be of the same sex/gender? With reference to a range of past and present cultures, this course will examine concepts of and beliefs about sexuality and reproduction; different forms of social relations and modes of organisation of social life; marriage, incest avoidance, identity and the structure of groups, residence, inheritance, and gender differentiation. The changing role of kinship in industrialising and urbanising societies will also be explored.
Two hours of lecture per week, biweekly workgroup sessions.
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of twelve units in any faculty or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: The course will use pharmaceuticals as an arena in which to examine critically global social and economic change. Aside from a consideration of patterns of use of substances of all sorts (`legal', `illegal', prescription, `over-the-counter'; tonics, herbals, etc.), and topics such as the cultural interpretation of medicines in various cultural settings, the course will also take up issues related to pharmaceutical behavior in the context of global transformation, that is, how the examination of pharmaceutical use and the pharmaceutical industry enables one to explore the emergence of transnational processes in local social, political, economic, and cultural forms. Examples of issues to be explored are medications as vehicles of ideology, the proliferation of medications as part of changing labour practices world-wide, market forces in the local organisation and control of drug production and supply, the technology of drug production as central to processes of penetration of global forms, drugs and medicines as `technologies of rule', the role of medications in the construction of new pathological categories, and how drugs are part of the very fabric of new social, political, and economic formations as well as new forms of selfhood. In addition to a set of core readings, students will have the opportunity to pursue topics of special interest.to them.
Proposed assessment: In-class midterm and final exam, and one research essay.
There is no preliminary reading. Those interested in further information can consult the following sources:
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Development Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology and/or Sociology.
Syllabus: This course explores conceptions of youth across a range of cultural and historical settings. In doing so, the course examines differences between contemporary Western understandings and definitions of youth and those found in other cultural and historical contexts. Case studies from twentieth-century Great Britain, North America and Australia (eg, teddy boys, bodgies and widgies, mods, skinheads, hippies, punks, ravers, ferals and assorted other 'folk devils'), Papua New Guinea (Sambia puberty rites), Nepal ('teenagers' in Kathmandu), Africa (Masai age sets), preindustrial Europe (the 'discovery' of childhood in the seventeenth century) and classical Europe (the absence of 'adolescence' in Greco-Roman society) will be employed to illustrate course themes. The central aim of the course will be to problematise many of the taken-for-granted assumptions about youth that exist in contemporary Western academic, state and popular discourses (eg, 'delinquency', 'deviance, 'resistance') through cross-cultural and historical comparison.
20 hours lectures, 11 hours film, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units.
Syllabus: What can we learn about other cultures through film? What can the camera do that the pen cannot? How has the digital revolution changed this? How have anthropologists and film-makers responded to these changes? What are the implications for the future?
This course will address these questions and others by means of an examination of some films by leading ethnographic filmmakers. We will study films from a variety of cultures, the contrasting modes of representation employed by various filmmakers, and the debates they have given rise to.
Proposed assessment: one essay, tutorial work and tutorial participation.
Offered in the same semester as prerequisite course.
Prequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH 2049 Filming Cultures.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to research in depth a topic relevant to issues examined in the prerequisite course. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at the beginning and end of semester), extra reading, work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
Preliminary reading: see under ANTH2049
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology or Film Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology; or Sociology; or Gender Sexuality and Culture.
Syllabus: Anthropology is uniquely situated to look into concepts and theories of gender, sex and sexuality through its concern with the culturally-specific character of human categories and practices. This course explores gender, sex and sexuality across a range of cultural settings seeking, in the process, to question most of what we -- including most theorists of sex/gender -- take for granted about the gendered and sexed character of human identity and difference. Topics explored include: the saliency of the categories man and woman; the relationships between race and gender; the role of colonialism and neocolonialism in the representation of gender, sex and sexuality; the usefulness of the notion of oppression; the relationship between cultural conceptions of personhood and cultural conceptions of gender; and the ethnocentricity of the concepts of gender, sex and sexuality themselves. To assist these explorations we will make use of cross-cultural case studies in a number of areas including rape, prostitution, work and domesticity, the third sex and homosexuality.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH), or other appropriate Arts first year subject, or relevant Science Faculty first year courses.
Syllabus: The course will consider the issues and controversies surrounding attempts to introduce into the social sciences concepts and theoretical perspectives developed in evolutionary biology. Its aim is to make recent perspectives and the arguments for and against available to students of the social and the biological sciences, as well as to those with more general methodological interests.
Although a naturalistic strand has always been present in the social sciences, it is fair to say that most of the more influential social theorists have seen a basic discontinuity between the biological and the social sciences. Recent ethological and sociobiological research has posed questions of the view that there are fundamental differences between human social behaviour and that of animals. This approach, however, has been augmented by the extension of certain evolutionary concepts to human cultural life itself, and it is predominantly with these that this course is concerned. Here, the suggestion is that evolutionary processes operate in cultural life not only through 'descent with modification' as it applies to genes, but through a comparable process that operates on cultural elements. The 'second form of evolution' that Dawkins' notions of memes (cultural representations that are subject to selection pressure) is thought to entail has led some to proclaim the social sciences to be a sub-category of the life sciences. Other scholars, who take their lead from a cognitive psychology grounded in evolutionary perspectives, dispute the memetic viewpoint, but nevertheless argue that there are no longer any grounds for separating the biological and the social sciences.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; or Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The place of humans among the primates, the mechanisms of evolution, and the evolution of humans and other primates. The main part of the course details the fossil record of the evolution of the human line since its separation from other primates.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 lectures, 10 tutorials and 13 film/videos
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or the School of Botany and Zoology. Students are also recommended to include at least one other later-year course in Archaeology and Anthropology or Life Sciences in their studies before or alongside this one: for example, ANTH2001, 2011, 2034, 2053, 2125, 2127, BIAN2012, 2013, 2115, BIOL3133, 3132, 3131, LANG2015, LING2015, PRAN2015, 2027, PREH2011, PSYC2007.
Syllabus: What continuities are there between human and animal social lives? How did characteristically human social arrangements emerge over the course of hominid evolution? Is there, despite human cultural diversity, a genetically based human nature that can be contrasted with, e.g. chimpanzee nature? What might the human social sciences learn from the zoological disciplines -- ethology, sociobiology, behavioural ecology -- that study animal social behaviour?
The long-standing social-science orthodoxy has been that radical differences between us and other animals render such questions fruitless, even dangerous, to pursue. But recent developments in the study of animal behaviour have challenged this view. Biological perspectives on human social life are attracting a fresh interest and research effort, though they remain controversial. This course examines the resulting debates.
Communication, conflict, altruism, kinship, sex, parenthood, social organisation, language and culture are amongst the topics covered. These will be discussed in three main contexts: the evolutionary past of hominid social characteristics; child development and child-rearing; and adult interactions, relationships and social structures. The main empirical base will be present-day and ethnographically described human societies, with some discussion of evidence on the undocumented past, and some use of animal examples.
The aim will be to present the biological approaches and the criticisms they have attracted in a balanced way, and to identify both the strengths and the weaknesses of these approaches. Students will be encouraged to form their own views on the material studied, and on its status in the natural and social sciences.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in Anthropology or enrolment for the major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: Aborigines are severely disadvantaged in terms of poverty, poor health, over-representation in the prisons, employment opportunities, and access to the political system. This course examines the dimensions of this disadvantaged position and the varied patterns of life of Aboriginal people, from reserves and cattle stations to major cities. Their ways of life have been radically transformed throughout the continent by European colonisation. The cultures of people living in remote areas show the greatest continuities with the past, but many Aboriginal people in the southern part of the continent also have a mode of life distinct from the cultures of people of European origin.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology; (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or enrolment for a major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: From the moment of Australia's discovery by Europeans the history, life and culture of Aboriginal people has been a subject of intellectual fascination. In the nineteenth century their social and cultural practices were widely believed to open up a window onto the origins of religion and European social institutions. More recently they have become a sociological, evolutionary and ecological prototype of the hunting and gathering way of life. This course will examine the details of traditional life, including subsistence economy, land ownership, social organisation, marriage arrangements, religion, magic, art and totemism and consider its impact on the European imagination and the production of social theory.
Offered in same semester as prerequisite.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2005 Aboriginal Societies and Cultures.
Syllabus: This course offers the opportunity to research an area of indigenous anthropology in depth through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, a work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
Preliminary reading: See under ANTH2005.
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology or Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Professor Wierzbicka
Prerequisites: Open to students who will normally be expected to have completed Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002 and/or Global and Local ANTH1003 and Introduction to the Study of Language LING1001, or who have completed Cross-Cultural Communication LING1021, or the Ethnography of Communication LING3026.
Syllabus: This course focuses on problems that define the intersection between anthropology and linguistics. See Linguistics entry for further information.
Incompatibility: LANG2015 Language and Culture
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Human Sciences or Linguistics major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first-year courses from any Faculty or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Medical Anthropology looks at health and illness in phenomenological, cultural, and social contexts. It encompasses Western bio-medicine as well as non-Western medical systems. The course examines topics such as the anthropology of the body, the notion of illness as metaphor, the variety and nature of explanations for sickness, healers and their roles, the interaction between medical systems within and between societies, and institutional conflict and change. The major theoretical perspectives for comparing medical systems will be examined along with the notion of disease theories as cultural products.
There is no required preliminary reading. However, those interested in further information on the area can consult the following sources:
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Human Sciences major.
Usually offered in the same semester as the prerequisite unit, may not be offered in 2002.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2026 Medical Anthropology.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to pursue in greater depth topics in the area of medical anthropology through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials, extra reading and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Human Sciences major.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 hours films
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: Our species has a capacity for flexible biological response to environmental conditions within a lifetime, as well as specific adaptations acquired over the long span of evolution. Pre-industrial human populations, sharing a similar range of physiological capacities, succeeded in occupying much of the globe and a wide diversity of environments. This course examines this adaptability and its limits in an anthropological context, with particular attention to nutrition, the physical environment, and disease.
The main sections of the course will be: on nutritional ecology, discussing the adequacy of the diet (especially in energy and protein) for health and growth, and environmental and social influences on nutrition; on environmental physiology, especially responses to physical factors (e.g. climate), also psychosocial factors (e.g. stress); on disease ecology, contrasting patterns of disease occurrence in traditional and developing societies with those in developed societies, and considering the processes involved in selected cases; and finally on the critical assessment of arguments that interpret aspects of culture as adaptations to biological variables, such as protein needs, population pressure or nutrient flows in the ecosystem.
Throughout, examples for study will be selected on a cross-cultural basis, with a focus on indigenous traditional and developing societies, but with some attention to developed societies and where possible to evidence on the undocumented past.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first-year courses to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH). Students without one of these courses should consult the lecturer.
Syllabus: Without agricultural production, civilisation as we know it today could never have come into existence. Nor could any of the great civilisations of history. This course will examine the role of agricultural subsistence at a crucial stage in human history, when post-hunter-gatherer populations in various regions began to lay the foundations of the present distributions of peoples, cultures and languages across the tropical and temperate latitudes of the earth. The course will examine both archaeological and linguistic data.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 13 hours films, 6 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: The Primates, our closest animal relatives: their classification, evolution, diet, locomotion, reproduction and social relations.
The theme will be the primates in their place in the natural world, with their diversity and adaptability, setting the stage for the comparison with human biology and social behaviour.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 film/videos over the semester
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology. This course is intended to complement 'Advances in Human Genetics' BIOL2152. Biological Anthropology students are recommended to take both.
Syllabus: 'Race' was once thought capable of explaining a great deal about both human biology and society. That is no longer true, either in anthropology or in human biology; but biological variation between individuals and between populations is real and remains to be explained. This course is about human biological variation, especially variation amongst populations in physical traits, blood genetics and DNA. Through case studies rather than comprehensively, variation amongst peoples of the world will be viewed as an outcome of evolution and biogeography, and as a reflection of ancestry, interrelationships and population histories.
