Great Discoveries from the Ancient World

Archaeology is fundamentally about reading material culture — objects, bones, ruins — to reconstruct lives no written record covers, and this course traces how that discipline evolved from treasure-hunting by wealthy adventurers into a rigorous science combining excavation, dating techniques, and historical interpretation. You'll move chronologically through landmark finds (Lucy, Göbeklitepe, Troy, Tutankhamun, Pompeii, Richard III), giving presentations on individual sites and sitting two quizzes, a midterm, and a final. As a humanities elective with no prerequisites, it pairs well with HART and HIST courses and gives you the vocabulary to think critically about how the past gets framed — including the colonial and nationalist agendas that shaped early digs.