Issues in Archaeological Theory

Archaeology isn't just digging things up — it's an interpretive discipline whose questions, methods, and politics have shifted dramatically across the culture-historical, processual, and post-processual paradigms, and this graduate seminar asks how those theoretical frames actually shape what you do in the trench and at the lab bench. Expect weekly readings on debates from agency and materiality to decolonial and posthuman approaches, in-class discussion, a critical report, and a term project that you build into an annotated bibliography, a presentation, and a formal write-up. It's the conceptual scaffolding behind every field season and analytical study you'll undertake in the program, including grounded engagement with the history of practice in Türkiye and at sites like Çatalhöyük.