Principles of genetic inheritance will be introduced. General human genetics topics selected for discussion may include: genetic disease; heredity-environment interaction; social implications of genetic issues, and forensic genetics. The main emphasis, however, will be on human population diversity and anthropological genetics, including: the 'race' concept; principles of population genetics; the geography of biological variation; the explanation of biological variation in terms of micro-evolution; and inferences from biological evidence about population origins and affinities, compared with inferences from archaeology and linguistics.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite course BIAN2120
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials.
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in, or previous completion of BIAN2120 Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics, and builds on that unit's subject matter. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or theme within the broader scope of Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2120.
Incompatibility: PRAN3020 Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Human Sciences or Population Studies major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2115, or previous completion of PRAN2015 `Race' and Human Genetic Variation.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with `Race' and Human Genetic Variation, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2115.
Incompatability: PRAN3015 Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit.
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2119, or previous completion of PRAN2019 Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group, and/or on the human biology of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2119.
Incompatibility: PRAN3019 Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units from the Faculty of Arts or Faculty of Asian Studies.
Syllabus: The course will consider anthropological approaches to the analysis of religion and society in India. It will examine contemporary ethnographic studies of village and urban life giving particular attention to caste, gender and family relations. It will also examine the manner in which the religious ideology of the subaltern classes complements and contradicts that of the Brahmanic elite through a close examination of oral traditions and popular religious practices. Finally, students will be introduced to some to the contemporary debates about approaches to the analysis of Indian society and culture.
Proposed assessment: One essay, tutorial work and tutorial participation.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to a value of 12 units in Anthropology; or Sociology; or Religious Studies.
Syllabus: What is religion? What is the place of ritual in religious practice? Does religious symbolism involve a distinctive mode of thought about the world?
Anthropologists have extensively studied the religious beliefs, rituals and symbolism of different societies; their findings present challenges to conventional understandings of religion. Further, the specificities of contemporary western cosmologies -- religious and secular -- are thrown into relief and questioned by the lives of people in circumstances very different from our own.
The course presents ethnographic data, on small- and large-scale religions, from different parts of the world within the framework of anthropological theories of religion.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Religious Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Dr Guinness or Dr Lyon
Prerequisites: Any two first-year courses in the Faculty of Arts or Asian Studies or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Lectures will provide a critical review of selected issues in the anthropological study of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is a region of rich social and cultural diversity. It is also an area of rapid social, political, and economic change. Forces of economic globalisation have had an enormous impact on the articulation of national, ethnic, and religious identities. This course will explore the impact of state and global patterns of production and consumption on indigenous patterns of social, political, religious, and economic organisation. Selected themes will be explored from year to year.
Offered each semester commencing 2002
Supervised research and project report
Lecturer: Staff supervision, to be agreed between student and staff member, with School approval
Prerequisites: 12 later-year units in Anthropology
Syllabus: Conduct of an agreed program of research, prescribed readings and final project report.
Proposed assessment: Research proposal and oral presentation of final research paper.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology, Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) Geography, Sociology or Political Science.
Syllabus: In the course of our history, human beings have developed very varied and enormously powerful technologies which have transformed not only our relations with nature, but our relations with each other and the ways in which we have organised ourselves. The course begins with the treatment of technology in social theory, examines the analysis of socio-technical systems, and the interaction of technology, social relations and social organisation. Case studies will consider socio-technical systems in a variety of societies of different times and places, as well as the impact of major technological developments from language to the information revolution.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Subject to staff availability
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in Anthropology or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Intensive study of a particular theme in anthropology, through a combination of lectures, tutorials and prescribed readings.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Subject to staff availability
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in Anthropology or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Intensive study of a particular theme in anthropology, through a combination of lectures, tutorials and prescribed readings.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2013 Human Evolution, or previous completion of PREH2011 Human Evolution.
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while ARCH2011 Human Evolution is in progress. It treats selected themes in palaeoanthropology, or other topics in the field of human evolution, in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by practical presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2013.
Incompatibility: PREH3011 Topics in Human Evolution.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2012 Primates, or previous completion of ANTH2011 Primates
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while BIAN2012 Primates is in progress. It treats selected themes in primatology in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by tutorial presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2012.
Incompatibility: ANTH3011 Topics in Primatology.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Honours Coordinator: Professor Merlan
Intending honours students should first read the general statement 'The degree with honours' in the introductory section of the Faculty of Arts entry and consult the honours coordinator
Completion of the Bachelor of Arts pass degree including a minimum of ten courses to the value of sixty units of anthropology are required to enter 4th year, the Anthropology to be made up as follows:
(a) Twelve units of first year, Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002 and Global and Local ANTH1003 (normally taken in sequence in the first year of study).
(b) In the second and third years, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Social Life ANTH2053 (obligatory); Anthropology C Honours ANTH3013 (always offered in Semester Two, and normally taken in the second semester of the third year of study); and 6 other Anthropology courses (which may include LANG2015 or LING2015). The Honours Convener may be contacted for advice on choice of courses.
To enter 4th year Honours, you must normally have achieved a distinction average over later-year ANTH courses.
(c) Anthropology C Honours ANTH3013 is run as a two-hour seminar each week. This seminar will focus on epistemological issues in Anthropology.
(d) Anthropology IV: As prescribed from year to year by the Head, School of Archaeology and Anthropology.
There will be three components:
(i) Two thirteen-week seminar courses, each of two hours a week: Methods and Analysis in Anthropology, and Contemporary Issues in Anthropology.
These will run concurrently in the first semester.
(ii) A research thesis of some 12,000 words.
(iii) A thesis-writing seminar.
Convener: Dr Peter Hiscock, BA ANU PhD Qld
The program in Archaeology provides students with an understanding of all periods of the human past and an insight into the application of archaeological techniques, especially those of excavation, and the analysis of material evidence. Studying archaeology can form an interesting 'bridge' for many students across the divide between the 'two cultures' of science and the humanities. Courses in the Archaeology major are designed to give students a secure grounding in archaeological theory, methods and techniques as well as in studies of particular regions of the world. There are several courses that involve practical and field components. In these courses students learn techniques of site recording, description and mapping, and the analysis of bones and artefacts from archaeological sites.
First year archaeology courses give an introduction to archaeology and a survey of the ancient world, from the origins of humans to the emergence of civilisations. In later-year courses there is an emphasis on the archaeology of Australia and adjacent regions in the Pacific and Asia. European and Latin American archaeology are further areas of concentration at this level. Thematic later-year courses include the archaeology of culture contact, archaeological studies of gender, the organisation of ancient and modern agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, the processes that form the archaeological record, environmental archaeology, understanding early technologies, landscape archaeology, the history of archaeology, and field and laboratory methods.
Students considering the possibility of entering careers as professional archaeologists should plan their courses with a view to taking the degree with honours. Special honours work begins in third year.
(a) First year Archaeology courses to the value of 12 units: ARCH1111 and ARCH1112; plus
(b) Later-year courses to the value of 30 units chosen from the following courses:
Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (3 units)
Ancient Israel: History, Religion and Archaeology HIST2137
Animals, Plants and People: Ethnobiology and Domestication ARCH2108
Archaeological Artefact Analysis ARCH3017
Archaeological Field and Laboratory Methods ARCH3004 (12 units)
Archaeological Formation Processes ARCH2035
Archaeology and Identity in pre-Roman Europe: Who were the Celts? ARCH2002
Archaeology and the Document ARCH2034
Archaeology of China and Southeast Asia ARCH2050
Archaeology of Culture Contact ARCH2031
Archaeology of Mexico and the Maya ARCH2021
Archaeology of South-west Asia and Egypt: Early Agriculture to Urban Civilisation ARCH2001
Archaeology of the Central Andes ARCH2040
Archaeology of the Pacific Islanders ARCH2005
Artefacts and Society in the Greco-Roman World ANCH2009
Australian Archaeology ARCH2004
Colonisation of Oceania: Vikings of the Pacific ARCH3019 (3 units)
Culture, Biology & Population Dynamics BIAN2120
Foragers and Hunters of Pre-Agricultural Europe ARCH2038
Genes Memes and Cultural Difference ANTH2127
History of Archaeology: Discovering the Past ARCH2006
Human Society and Animal Society: Comparisons and Relationships BIAN2124
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures ANTH2005
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures: Further Studies ANTH3005 (3 units)
Introduction to Cultural Heritage Management ARCH2051
Introduction to Environmental Archaeology ARCH2041
Landscape Archaeology ARCH2017 (12 units)
Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN2119
Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Populations ARCH2039
Palaeo-environmental Reconstruction GEOG3029
Post-Roman Archaeology of Britain: Arthur and the Anglo Saxons ARCH2037
Presenting the Past: Archaeology, Politics and Representation ARCH2032
`Race' and Human Genetic Variation BIAN2115
Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology BIAN3120 (3 units)
Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation BIAN3115
Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN3119 (3 units)
Research Design in Archaeology ARCH3000
Science and Myths of the Human Past: Atlantis and the Pyramid Builders ARCH3005
Selected Themes in Asian Archaeology ARCH3020 (3 units)
Techniques in Biological Anthropology BIAN3010 (3 units)
Technology Culture and Evolution ANTH2125
Topics in Human Evolution BIAN3013 (3 units)
Animals, Plants and People: Ethnobiology and Domestication ARCH2108
Human Society and Animal Society: Comparisons and Relationships BIAN2124
Syllabus: An introduction to the way archaeologists work using many examples, including ancient Egypt, the city of Troy, Stonehenge, cannibalism in north America, Custer's Last Stand, the relationship of Chimpanzees and humans, and the evidence for human evolution. In the process of learning about these examples we will explore how to find and excavate archaeological sites, how to date the past, and how to interpret archaeological material. In addition to lectures and tutorials this course has laboratory classes so that students are able to handle ancient archaeological materials. Videos and an extensive online multimedia (WebCT) presentation also provide you with a comprehensive educational experience to add to the learning that can be done in lectures and laboratories.
24 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials/laboratories. Films will be shown.
Lecturer: Professor Bellwood and Professor Groves
Syllabus: This course introduces students to current interpretations of human evolution and cultural development. Topics are chosen from a vast chronological range, beginning with origins of humanity over 2 million years ago, moving through the rise of modern humans and their cultures, to end with the rise of the first civilisations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Americas and China.
We will examine generally accepted views of the ancient past of humankind. Major aspects of human physical and cultural development to be reviewed include the evolution of modern humans, the origins of language and art, the basic history of hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, and the development of complex human societies and the first civilisations.
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: After an examination of the characteristics of different kinds of anthropological and archaeological observations, we look at procedures for recording and storing information. Methods of quantitative analysis are described, using examples from archaeology, biological anthropology, and social anthropology.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Mr Farrington and Professor Groves
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The course examines the relationships between the human and the plant and animal worlds. Particular attention will be given to the concept of domestication, to the wild precursors of domesticates, and to the exploitation, manipulation and transformation of selected plant and animal species.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or Art History.
Syllabus: The course sets the anthropology of art in a wider sociological and historical context, with a focus on the appropriation of objects and forms from colonised and post-colonial peoples into the western category of art, the invention of the categories primitive art and tribal art, and processes of commoditisation. There will be some emphasis on Aboriginal art. A major theme of the course will be the plurality of significance accorded to the same object as it moves from one cultural context to another. In order to appreciate this movement we begin with an analysis of the institution of art in western societies, and then examine the creation and significance of visual forms in a range of cultures, drawing on perspectives in the anthropology of art, the sociology of art, and related disciplines.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: An introduction to archaeological approaches to the analysis of artefacts. Issues examined include the concept and practice of classification, technological analysis of the manufacturing process, and an introduction to the study of style and function. Both theory and practice of artefact analysis will be covered and students will undertake studies of artefacts in laboratory sessions.
Normally offered in alternate years
Summer session 2003 (January to February)
Usually comprises two week compulsory residential field school at Kiandra early February and followed by one week intensive laboratory work as well as 12 hours laboratory work during the first term.
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH).
Syllabus: The course is designed to provide students with a practical introduction to basic archaeological field and laboratory methods. Its focus is on techniques of excavation, archaeological stratigraphy, the recording of artefacts and the analysis and interpretation of structures, features and excavated materials.
Incompatibility: PREH3004 Archaeological Field and Laboratory Methods.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Reviews the concept and importance of formation processes for interpretation in archaeology. The course describes the diversity of mechanisms involved in the formation of archaeological sites. The implications of formation processes for archaeological interpretations are considered, and theoretical frameworks for examining formation processes are evaluated. Examples of specific processes are discussed and material examined in the laboratory.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials. Lectures will be taped.
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Can we be certain about the identity of the ancient Celts? How does archaeology deal with situations where there can be multiple interpretations of the past? In this course we shall examine the various forms of evidence used in labelling the people of pre-Roman Europe and try to separate reliable data, whether archaeological, linguistic or textual from the broader fields of mythology and imagination. There is currently a strong emphasis in European archaeology on the construction of national identity. We shall examine the roots of the European identity through a survey of pre-Roman archaeology in Europe starting with the postglacial warming through controversy about the nature of agricultural origins in Europe, to the diverse opinion on the spread of Indo-European languages and the origins of urbanism in pre-Roman Europe. We shall incorporate many forms of learning into this course from lectures to workshops on Celtic art as well as videos and current websites.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisite: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course explores the interface between the archaeological record and the ethnohistoric document. It will outline the legendary and official histories and administrative accounts of the ancient, large scale political empires, and the archaeology of the urban centre, its rural sustaining area and its distant provinces in order to discuss the difficulty of using these divergent sources to construct an understanding of these extensive and complex socio-political and economic entities. The course will consider various models of complex society reconstruction, such as core and periphery, dominance and subordination, kingship and social organisation, and ethnicity, as well as questions of the meanings of material culture, settlement hierarchies, agricultural systems and the sacred landscape. Various ancient imperial settings will be considered comparatively, where appropriate.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: The course will study the archaeology of Neolithic and Bronze Age China, and the archaeology of Mainland and Island Southeast Asia from the late Pleistocene to the beginnings of Indian and Chinese contact. Particular emphasis will be placed on the Pleistocene colonisation of SE Asia, on the archaeology of early agricultural and Bronze/Iron Age societies in both China and SE Asia, and on the cultural and linguistic ancestries of the present inhabitants of East and Southeast Asia.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisite: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course will cover the theoretical and methodological issues confronting the archaeological study of culture contact between indigenous societies and outsiders. Different archaeological, historical and anthropological theories and models of contact and encounter will be discussed. Aspects to be covered will include, the identification of the processes and events of culture contact from archaeological evidence, what sorts of analyses are appropriate to this study, the relationship between prehistoric and historic archaeology, how archaeologists have attempted to deal with the spatial and temporal tensions of scale between archaeological, anthropological and historical data and the socio-political dimensions of culture contact archaeology. The geographical coverage of the course will include case studies from Australia, New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, the Americas and South Africa.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course examines the definition and evolution of Mesoamerican culture and its civilisations. It will focus on the emergence of sedentary life and ceremonialism, architecture and town planning, and the political, social and economic life of the major states. Emphasis will be placed on the Classic Period (Teotihuacan and the Maya) and the empire of the Aztecs.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: The archaeological record of Southwest Asia from the beginnings of agriculture and animal husbandry (c.10,000 BC) to the high point of Sumerian and Akkadian civilisation during the third millennium BC. Comparative surveys of the Harappan (Pakistan) and Egypt prior to about 2000 BC.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: An introduction to the archaeology of Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile and Argentina, and Ecuador through the study of particular themes: hunter-gatherers-fishers and the emergence of agriculture and sedentary life; the development of ranked societies and ceremonialism; urbanism and the rise of major political states and empires. It will outline the various culture periods including the Late Preceramic and Initial; Chavin; Mochica; Tiwanaku and Wari, Chimu and Inka focussing in particular on the North and Central Coasts and the southern Highlands of Peru. Settlement pattern studies and the analysis of art and material culture play an important role in this course.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials and/or workshops
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: An introduction to the archaeology of the Pacific Islands, spanning Melanesia (including the Island of New Guinea), Micronesia and Polynesia. The course examines the amazing human endeavour which was the location and settlement of some of the most remote islands on earth, and the subsequent cultural and environmental changes through to the period of early contact with European explorers, missionaries and traders. The region's past includes the earliest evidence for open sea voyaging in the world, unique hunting and gathering adaptations to tropical rainforest environments, the mass extinction of species of birds and other vertebrates with initial human settlement on many islands, the development of over a quarter of the world's modern languages, and the construction of the mysterious Easter Island statues
For details see Classics major -- School of Language Studies
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Anthropology; or Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or enrolment in the Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
Syllabus: Introduction to the physical and cultural characteristics of humans living in Australia prior to the end of the 18th century. Much of the course focuses on how the environment was exploited, especially the economy and the impact on the landscape. Claims for demographic change and the development of social and economic complexity are also examined.
Prerequisite: Archaeology of the Pacific Islanders ARCH2005 or PREH2005 permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: An advanced course on the archaeology of the Pacific, in which certain selected themes are examined in detail. There will be emphasis on methods of analysis and interpretation of the archaeological evidence on which reconstruction is based.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures and 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology, or enrolment in the Population Studies major.
Syllabus: The potential of human populations to grow, stabilise or decline is realised through events, which are often strongly marked culturally and always crucial for individuals: birth, migration and death. The prospects and hazards of survival, mobility, marriage and raising a family vary greatly between populations, and are often related to sociocultural factors including religion, education, gender roles, valuation of children, political organisation and economy. Yet if sociocultural factors are to influence the dynamics of fertility and mortality, they must do so through their effects on those very biological events, such as giving birth and dying. This course explores in an anthropological context the complex interplay between culture and biology in producing population dynamics of different kinds, as well as the implications of those population dynamics for the societies in question.
Course topics include: population size and structure in the past and present; the biology of natural fertility; social factors controlling fertility; mortality and the impact of varying life expectancies; population pressure on resources and consequences for migration; marital mobility, marriage practices, kinship systems and sex ratios; the demography of small-scale societies; health, nutrition and the demographic effect of epidemics; demographic implications of warfare; change, development and demographic transitions. Quantitative demographic techniques are introduced but not pursued in depth. Examples are drawn mainly from the mass societies of Asia and the small-scale indigenous societies of the Australia-Pacific region.
The course is designed on the premise that what is distinctive about the anthropological (in the broad sense) approach to population is its concern with the processes that lie behind population numbers more than the numbers themselves, and its comparative perspective across cultures and from the distant past to the present.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course examines the changing concept of hunter-gatherers, fishers and foragers in pre-agricultural Europe. What underlies the classification of 'hunter-gatherer'? And why do some archaeologists resist the label. We shall broadly examine the theories involved in the origins of our own species and those of earlier hominids. This course is concerned with the interpretation of archaeological evidence for 'culture' rather than the morphological details of human evolution but the two aspects must both be considered. When did hominids first arrive in Europe and how is such evidence researched and presented today? We shall discuss a number of ideas about Homo neanderthalensis and how the relationship between this species and early modern humans is seen by various archaeologists and biological anthropologists. How is our view of the Upper Palaeolithic societies of Europe and their fantastic and challenging art changing and what can be said about the environmental management of later glacial and early post-glacial foragers? Finally we shall examine the question of whether there is a continuity of population remaining in Europe from these pre-agricultural foragers or were they relegated to the margins of agricultural migrant lands, becoming insignificant in the development of later prehistoric and historic Europe?
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH), or other appropriate Arts first year subject, or relevant Science Faculty first year courses.
Syllabus: The course will consider the issues and controversies surrounding attempts to introduce into the social sciences concepts and theoretical perspectives developed in evolutionary biology. Its aim is to make recent perspectives and the arguments for and against available to students of the social and the biological sciences, as well as to those with more general methodological interests.
Although a naturalistic strand has always been present in the social sciences, it is fair to say that most of the more influential social theorists have seen a basic discontinuity between the biological and the social sciences. Recent ethological and sociobiological research has posed questions of the view that there are fundamental differences between human social behaviour and that of animals. This approach, however, has been augmented by the extension of certain evolutionary concepts to human cultural life itself, and it is predominantly with these that this course is concerned. Here, the suggestion is that evolutionary processes operate in cultural life not only through 'descent with modification' as it applies to genes, but through a comparable process that operates on cultural elements. The 'second form of evolution' that Dawkins' notions of memes (cultural representations that are subject to selection pressure) is thought to entail has led some to proclaim the social sciences to be a sub-category of the life sciences. Other scholars, who take their lead from a cognitive psychology grounded in evolutionary perspectives, dispute the memetic viewpoint, but nevertheless argue that there are no longer any grounds for separating the biological and the social sciences.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course looks at the intriguing history of archaeological investigations. It focuses on the way influential discoveries were made, the influence of rivalries and political/social pressures on archaeological research, and the development of archaeological practice.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; or Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The place of humans among the primates, the mechanisms of evolution, and the evolution of humans and other primates. The main part of the course details the fossil record of the evolution of the human line since its separation from other primates.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 lectures, 10 tutorials and 13 film/videos
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or the School of Botany and Zoology. Students are also recommended to include at least one other later-year course in Archaeology and Anthropology or Life Sciences in their studies before or alongside this one: for example, ANTH2001, 2011, 2034, 2053, 2125, 2127, BIAN2012, 2013, 2115, BIOL3133, 3132, 3131, LANG2015, LING2015, PRAN2015, 2027, PREH2011, PSYC2007.
Syllabus: What continuities are there between human and animal social lives? How did characteristically human social arrangements emerge over the course of hominid evolution? Is there, despite human cultural diversity, a genetically based human nature that can be contrasted with, e.g. chimpanzee nature? What might the human social sciences learn from the zoological disciplines -- ethology, sociobiology, behavioural ecology -- that study animal social behaviour?
The long-standing social-science orthodoxy has been that radical differences between us and other animals render such questions fruitless, even dangerous, to pursue. But recent developments in the study of animal behaviour have challenged this view. Biological perspectives on human social life are attracting a fresh interest and research effort, though they remain controversial. This course examines the resulting debates.
Communication, conflict, altruism, kinship, sex, parenthood, social organisation, language and culture are amongst the topics covered. These will be discussed in three main contexts: the evolutionary past of hominid social characteristics; child development and child-rearing; and adult interactions, relationships and social structures. The main empirical base will be present-day and ethnographically described human societies, with some discussion of evidence on the undocumented past, and some use of animal examples.
The aim will be to present the biological approaches and the criticisms they have attracted in a balanced way, and to identify both the strengths and the weaknesses of these approaches. Students will be encouraged to form their own views on the material studied, and on its status in the natural and social sciences.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology; (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or enrolment for a major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: From the moment of Australia's discovery by Europeans the history, life and culture of Aboriginal people has been a subject of intellectual fascination. In the nineteenth century their social and cultural practices were widely believed to open up a window onto the origins of religion and European social institutions. More recently they have become a sociological, evolutionary and ecological prototype of the hunting and gathering way of life. This course will examine the details of traditional life, including subsistence economy, land ownership, social organisation, marriage arrangements, religion, magic, art and totemism and consider its impact on the European imagination and the production of social theory.
Offered in same semester as prerequisite.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2005 Aboriginal Societies and Cultures.
Syllabus: This course offers the opportunity to research an area of indigenous anthropology in depth through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, a work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
Preliminary reading: See under ANTH2005.
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology or Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
Normally offered in alternate years.
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course will examine the principles underlying the practice of cultural heritage management. The course will cover the following topics --
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories/tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course concentrates on techniques for examining past environments from an archaeological perspective and assessing the human element in altering or transforming them over time. It is an introduction to the subject and requires no previous science background. After examining the factors which affect environments, the course will cover geomophological contexts of archaeological sites, kinds of evidence for examining landscape change and discuss case studies from various parts of the world where the human factor has been argued as being important in causing past environmental changes, or where the interaction between humans and their environmentants has been implicated in cultural change.
13 hours lectures, 39 hours practical classes; plus compulsory attendance at a minimum of 3 days of field excursions.
Prerequisite: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
The course will be limited to 45 enrolments, based on the practical limitations of field vehicles and university field safety guidelines.
Syllabus: This course provides an introduction to the techniques and analysis of Landscape Archaeology. This is an integrated practical course and therefore it involves compulsory field work. These techniques will be taught through a focus upon the landscapes of the nineteenth century European occupation of New South Wales: rural, urban and industrial. In order to interpret the landscape features observed, attention will be given to: site identification; the methods and problems of site recording and mapping; drawing and presentation of results; an understanding of nineteenth century technology; the landscape as a document of sequent occupance.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 hours films
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: Our species has a capacity for flexible biological response to environmental conditions within a lifetime, as well as specific adaptations acquired over the long span of evolution. Pre-industrial human populations, sharing a similar range of physiological capacities, succeeded in occupying much of the globe and a wide diversity of environments. This course examines this adaptability and its limits in an anthropological context, with particular attention to nutrition, the physical environment, and disease.
The main sections of the course will be: on nutritional ecology, discussing the adequacy of the diet (especially in energy and protein) for health and growth, and environmental and social influences on nutrition; on environmental physiology, especially responses to physical factors (e.g. climate), also psychosocial factors (e.g. stress); on disease ecology, contrasting patterns of disease occurrence in traditional and developing societies with those in developed societies, and considering the processes involved in selected cases; and finally on the critical assessment of arguments that interpret aspects of culture as adaptations to biological variables, such as protein needs, population pressure or nutrient flows in the ecosystem.
Throughout, examples for study will be selected on a cross-cultural basis, with a focus on indigenous traditional and developing societies, but with some attention to developed societies and where possible to evidence on the undocumented past.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first-year courses to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH). Students without one of these courses should consult the lecturer.
Syllabus: Without agricultural production, civilisation as we know it today could never have come into existence. Nor could any of the great civilisations of history. This course will examine the role of agricultural subsistence at a crucial stage in human history, when post-hunter-gatherer populations in various regions began to lay the foundations of the present distributions of peoples, cultures and languages across the tropical and temperate latitudes of the earth. The course will examine both archaeological and linguistic data.
One lecture and one two-hour class throughout semester and attendance at selected seminars. Up to 26 hours additional project work by arrangement. One field day.
Course Coordinator: To be advised
Prerequisites: At least 96 units in a degree including two later-year courses in BIOL, SREM, SRES, ANTH, PRAN or PREH or written approval of the lecturer.
Syllabus: The course reviews techniques commonly used to provide a reconstruction of the past ecology, climate, and surface processes of a region with an emphasis on the potential resources and constraints that may have affected human populations. Biological techniques to be studied include analyses of pollen, charcoal, wood, seeds, isotopic biochemistry and biogenic silica and a range of geomorphological and chronological methods will also be considered. The contribution of these techniques to particular prehistoric problems such as the role of human activity in environmental change is assessed.
Proposed assessment: To be agreed in consultation with students.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology, Geography, Environmental Studies/Agroecology or Human Sciences major.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures,7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or one course of first year History or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course considers the archaeology of the period when the English language arose and the English state was formed from the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It was during this period that the current 'Celtic Fringe' of Europe developed in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and the legend of King Arthur arose.
Looking at Post-Roman Britain during the period from about 400 to 1066 AD allows us to examine issues such as continuity versus replacement in biological anthropology, migration versus diffusion in the archaeological record, the relation between archaeological and linguistic entities and the interplay of archaeology and nationalism in the modern world. Contemporary developments in Continental Europe at the end of the Western Roman Empire are also examined.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: How does the public find out about the past? Who owns that past and who decides on how it is presented to the public? Whose past is represented and through what media? How many pasts are there anyway? Is the concept of universal cultural heritage sustainable in the face of indigenous demands for control over cultural and intellectual property rights? Are different pasts presented to different audiences? What role does archaeology play in the construction of national identities? What impact will the Internet have on the presentation and dissemination of archaeological information? The aim of the course is to review the theoretical frameworks underpinning the practice of applied or management archaeology. Emphasis will be placed on examining the interface between the practice of archaeology and the public presentation of archaeological knowledge.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 13 hours films, 6 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: The Primates, our closest animal relatives: their classification, evolution, diet, locomotion, reproduction and social relations.
The theme will be the primates in their place in the natural world, with their diversity and adaptability, setting the stage for the comparison with human biology and social behaviour.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 film/videos over the semester
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology. This course is intended to complement 'Advances in Human Genetics' BIOL2152. Biological Anthropology students are recommended to take both.
Syllabus: 'Race' was once thought capable of explaining a great deal about both human biology and society. That is no longer true, either in anthropology or in human biology; but biological variation between individuals and between populations is real and remains to be explained. This course is about human biological variation, especially variation amongst populations in physical traits, blood genetics and DNA. Through case studies rather than comprehensively, variation amongst peoples of the world will be viewed as an outcome of evolution and biogeography, and as a reflection of ancestry, interrelationships and population histories.
Principles of genetic inheritance will be introduced. General human genetics topics selected for discussion may include: genetic disease; heredity-environment interaction; social implications of genetic issues, and forensic genetics. The main emphasis, however, will be on human population diversity and anthropological genetics, including: the 'race' concept; principles of population genetics; the geography of biological variation; the explanation of biological variation in terms of micro-evolution; and inferences from biological evidence about population origins and affinities, compared with inferences from archaeology and linguistics.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite course BIAN2120
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials.
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in, or previous completion of BIAN2120 Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics, and builds on that unit's subject matter. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or theme within the broader scope of Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2120.
Incompatibility: PRAN3020 Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Human Sciences or Population Studies major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2115, or previous completion of PRAN2015 `Race' and Human Genetic Variation.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with `Race' and Human Genetic Variation, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2115.
Incompatability: PRAN3015 Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit.
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2119, or previous completion of PRAN2019 Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group, and/or on the human biology of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2119.
Incompatibility: PRAN3019 Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in alternate years
Lecturer: Dr Hiscock and Mr Farrington
Prerequisites: Either ARCH1111 or ARCH1112, and 18 units of ARCH or PREH courses at later- year level, or permission of the Convener.
Syllabus: This course is designed to provide the student with an introduction to the principles by which archaeological projects are devised and executed. It will deal with the issues of finding a topic to research, defining its scope and limitations, developing a research bibliography and data inventory, devising a methodology by which the topic becomes a research question, and elaborating a research design.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories
Prerequisites: One first-year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Introduction to scientific investigations in archaeology, and to the way popular and pseudo-scientific stories of the past are developed. Popular myths of the past are explored, focussing on interpretations of Atlantis, Stonehenge, the Giza plateau, and creationist stories such as the Great Flood. The goal of these examinations is to illuminate the practice of Scientific Archaeology.
Incompatibility: PREH3005 Science and Myths of the Human Past: Atlantis and the Pyramid Builders.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology or Biological Anthropology major.
Prerequisite: PREH2050 or ARCH2050 Archaeology of China and Southeast Asia or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: An advanced course on the archaeology of Asia, in which certain selected themes are examined in detail. There will be emphasis on methods of analysis and interpretation of the archaeological evidence on which reconstruction is based.
Prerequisite: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) and/or BIOL1003.
Syllabus: Recognition of bones and teeth. The human skeleton: techniques of analysis for age, sex, stature, pathology and racial origin. The skeletal recognition of Australian mammals, and their basic biology. Basic recognition of other Australian fauna. Fundamentals of taphonomy.
Incompatibility: PREH3010 Skeletal Analysis.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology or Biological Anthropology major.
16 hours lecture/demonstrations
Prerequisites: 12 first-year units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany & Zoology. Students are also advised to have completed either Skeletal Analysis BIAN3011 or PREH3010 and at least two of the following: ANTH2011, ARCH2011, BIAN2012, 2013, 2115, 2119, PRAN2015, 2019 before attempting this course: students without these courses should contact the lecturer.
Co-requisite: It is recommended that Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (or PRAN2026), be taken as a companion course to this course.
This course is primarily intended for Honours students and when places are limited priority may be given to students intending to undertake Honours in the following year. Students intending to undertake honours in Biological Anthropology should note that Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (or PRAN2026) is a co-requisite in terms of admission to Honours.
Syllabus: Introduction to some techniques used in biological anthropology: for example, radiometric dating, phylogenetic and genetic analysis, forensic anthropology, background to statistics. Where possible the course will include talks by, and visits to the laboratories of, specialists in techniques associated with biological anthropology.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology or Biological Anthropology major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology, Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) Geography, Sociology or Political Science.
Syllabus: In the course of our history, human beings have developed very varied and enormously powerful technologies that have transformed not only our relations with nature, but our relations with each other and the ways in which we have organised ourselves. The course begins with the treatment of technology in social theory, examines the analysis of socio-technical systems, and the interaction of technology, social relations and social organisation. Case studies will consider socio-technical systems in a variety of societies of different times and places, as well as the impact of major technological developments from language to the information revolution.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2013 Human Evolution, or previous completion of PREH2011 Human Evolution.
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while ARCH2011 Human Evolution is in progress. It treats selected themes in palaeoanthropology, or other topics in the field of human evolution, in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by practical presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2013.
Incompatibility: PREH3011 Topics in Human Evolution.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2012 Primates, or previous completion of ANTH2011 Primates
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while BIAN2012 Primates is in progress. It treats selected themes in primatology in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by tutorial presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2012.
Incompatibility: ANTH3011 Topics in Primatology.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories
Prerequisite: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course explores our understanding of variability in archaeological assemblages. Evidence from a number of time periods is described and suggested explanations for assemblage variability are evaluated. Case studies include archaeological variation in the Middle Palaeolithic in Europe, and the mid-Holocene technology of Australia. Alternative explanations of the complex variations in the archaeological record are examined. Interactive computer programs are used to enhance the learning process.
Honours Coordinator: Dr Hiscock
To be admitted to the Honours School in Archaeology students must be eligible to take out their BA pass degree. Students wishing to take Honours in Archaeology after undertaking a combined program (for example BA/BSc or BA/Asian Studies) must complete the requirements for their BA degree before admission to the Honours in Archaeology degree.
All students wishing to be admitted to the Honours in Archaeology School must include a minimum of 10 courses to the value of 60 specified units as follows:
(a) First year courses: One or both of the first year Archaeology courses, ARCH1111 and ARCH1112.
(b) Specific later year courses:
Research Design in Archaeology ARCH3000 and one of the two fieldwork-based courses: Archaeological Field Laboratory Methods ARCH3004 or PREH3004, Landscape Archaeology ARCH2017 or PREH2017. An average mark of 70% or more (Distinction level) must be obtained for these courses.
(c) Other later year courses: The remaining archaeology units can come from any ARCH or PREH courses (including The Primates BIAN2013 or ANTH2011) and/or from ANCH2009, HIST2137. While students are only required to have 60 units in archaeology to enter the Honours in Archaeology School, all students are encouraged to take further archaeological courses if they are planning a career in archaeology. It is advisable for any prospective Honours students to contact the Honours Coordinator as soon as possible after completion of their first year for advice in their choice of later year courses.
(d) An average mark of 70% or more (Distinction level) must be obtained for all the later year archaeology courses.
(e) Field or laboratory experience: It is expected that all intending Honours students will have had some field-work experience during their second/third years. This may be gained by assisting on School field projects or working with other researchers or archaeological consultants. Information is often posted on School noticeboards.
(f) Students will have to submit a preliminary thesis proposal for a BA Honours thesis during the semester before they enter the Honours in Archaeology School. This proposal should be discussed with a member of staff willing to be the supervisor for the proposed thesis. The School reserves the right not to admit a student unable to find a supervisor or a topic suitable to the School.
Work for the Honours in archaeology degree is divided between course work and research. There will be two 6 week seminars during the First Semester, each with one 2 hour meeting per week. Each Honours student will be expected to write one essay for each seminar, getting 10% of their final mark for each.
Research: students are required to undertake a research project approved by the School and to submit a BA Honours thesis of 12-15,000 words. 80% of the final grade will be awarded through examination of the thesis. A weekly Thesis Writing seminar will be held during the first semester to assist students with research design and thesis writing.
Combined Honours in Archaeology with other subjects: Students can undertake combined Honours degrees between Archaeology and various areas of the Arts Faculty. Such students will be required to complete 96 units in the combined area, 48 units in each discipline. Such students will be required to fulfil all requirements set out in points (a)-(f) above.
For details on the graduate diplomas and degrees in Archaeology see the Postgraduate Prospectus.
Convener: Professor Colin Groves, BSc PhD Lond., FRAI, FAHA
Biological anthropology is the branch of anthropology that focuses on the evolutionary and biological aspects of humankind: Homo sapiens as an evolved species - human populations as varied and dynamically changing sets of biological individuals, adaptable but also vulnerable to ever-changing circumstances. It is also concerned with the non-human primates, and with current debates on the biological bases of human social behaviour. The subject thus encompasses what used to be called physical anthropology, as well as primatology, palaeoanthropology and human population biology, including human genetics and the study of human health, nutrition, growth, demography and ecological adaptation, viewed comparatively and synthetically.
Biological anthropology thus takes an overview of the various biological specialisms as they apply to human beings and their evolutionary relatives, especially at the population level. Its place amongst the anthropological disciplines is reflected in its comparative (cross-cultural and cross-species) approach.
Human beings are highly complex cultural animals. Studying human evolution and biology within a School of Archaeology and Anthropology, biological anthropologists are constantly aware of and interested in the manifold interactions between the biological and socio-cultural dimensions of human existence.
Key topics in courses included in the Biological Anthropology major include the:
The pass degree courses are not planned to provide specialised professional training, but to present students with an overall understanding of biological anthropology and its main sub-fields. Honours courses offer more specialist training and examine in more depth the discipline's theoretical basis.
Students considering the possibility of entering careers as professional biological anthropologists should plan their courses with a view to taking the degree with Honours. Special honours work begins in third year.
(a) Any combination of 12 first-year units from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology and/or School of Botany and Zoology (normally but not necessarily a sequence in anthropology, archaeology or biology as indicated under 'first year' above). There is no dedicated first-year course in biological anthropology. Students are recommended to include at least 12 relevant first-year units in their first-year studies, chosen from the following: Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002, Global and Local ANTH1003, Archaeology: An Introduction ARCH1111, From Origins to Civilisations ARCH1112, Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003, Human Biology BIOL1008; plus
(b) 30 later-year units from lists A, B and C below. At least 18 to be chosen from List A, and at least 24 from lists A and B combined.
Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN2119
'Race' and Human Genetic Variation BIAN2115
Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation BIAN3115 (3 units)
Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment BIAN3119 (3 units)
Techniques in Biological Anthropology BIAN3010 (3 units)
Advances in Human Genetics BIOL2152
Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (3 units)
Anthropology of Emotion ANTH2034
Anthropology of Emotion: Further Studies ANTH3034 (3 units)
Culture, Biology & Population Dynamics BIAN2120
Genes, Memes and Cultural Difference ANTH2127
Human Society and Animal Society: Comparisons and Relationships BIAN2124
Medical Anthropology: Further Studies ANTH3026 (3 units)
Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology BIAN3120 (3 units)
Science and Myths of the Human Past: Atlantis and the Pyramid Builders ARCH3005
Animals, Plants and People: Ethnobiology and Domestication ARCH2108
Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Social Life ANTH2053
Australian Archaeology ARCH2004
Biodiversity and Systematics BIOL3134
Biological Basis of Behaviour PSYC2007
Ecology of Health and Disease SCCO2103
Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology BIOL3131
Foragers and Hunters of Pre-agricultural Europe ARCH2038
History of Archaeology: Discovering the Past ARCH2006
Indigenous Australians and Australian Society ANTH2017
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures ANTH2005
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures: Further Studies ANTH3005 (3 units)
Introductory Genetics BIOL2151
Methods of Social Research A SOCY2038
Origins and Dispersals of Agricultural Populations ARCH2039
1. Most advanced courses in Biological Anthropology are normally offered in alternate years only -- see individual course entries.
2. The prerequisites for the advanced courses vary -- see individual course entries.
3. The first 4 courses in List A of the major are the core courses for honours.
4. When prerequisites are fulfilled outside the major, the number of later-year units may be alternatively be increased to 36 or 42 and the number of first-year units decreased commensurately so that the total remains 42. In these cases, at least 24 units should be from List A and at least 30 from lists A & B combined.
Two lecture hours and one tutorial hour each week. Repeat evening lectures will be given.
Syllabus: Anthropology is the study of different ways of life, focussing on the similarities between them as much as the differences. In this course, students will be introduced to a range of cultures from around the world, and in the process will develop an informed and critical perspective on their own lives and those of other people. We will explore core concepts such as 'nature', 'culture' and 'society', and critically examine the basic approaches, theories and debates found within anthropology. We will cover a range of issues including race and racism, sex and gender, magic and myth, symbolism and representation, and the role of knowledge as power within anthropology. In the process students will learn how to apply anthropological understanding to the world around them.
Students taking this course are advised to combine it with Global and Local ANTH1003.
Two lecture hours, one film hour and one tutorial hour each week. Repeat evening lectures will be given
Syllabus: The emergence of global industrialisation and consumer cultures, world political and religious forces, and international migration have posed a new challenge to anthropology. Anthropologists from their `traditional' viewpoint of the small rural community now apply their insights to the nature and impact of global forces, particularly in their local context, whether that be a remote village or a cosmopolitan city. In this course we will examine just how relevant anthropology is to contemporary issues. We will examine a range of issues including the articulation of local production within the world economy, consumerism in its local forms, world religions and local religious revitalisation, industrial and urban subcultures and contemporary ethnic (including indigenous) identities, international tourism and labour force movement in their local impact, world health and population concerns and local responses, development and local poverty, and global and local environmental movements. This course will introduce students to the theories, concepts and practices anthropologists have developed to address problems of inequality, discrimination, and cultural and economic imperialism in the world today.
Students taking this course are advised to combine it with Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002
Syllabus: An introduction to the way archaeologists work using many examples, including ancient Egypt, the city of Troy, Stonehenge, cannibalism in north America, Custer's Last Stand, the relationship of Chimpanzees and humans, and the evidence for human evolution. In the process of learning about these examples we will explore how to find and excavate archaeological sites, how to date the past, and how to interpret archaeological material. In addition to lectures and tutorials this course has laboratory classes so that students are able to handle ancient archaeological materials. Videos and an extensive online multimedia (WebCT) presentation also provide you with a comprehensive educational experience to add to the learning that can be done in lectures and laboratories.
Incompatibility: PREH1111 Introduction to Archaeology.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Environmental Studies/Agroecology, Human Sciences, Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies or Population Studies major.
24 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials/laboratories. Films will be shown.
Lecturer: Professor Bellwood and Professor Groves
Syllabus: This course introduces students to current interpretations of human evolution and cultural development. Topics are chosen from a vast chronological range, beginning with origins of humanity over 2 million years ago, moving through the rise of modern humans and their cultures, to end with the rise of the first civilisations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Americas and China.
We will examine generally accepted views of the ancient past of humankind. Major aspects of human physical and cultural development to be reviewed include the evolution of modern humans, the origins of language and art, the basic history of hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, and the development of complex human societies and the first civilisations.
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: After an examination of the characteristics of different kinds of anthropological and archaeological observations, we look at procedures for recording and storing information. Methods of quantitative analysis are described, using examples from archaeology, biological anthropology, and social anthropology.
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Mr Farrington and Professor Groves
Prerequisites: Two first year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ARCH, ANTH or PREH) or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The course examines the relationships between the human and the plant and animal worlds. Particular attention will be given to the concept of domestication, to the wild precursors of domesticates, and to the exploitation, manipulation and transformation of selected plant and animal species.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology
Syllabus: The course surveys the variety of approaches to the description and analysis of human social life in social/cultural anthropology through lectures and the close examination of selected readings. It does so by tracing the development of anthropological theory through the twentieth century, and with reference to its intellectual origins. It begins with the emergence of the idea of society as an object of study, outlines and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the main paradigms and problematics structure and function, transactionalism, structuralism, the concept of culture, ecological approaches, neo-marxist anthropology, practice theory and post-structuralism, feminist anthropology, history and anthropology, and post-modernism.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units in any Faculty or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: examination of key sources on emotion in the social sciences. Topics covered include components of emotion, the cultural construction of emotion, the social ontology of emotion, and the role of emotion in the agency of the body in society. Includes discussion of individual emotions such as love, shame and envy. Also discussed are the place of emotion in the analysis of religion, politics, and health and illness.
Offered in the same semester as the prerequisite unit.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in ANTH2034, or previous completion of ANTH2034 Anthropology of Emotion.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to pursue in greater depth topics in the anthropology of emotion through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials, extra reading and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology or Biological Anthropology major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Anthropology; or Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or enrolment in the Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
Syllabus: Introduction to the physical and cultural characteristics of humans living in Australia prior to the end of the 18th century. Much of the course focuses on how the environment was exploited, especially the economy and the impact on the landscape. Claims for demographic change and the development of social and economic complexity are also examined.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures and 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology, or enrolment in the Population Studies major.
Syllabus: The potential of human populations to grow, stabilise or decline is realised through events, which are often strongly marked culturally and always crucial for individuals: birth, migration and death. The prospects and hazards of survival, mobility, marriage and raising a family vary greatly between populations, and are often related to sociocultural factors including religion, education, gender roles, valuation of children, political organisation and economy. Yet if sociocultural factors are to influence the dynamics of fertility and mortality, they must do so through their effects on those very biological events, such as giving birth and dying. This course explores in an anthropological context the complex interplay between culture and biology in producing population dynamics of different kinds, as well as the implications of those population dynamics for the societies in question.
Course topics include: population size and structure in the past and present; the biology of natural fertility; social factors controlling fertility; mortality and the impact of varying life expectancies; population pressure on resources and consequences for migration; marital mobility, marriage practices, kinship systems and sex ratios; the demography of small-scale societies; health, nutrition and the demographic effect of epidemics; demographic implications of warfare; change, development and demographic transitions. Quantitative demographic techniques are introduced but not pursued in depth. Examples are drawn mainly from the mass societies of Asia and the small-scale indigenous societies of the Australia-Pacific region.
The course is designed on the premise that what is distinctive about the anthropological (in the broad sense) approach to population is its concern with the processes that lie behind population numbers more than the numbers themselves, and its comparative perspective across cultures and from the distant past to the present.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course examines the changing concept of hunter-gatherers, fishers and foragers in pre-agricultural Europe. What underlies the classification of 'hunter-gatherer'? And why do some archaeologists resist the label. We shall broadly examine the theories involved in the origins of our own species and those of earlier hominids. This course is concerned with the interpretation of archaeological evidence for 'culture' rather than the morphological details of human evolution but the two aspects must both be considered. When did hominids first arrive in Europe and how is such evidence researched and presented today? We shall discuss a number of ideas about Homo neanderthalensis and how the relationship between this species and early modern humans is seen by various archaeologists and biological anthropologists. How is our view of the Upper Palaeolithic societies of Europe and their fantastic and challenging art changing and what can be said about the environmental management of later glacial and early post-glacial foragers? Finally we shall examine the question of whether there is a continuity of population remaining in Europe from these pre-agricultural foragers or were they relegated to the margins of agricultural migrant lands, becoming insignificant in the development of later prehistoric and historic Europe?
Normally offered in alternate years
26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH), or other appropriate Arts first year subject, or relevant Science Faculty first year courses.
Syllabus: The course will consider the issues and controversies surrounding attempts to introduce into the social sciences concepts and theoretical perspectives developed in evolutionary biology. Its aim is to make recent perspectives and the arguments for and against available to students of the social and the biological sciences, as well as to those with more general methodological interests.
Although a naturalistic strand has always been present in the social sciences, it is fair to say that most of the more influential social theorists have seen a basic discontinuity between the biological and the social sciences. Recent ethological and sociobiological research has posed questions of the view that there are fundamental differences between human social behaviour and that of animals. This approach, however, has been augmented by the extension of certain evolutionary concepts to human cultural life itself, and it is predominantly with these that this course is concerned. Here, the suggestion is that evolutionary processes operate in cultural life not only through 'descent with modification' as it applies to genes, but through a comparable process that operates on cultural elements. The 'second form of evolution' that Dawkins' notions of memes (cultural representations that are subject to selection pressure) is thought to entail has led some to proclaim the social sciences to be a sub-category of the life sciences. Other scholars, who take their lead from a cognitive psychology grounded in evolutionary perspectives, dispute the memetic viewpoint, but nevertheless argue that there are no longer any grounds for separating the biological and the social sciences.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: This course looks at the intriguing history of archaeological investigations. It focuses on the way influential discoveries were made, the influence of rivalries and political/social pressures on archaeological research, and the development of archaeological practice.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 7 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or Evolution, Ecology and Heredity BIOL1003; or Human Biology BIOL1008.
Syllabus: The place of humans among the primates, the mechanisms of evolution, and the evolution of humans and other primates. The main part of the course details the fossil record of the evolution of the human line since its separation from other primates.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 lectures, 10 tutorials and 13 film/videos
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology ANTH, ARCH or PREH); or the School of Botany and Zoology. Students are also recommended to include at least one other later-year course in Archaeology and Anthropology or Life Sciences in their studies before or alongside this one: for example, ANTH2001, 2011, 2034, 2053, 2125, 2127, BIAN2012, 2013, 2115, BIOL3133, 3132, 3131, LANG2015, LING2015, PRAN2015, 2027, PREH2011, PSYC2007.
Syllabus: What continuities are there between human and animal social lives? How did characteristically human social arrangements emerge over the course of hominid evolution? Is there, despite human cultural diversity, a genetically based human nature that can be contrasted with, e.g. chimpanzee nature? What might the human social sciences learn from the zoological disciplines -- ethology, sociobiology, behavioural ecology -- that study animal social behaviour?
The long-standing social-science orthodoxy has been that radical differences between us and other animals render such questions fruitless, even dangerous, to pursue. But recent developments in the study of animal behaviour have challenged this view. Biological perspectives on human social life are attracting a fresh interest and research effort, though they remain controversial. This course examines the resulting debates.
Communication, conflict, altruism, kinship, sex, parenthood, social organisation, language and culture are amongst the topics covered. These will be discussed in three main contexts: the evolutionary past of hominid social characteristics; child development and child-rearing; and adult interactions, relationships and social structures. The main empirical base will be present-day and ethnographically described human societies, with some discussion of evidence on the undocumented past, and some use of animal examples.
The aim will be to present the biological approaches and the criticisms they have attracted in a balanced way, and to identify both the strengths and the weaknesses of these approaches. Students will be encouraged to form their own views on the material studied, and on its status in the natural and social sciences.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in Anthropology or enrolment in the Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
Syllabus: Aborigines are severely disadvantaged in terms of poverty, poor health, over-representation in the prisons, employment opportunities, and access to the political system. This course examines the dimensions of this disadvantaged position and the varied patterns of life of Aboriginal people, from reserves and cattle stations to major cities. Their ways of life have been radically transformed throughout the continent by European colonisation. The cultures of people living in remote areas show the greatest continuities with the past, but many Aboriginal people in the southern part of the continent also have a mode of life distinct from the cultures of people of European origin.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology; (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) or enrolment for a major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: From the moment of Australia's discovery by Europeans the history, life and culture of Aboriginal people has been a subject of intellectual fascination. In the nineteenth century their social and cultural practices were widely believed to open up a window onto the origins of religion and European social institutions. More recently they have become a sociological, evolutionary and ecological prototype of the hunting and gathering way of life. This course will examine the details of traditional life, including subsistence economy, land ownership, social organisation, marriage arrangements, religion, magic, art and totemism and consider its impact on the European imagination and the production of social theory.
Offered in same semester as prerequisite.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2005 Aboriginal Societies and Cultures.
Syllabus: This course offers the opportunity to research an area of indigenous anthropology in depth through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, a work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
Preliminary reading: See under ANTH2005.
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology or Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Lecturer: Professor Wierzbicka
Prerequisites: Open to students who will normally be expected to have completed Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002 and/or Global and Local ANTH1003 and Introduction to the Study of Language LING1001, or who have completed Cross-Cultural Communication LING1021, or the Ethnography of Communication LING3026.
Syllabus: This course focuses on problems that define the intersection between anthropology and linguistics. See the Linguistics entry for further information.
Incompatibility: LANG2015 Language and Culture
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Human Sciences or Linguistics major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first-year courses from any Faculty or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Medical Anthropology looks at health and illness in phenomenological, cultural, and social contexts. It encompasses Western bio-medicine as well as non-Western medical systems. The course examines topics such as the anthropology of the body, the notion of illness as metaphor, the variety and nature of explanations for sickness, healers and their roles, the interaction between medical systems within and between societies, and institutional conflict and change. The major theoretical perspectives for comparing medical systems will be examined along with the notion of disease theories as cultural products.
There is no required preliminary reading. However, those interested in further information on the area can consult the following sources:
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Human Sciences major.
Usually offered in the same semester as the prerequisite unit, may not be offered in 2002.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2026 Medical Anthropology.
Syllabus: The course offers the opportunity to pursue in greater depth topics in the area of medical anthropology through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials, extra reading and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
This course may also be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Human Sciences major.
For details see the Sociology major -- School of Social Sciences.
Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 hours films
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: Our species has a capacity for flexible biological response to environmental conditions within a lifetime, as well as specific adaptations acquired over the long span of evolution. Pre-industrial human populations, sharing a similar range of physiological capacities, succeeded in occupying much of the globe and a wide diversity of environments. This course examines this adaptability and its limits in an anthropological context, with particular attention to nutrition, the physical environment, and disease.
The main sections of the course will be: on nutritional ecology, discussing the adequacy of the diet (especially in energy and protein) for health and growth, and environmental and social influences on nutrition; on environmental physiology, especially responses to physical factors (e.g. climate), also psychosocial factors (e.g. stress); on disease ecology, contrasting patterns of disease occurrence in traditional and developing societies with those in developed societies, and considering the processes involved in selected cases; and finally on the critical assessment of arguments that interpret aspects of culture as adaptations to biological variables, such as protein needs, population pressure or nutrient flows in the ecosystem.
Throughout, examples for study will be selected on a cross-cultural basis, with a focus on indigenous traditional and developing societies, but with some attention to developed societies and where possible to evidence on the undocumented past.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first-year courses to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH). Students without one of these courses should consult the lecturer.
Syllabus: Without agricultural production, civilisation as we know it today could never have come into existence. Nor could any of the great civilisations of history. This course will examine the role of agricultural subsistence at a crucial stage in human history, when post-hunter-gatherer populations in various regions began to lay the foundations of the present distributions of peoples, cultures and languages across the tropical and temperate latitudes of the earth. The course will examine both archaeological and linguistic data.
For details see the Population Studies major -- School of Social Sciences.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
26 hours lectures, 13 hours films, 6 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology.
Syllabus: The Primates, our closest animal relatives: their classification, evolution, diet, locomotion, reproduction and social relations.
The theme will be the primates in their place in the natural world, with their diversity and adaptability, setting the stage for the comparison with human biology and social behaviour.
Normally offered in odd-numbered years
Up to 26 hours lectures, 10 hours tutorials and 13 film/videos over the semester
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany and Zoology. This course is intended to complement 'Advances in Human Genetics' BIOL2152. Biological Anthropology students are recommended to take both.
Syllabus: 'Race' was once thought capable of explaining a great deal about both human biology and society. That is no longer true, either in anthropology or in human biology; but biological variation between individuals and between populations is real and remains to be explained. This course is about human biological variation, especially variation amongst populations in physical traits, blood genetics and DNA. Through case studies rather than comprehensively, variation amongst peoples of the world will be viewed as an outcome of evolution and biogeography, and as a reflection of ancestry, interrelationships and population histories.
Principles of genetic inheritance will be introduced. General human genetics topics selected for discussion may include: genetic disease; heredity-environment interaction; social implications of genetic issues, and forensic genetics. The main emphasis, however, will be on human population diversity and anthropological genetics, including: the 'race' concept; principles of population genetics; the geography of biological variation; the explanation of biological variation in terms of micro-evolution; and inferences from biological evidence about population origins and affinities, compared with inferences from archaeology and linguistics.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite course BIAN2120
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials.
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in, or previous completion of BIAN2120 Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics, and builds on that unit's subject matter. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or theme within the broader scope of Culture, Biology and Population Dynamics.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2120.
Incompatibility: PRAN3020 Regional and Thematic Topics in Demographic Anthropology
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Human Sciences or Population Studies major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2115, or previous completion of PRAN2015 `Race' and Human Genetic Variation.
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with `Race' and Human Genetic Variation, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2115.
Incompatability: PRAN3015 Regional Topics in Human Genetic Variation
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit.
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2119, or previous completion of PRAN2019 Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
Syllabus: This course is designed to be taken in conjunction with Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment, and develops the theme of that course. Special attention in tutorials and written work will be given to developing a focus on a specific region or population group, and/or on the human biology of poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation. The course is open to pass and intending honours students and the latter are especially encouraged to take it.
Proposed assessment: tutorial work (including oral presentation) and a 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2119.
Incompatibility: PRAN3019 Regional Topics in Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in alternate years
22 hours lectures, 11 hours laboratories
Prerequisites: One first-year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Introduction to scientific investigations in archaeology, and to the way popular and pseudo-scientific stories of the past are developed. Popular myths of the past are explored, focussing on interpretations of Atlantis, Stonehenge, the Giza plateau, and creationist stories such as the Great Flood. The goal of these examinations is to illuminate the practice of Scientific Archaeology.
Prerequisite: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) and/or BIOL1003.
Syllabus: Recognition of bones and teeth. The human skeleton: techniques of analysis for age, sex, stature, pathology and racial origin. The skeletal recognition of Australian mammals, and their basic biology. Basic recognition of other Australian fauna. Fundamentals of taphonomy.
Incompatibility: PREH3010 Skeletal Analysis.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology or Biological Anthropology major.
16 hours lecture/demonstrations
Prerequisites: 12 first-year units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology (ANTH, ARCH or PREH) and/or the School of Botany & Zoology. Students are also advised to have completed either Skeletal Analysis BIAN3011 or PREH3010 and at least two of the following: ANTH2011, ARCH2011, BIAN2012, 2013, 2115, 2119, PRAN2015, 2019 before attempting this course: students without these courses should contact the lecturer.
Co-requisite: It is recommended that Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (PRAN2026), be taken as a companion course to this course.
This course is primarily intended for Honours students and when places are limited priority may be given to students intending to undertake Honours in the following year. Students intending to undertake honours in Biological Anthropology should note that Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology ARCH2126 (or PRAN2026) is a co-requisite in terms of admission to Honours.
Syllabus: Introduction to some techniques used in biological anthropology: for example, radiometric dating, phylogenetic and genetic analysis, forensic anthropology, background to statistics. Where possible the course will include talks by, and visits to the laboratories of, specialists in techniques associated with biological anthropology.
This course may be counted towards an Archaeology or Biological Anthropology major.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Any two first year courses to the value of 12 units in Anthropology, Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) Geography, Sociology or Political Science.
Syllabus: In the course of our history, human beings have developed very varied and enormously powerful technologies that have transformed not only our relations with nature, but our relations with each other and the ways in which we have organised ourselves. The course begins with the treatment of technology in social theory, examines the analysis of socio-technical systems, and the interaction of technology, social relations and social organisation. Case studies will consider socio-technical systems in a variety of societies of different times and places, as well as the impact of major technological developments from language to the information revolution.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite unit plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2013 Human Evolution, or previous completion of PREH2011 Human Evolution.
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while ARCH2011 Human Evolution is in progress. It treats selected themes in palaeoanthropology, or other topics in the field of human evolution, in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by practical presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2013.
Incompatibility: PREH3011 Topics in Human Evolution.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Normally offered in the same semester as the pre-/co-requisite unit and run by the same teacher
Attendance in the pre-/co-requisite course plus 3-4 hours extra tutorials
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrolment in BIAN2012 Primates, or previous completion of ANTH2011 Primates
Syllabus: The course consists of a series of tutorials taken while BIAN2012 Primates is in progress. It treats selected themes in primatology in critical detail.
Proposed assessment: by tutorial presentations and a final 3,000-word essay.
Preliminary reading: see under BIAN2012.
Incompatibility: ANTH3011 Topics in Primatology.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology or Archaeology major.
Honours Coordinator: Dr Attenborough
To enter Honours IV in Biological Anthropology, students should be eligible to graduate with a BA pass degree, which should include sixty specified coursework units (ten 6-point courses or the equivalent) as follows:
(a) First-year courses: First-year courses to the value of 12 units in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology and/or Division of Botany and Zoology. Normally these will be ANTH1002 and ANTH1003 or ARCH1111 and ARCH1112 or BIOL1003 and BIOL1008, though other combinations are acceptable. Any two of these courses allow entry to any of the core courses in biological anthropology, but they vary regarding the other later-year courses to which they allow entry. Where prerequisites permit, relevant later-year courses listed under the biological anthropology major may be substituted for 6-12 of these units.
(b) Later-year thematic core courses: All four of the core courses on the main sub-fields in biological anthropology: The Primates BIAN2012 or ANTH2011, Human Evolution PREH2011 or BIAN2013, `Race' and Human Genetic Variation PRAN2015 or BIAN2115, and Nutrition, Disease and the Human Environment PRAN2019 or BIAN2119 (6 units each). It is important to note that all these courses are normally offered in alternate years only. In exceptional cases, students who have missed one core course but are otherwise qualified to enter Honours IV may apply to the Head of School for permission to do so.
(c) Practically oriented honours preparation courses: 12 units of honours preparation courses, as follows: Skeletal Analysis PREH3010 or BIAN3011 (6 units), Analytical Methods for Anthropology and Archaeology PRAN2026 or ARCH2126 (3 units) and Techniques in Biological Anthropology BIAN3010 (3 units). These are offered every year and generally recommended for the last year of study before the Honours year.
(d) Later-year optional courses: Further later-year courses to the value of 12 points chosen from those listed under the Biological Anthropology major. Many of these are also offered in alternate years or irregularly. Students are advised to check as appropriate for any changes in the School's range of course offerings.
Timing: Students interested in Biological Anthropology Honours are advised to construct a coursework plan consistent with that possibility at least from the beginning of second year. This is on account of the stringent timetabling limitations on the availability of core courses. They should also seek advice early on from the Honours Coordinator and Faculty Sub-Dean. Full-time BA students in their second year should take the two core courses available in that year, and other optional courses according to interest: then in their third year they should take the other two core courses, the balance of the two optional courses, and the honours preparation courses. Part-time students and combined-degree students should adjust the same basic plan to their more extended schedule, normally taking the honours preparation courses in their last year before Honours IV.
Entry arrangements and standards: Interested students may approach or be approached by the Honours Convener during second year, to discuss the possibility of Honours. The normal minimum criterion for admission is -- a Distinction in one core course, a Credit in the other, and a Distinction in at least half of the other later-year courses listed under the Biological Anthropology major taken to that date. Maintenance of a similar minimum standard is required for entry to Honours IV. At the end of third year (or equivalent), the School and Faculty jointly review the eligibility of each applicant to proceed to Honours IV, and formal letters are sent out accordingly.
Coursework outside the School: Courses relevant to the study of biological anthropology are offered in several other sections of the University, e.g. Life Sciences, Geology, Geography, Statistics and Human Sciences. Many of these are listed under the Biological Anthropology major, though this list omits, for example, first-year courses in Statistics. Students are advised to consider enrolling in these courses, but also to note prerequisites and any degree structure implications. The School is willing to consider accepting such courses as part of the Honours program, and requests to do this should be directed in the first instance to the Honours Convener.
Combined degrees: Students doing combined degrees such as BA/BSc may also enter Honours IV in Biological Anthropology, providing they meet the above requirements within their degree structure. Honours IV need not be the last component of a combined degree, but students who wish to undertake Honours IV before they complete the pass component of the combined degree must at least be eligible to take out a pass degree that includes the prerequisites for honours entry.
Combined honours: Currently there is no regular arrangement for combined honours programs involving Biological Anthropology, but students keen to undertake a program combining Biological Anthropology and another discipline, within or beyond the School, are welcome to raise the suggestion with the relevant Coordinators. Any intellectually coherent combination will be supported so far as possible, either ad hoc or, where demand is recurrent, by proposing up a regular program. The possibility of a standardised combined honours program in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology is under discussion in the School.
It is possible for students to take honours courses, which combine courses between archaeology and anthropology, for which they should consult the relevant Honours coordinators.
Combined courses are possible between two Schools with the concurrence of the heads of both Schools concerned. Such arrangements exist between for instance, anthropology and history, archaeology and classics, archaeology and geography and archaeology and linguistics. For further information consult the relevant Honours Conveners.
For details on the graduate diplomas and degrees in archaeology and anthropology see the ANU Postgraduate Prospectus.
Convener: Dr Patrick Guinness, BA MA Syd., PhD ANU
Development Studies refers to a broad range of courses that address the planning, implementation and consequences of social, political and economic change among peoples of the Third and Fourth Worlds.
Development as an aspect of state policy, and specifically as an integral part of relations between states of the wealthy `West' or `North' (First World) and states of the `South' (Third World), gained prominence after the Second World War with the establishment of the IMF/World Bank and other development banks and aid agencies, such as USAID and the Australian Development Assistance Bureau. Since then agency and government officials, practitioners and intellectuals have debated the rights and wrongs of development and the merits of particular approaches to development. These have crystallised in various `theories' or approaches to development, such as the modernisation theories, world system theories, or the more recent emphasis on empowerment or popular participation.
Development Studies examines the impact of globalisation on states and peoples of the South, and reviews notions of economic viability, democracy, governance, human rights or environmental sustainability as they apply to such culturally divergent entities. Ideas of appropriate development that challenge the wholesale import of Western models are espoused in such ideas as ecodevelopment or ethnodevelopment. In the last two decades there has been an explosion in the numbers of non-government organisations (NGOs) or voluntary organisations (VOs) also concentrating on development.
The Development Studies major consists of a minimum of 42 units comprising:
(a) First year courses to the value of 12 units from: ANTH1002 and ANTH1003; ECON1101 and ECON1102: ECHI1105 and ECHI1106; ASHI1002, ASHI1003; POLS1002, POLS1003 and POLS1004; SOCY1002 and SOCY1003; GEOG1008; SRES1001; or two History courses at 1000 level.
(b) Five later-year courses to the value of 30 units. Among these later-year courses:
Students should try to include the normal prerequisites for advanced courses in their selection of first-year courses, but exemptions from normal prerequisites may be made for courses being included in a Development Studies major on consultation with the lecturer concerned.
Advice on appropriate combinations and sequences is available from the convener.
Warning: Students should note that although courses from the Faculties of Asian Studies and Economic and Commerce may be used in a Development Studies major, they are not classified as Arts courses. For students enrolled in a single BA the program rules allow for a maximum of 48 units out-of-Faculty courses. For BA students enrolled in a combined program only a maximum of 12 units (2 courses) from the Faculties of Asian Studies and Economic and Commerce are available for this major.
Anthropology and the Urban Experience ANTH2054
Anthropology of Modernity and Post Modernity ANTH2055
Belonging Identity and Nationalism ANTH2056
Culture and Development: Further Studies ANTH3009
Development, Poverty & Famine ECHI2003
Drugs in a Changing World Order ANTH2063
Dynamic Asian Business BUSN2023/2024
Ecology and Social Change ECOS3006
Environmental Politics, Policy and Planning GEOG3028
Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective ANTH2025
Gender, Globalisation and Development POLS2086
Globalisation and Regionalisation of the World Economy ECHI2006
Globalism and the Politics of Identity POLS2075
Identity, Difference and Ethnicity SOCY3022
International Business BUSN3018/19
People and Environment GEOG2013
Population and Resources GEOG2014
Population and Society POPS2001
Poverty, Public Policy and Development ECHI3004
Studies in Social Change and Development SOCY3026
Modern Islamic Thought: West to South East Asia ASIA2816
Asian Giants: India, China and Japan: Alternative Paths to Prosperity ECHI2109/2119
India: The Emerging Giant ASHI2263
International Relations in Northeast Asia ASHI2017
Religion and Society in India ANTH2033
Society and Economy in China A: Historical Development ASHI2018
Society and Economy in China B: The People's Republic ASHI2019
Anthropology of New Guinea and Melanesia ANTH2006
Chinese in Southern Diaspora ASHI3002
Colonialism and Resistance: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines ASHI2011
Geography of Southeast Asia GEOG3016
India: The Emerging Giant ASHI2263
Indonesia: Politics, Society and Development ASHI2516
Orientalism and the Study of Asia ASHI3008
Mainland Southeast Asia to 1900: Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Vietnam ASHY2013
Malaysia: A Developing Multiculture Society ASHI2515
Reading Malay Political Culture ASHI3504
Religion and Politics in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: 1858-present ASIA2163
Religion and Social Movements in Southeast Asia ASIA2173
Southeast Asia: Contemporary Issues and Anthropological Perspectives ANTH2060
Southeast Asia Field School GEOG3015
Southeast Asian Economic Policy and Development ECON3009
State, Society and Politics in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines ASIA2012
Mainland Southeast Asia: Colonial and Postcolonial Developments ASHI2041
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: First year courses to the value of 12 units in the Arts Faculty or the Centre for Asian Societies and Histories, or Economics or Economic History.
Syllabus: This course examines mainstream and alternative concepts of development by focusing on development issues and case studies located in so-called Third World countries. It examines the historical background to development ideas and practices, and the cultural presuppositions and assumptions on which they are consequently based, as well as the ways in which they impact on different cultures throughout the world. Of particular interest will be alternative concepts of development, such as people-centred development, gender and development, equity in development, local knowledge and values, sustainable development, and participation and empowerment in development.
Proposed assessment: one tutorial paper, one essay and one in-class test.
Two lectures and one tutorial a week for eleven weeks
Prerequisite: First-year courses to the value of 12 units in Political Science or Sociology or Anthropology or Geography or Economics or Economic History, or with the permission of the lecturer
Syllabus: This course is about development and change in Third World societies. It surveys the impact of colonialism and examines theoretical approaches to development. Against this background the course takes up some key issues facing Third World countries, including trade, investment, globalisation, debt, aid, food, the environment, goverance, human rights, the military and democratisation. Development strategies are reviewed and agents of change are considered.
Proposed assessment: An essay, tutorial work and an examination
22 hours of lectures and 10 hours of tutorials over 13 weeks.
Prerequisite: Any two first-year courses of Sociology or Anthropology or Political Science or with the permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: The course surveys various sociological approaches to the study of social and economic development in less developed societies. It includes a critical examination of modernisation theories, various forms of dependency theory, world systems theory, and the theory of imperialism. Case studies from one or more societies will be used to illustrate the dynamics of the development and underdevelopment processes, and various national liberation and revolutionary movements will be examined.
Proposed assessment: Details will be discussed with students.
This course may also be counted towards a Development Studies, Sociology or Environmental Studies major.
Convener: Dr Ian Keen, BSc Lond., PhD ANU
The major in Indigenous Australian Studies enables students with an interest in indigenous Australian studies to take a set of interrelated courses in different disciplines without the normal prerequisite required in each course. The major is an interdisciplinary program in which it is possible to combine courses from the majors in Anthropology; Archaeology; Art History; English, Gender, Sexuality and Culture; History; Linguistics, and Music for a broadly based understanding of indigenous Australian societies and cultures, both past and present. Taken together, the courses provide a comprehensive insight into indigenous Australian studies including Aboriginal origins, their occupation and adaptation to the continent, their traditional and contemporary social, cultural artistic, musical and linguistic practices, the impact of European colonisation, the history of the interrelationship between Aboriginal people and other indigenous Australians, the place of indigenous people in Australian society today and issues of representation.
The School of Humanities offers ENGL1010 Indigenous Australian Literature as a first year course that should be of interest to students undertaking this major.
The requirements for the major are 42 units composed as follows:
(a) 12 first-year units within the Faculty of Art; plus
(b) 30 later-year units from among the designated courses set out below.
Australian Archaeology ARCH2004
Indigenous Australians and Australian Society ANTH2017
Indigenous Australian History HIST2022
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures ANTH2005
Indigenous Australian Societies and Cultures: Further Studies ANTH3005 (3 units)
Indigenous Australian Visual Culture ARTV3029
Language in Indigenous Australia LING2016
Music in Indigenous Australian Society MUSM2088
Savage Dreams, Native Truths: Representations of the "Native Other" in America and Australia ENGL2072
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or enrolment in the Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major or permission of the lecturer.
Syllabus: Introduction to the physical and cultural characteristics of humans living in Australia prior to the end of the 18th century. Much of the course focuses on how the environment was exploited, especially the economy and the impact on the landscape. Claims for demographic change and the development of social and economic complexity are also examined.
20 hours of lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week
Prerequisite: For students taking the course as part of an English major, any two first-year English courses; for others, two first-year Arts courses or two compulsory courses in the Gender, Sexualtity and Culture major
Syllabus: What perceptions of place and of other human beings are generated by the situation of first contact? How are these perceptions constructed? This course examines the phenomenon of contact with reference to Australia and the South Pacific, with some consideration of the Americas. Texts used include those traditionally marginalised in literary studies (journals, diaries, letters), as well as novel-extracts, poetry and visual material. We shall analyse European notions of the Savage (Noble and Ignoble) and of the State of Nature from their origins in Antiquity to their application in eighteenth-century explorers' journals, First Fleet journals, diaries and letters. Material aimed at promoting discussion of Aboriginal perceptions of Europeans is also set. The course is suitable for all students, but may be of special relevance to those interested in contemporary theory, postcolonial studies and Australian studies. It focuses on issues still alive today, particularly in the wake of the Mabo debate.
Proposed assessment: One 1,500 word essay and a final two-hour examination (with take-home option).
26 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in Anthropology or enrolment for a major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: Aborigines are severely disadvantaged in terms of poverty, poor health, over-representation in the prisons, employment opportunities, and access to the political system. This course examines the dimensions of this disadvantaged position and the varied patterns of life of Aboriginal people, from reserves and cattle stations to major cities. Their ways of life have been radically transformed throughout the continent by European colonisation. The cultures of people living in remote areas show the greatest continuities with the past, but many Aboriginal people in the southern part of the continent also have a mode of life distinct from the cultures of people of European origin.
Twenty lectures and 12 tutorials, plus video and film screenings. Lectures will be taped
Prerequisites: If this course is to be included in a History major, 12 units in first-year History. Otherwise, any one first year course from Anthropology, Archaeology (ARCH or PREH), Sociology or Political Science or 12 first year units in the Australian Studies, Aboriginal Studies or Indigenous Studies majors.
Syllabus: A study of the history of Indigenous Australians since European contact. We consider the ways in which the conceptual tools for understanding this history have changed over time, in response both to a changing political climate and the increasing impact of Indigenous perspectives on historical writing. Topics to be covered include: first contact; processes of invasion, dispossession, and settlement; Indigenous workers and labour relations; the gendered and sexual dimensions of colonisation in the Australian context; changes to government policy; the motivations for and experience and consequences of the large-scale removal of children from their parents; the constitutional changes of 1967; the struggle for land rights; and housing, health, and education. There will be special attention to the dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through various cultural forms such as writing and the visual and performing arts, and through public protest and political action for Aboriginal rights.
Students will be encouraged to use the extensive resources for Indigenous history located in Canberra, at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the National Museum of Australia, and elsewhere. An excursion to a site of significance in Indigenous history is planned.
22 hours lectures, 11 hours tutorials
Prerequisites: Two first-year courses in Anthropology or Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or enrolment for a major in Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies.
Syllabus: From the moment of Australia's discovery by Europeans the history, life and culture of Aboriginal people has been a subject of intellectual fascination. In the nineteenth century their social and cultural practices were widely believed to open up a window onto the origins of religion and European social institutions. More recently they have become a sociological, evolutionary and ecological prototype of the hunting and gathering way of life. This course will examine the details of traditional life, including subsistence economy, land ownership, social organisation, marriage arrangements, religion, magic, art and totemism and consider its impact on the European imagination and the production of social theory.
Offered in same semester as prerequisite.
Prerequisite: Current enrolment in, or previous completion of ANTH2005 Aboriginal Societies and Cultures.
Syllabus: This course offers the opportunity to research an area of indigenous anthropology in depth through guided reading and research. Attendance and work in the prerequisite is required, as well as 3-4 hours extra tutorials (at beginning and end of semester), extra reading, a work-in-progress seminar presentation, and submission of a 3,000-word research essay.
Preliminary reading: See under ANTH2005.
This course may be counted towards an Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Archaeology or Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) Studies major.
Syllabus: This course will examine Aboriginal responses to the history of colonial occupation and expansion, as they have been manifested and reflected in material culture. It will also consider European attitudes to this culture and the significance of attempts to assimilate or appropriate it. A range of visual practices from traditional to post-modern will be addressed in relation to the ongoing history of Aboriginal political struggle. The course will draw on the expertise of participants and practitioners.
Incompatibility: ARTV2007 (Discipline 3029) Aboriginal Visual Culture
Two lectures and one tutorial a week
Prerequisite: Introduction to the Study of Language LING1001/2001 and one other Linguistics, Anthropology, Archaeology (ARCH or PREH), Sociology or History course. Students who have not completed Introduction to the Study of Language will be offered an additional weekly tutorial during the first part of the course to introduce them to relevant general linguistic ideas.
Syllabus: History of opinions and research on Australian languages; language and local group; genetic and areal relations between languages; basic structural features (including learning some of a selected language); vocabulary and semantic structure, especially kinship; speech use and etiquette; specialised codes: sign language, respect language, song language; impact of English on traditional languages; loanwords, language reduction and shift; pidgins, creoles, and Aboriginal English; language and education: language planning, bilingual education; language and the law.
Incompatibility: LING2016 Language in Aboriginal Australian
This course can be counted towards a Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Australian Studies or Indigenous Australian Studies major.
One lecture, one tutorial and one workshop each week.
Syllabus: A study of music in Aboriginal society, in both traditional tribal and contemporary contexts. Although this study of music in its social context will examine some technical aspects of Aboriginal music, the course has a broadly humanistic perspective and may be studied without musical prerequisites. The study will examine the relationship of music to spiritual beliefs, ceremonies, social structures, dance and art, in music of the Aborigines from Central Australia and Arnhem Land, and will examine issues relating to changing contexts in Aboriginal society. Students also participate in a weekly workshop, which develops their intercultural understanding through the experience of playing and singing music from oral cultures.
Proposed assessment: As below, or as agreed at the first meeting. One major written project or its equivalent, of 2,500-3,000 words; tutorial assignments as required by the lecturer.
Offered in 2003 and in alternate years
20 hours of lectures and one 1 hour tutorial a week
Prerequisite: Any two first-year English courses or one first year English and one Theatre Studies course.
Syllabus: This course will focus upon narrative and discursive representations of people and cultures invaded, subjugated and transformed in various ways by British colonialism. The emphasis will be upon the modern period but some consideration will be given to seminal texts from earlier centuries, as well as to non-literate modes of narrative discourse. As well as providing students with an introduction to contemporary Aboriginal and Native American writing, the course is designed to encourage speculation about two sets of parallels and contracts -- those between the Australian and the American experience and those between the productions of Native and European "settler" writers.
Proposed assessment: One essay of 1,500 words; and EITHER a two-hour exam OR a second essay of 2,000 words.
20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of tutorial, plus film screenings
Lecturer: Dr Kennedy and Ms Wilson
Prerequisites: Any first-year Arts courses to the value of twelve units
Syllabus: This course is concerned with the cultural politics of memory and trauma. Whose memories are sought, believed and commemorated in the public sphere? What problems do traumatic events present for those attempting to commemorate or represent them? Is trauma a useful cross-cultural concept? We will begin by tracing the history of the concept of trauma in psychoanalysis, medicine and popular culture. Next, students will be introduced to theories of memory and trauma drawn from cultural studies, anthropology, history, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory. We will study the cultural politics of trauma and memory in relation to two events -- the Holocaust and the Stolen Generations. In particular, we will consider the relationship between trauma, history and mourning, the role of public memorials, and the problem of "forgetting". Texts for study will include autobiographies, films, novels, poetry, testimonials, media texts and political essays.
Proposed Assessment: 3,000-4,000 words of written work, and tutorial participation.
One lecture and two hours of tutorial/workshop each week.
Lecturers: Dr Wild, Gary France
Prerequisites: Two courses to the value of 12 units in the Faculty of Arts or Asian Studies, with the permission of the Head of Department, Musicology, Canberra School of Music.
Note: Students are not required to have a reading knowledge of music but are expected to have a demonstrated interest in music and a willingness to participate in a workshop situation with other music students.
This course is linked to the courses Music in Indigenous Australian Society (MUSM2088), and Music in Asian Cultures (MUSM2089), which will be offered in alternate years. Students wishing to include these courses in relevant majors should discuss this with the appropriate convener.
Syllabus: A study of music of different world traditions, in both their traditional and contemporary contexts, and an exploration of the fusion of world musics as currently used in contemporary music. This course explores musical ideas and ideas about music as practised in various cultures. This first semester course includes a theoretical introduction to the principles and practices of the anthropology of music, and focuses on the relationships between music and other aspects of culture. Different traditions are studied through selected repertoire from a variety of cultures, especially indigenous Australian, Native American, African and South Pacific cultures. Students also participate in a weekly workshop that develops their inter-cultural understanding through the experience of playing and singing music from other cultures.
Proposed assessment: One major written assignment, tutorial presentation, and class tests as directed by the lecturer.