Archaeology at USC offers students a way to connect with the material remains of the human past and its impact in the present.
Archaeology is an exciting major and minor, ideal for any student who wants to understand the world by making sense of the places and things that people lived with, passed through, and thought about, at all scales, from Stonehenge to stone tools. Archaeology majors and minors gain access to a multi-departmental course of study that features classes in departments such as Anthropology, Classics, Art History, Human Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Spatial Sciences, History, Linguistics, and Religion.
USC’s Archaeology Research Center offers USC students the opportunity to gain direct experience through participation in fieldwork and research projects. USC faculty are currently conducting field research here in Los Angeles, as well as in Mexico, Colombia, and other regions all over the world, and they are always looking to bring interested students into the field to gain firsthand experience. Archaeology Research Center alumni have gone to graduate school, into law, intelligence, business, non-profits, policy, archaeology, museums, and medicine.
The Department of Anthropology offers a wide array of Archaeology courses. ANTH 314: The Nature of Maya Civilization and ANTH 140: Mesoamerican Cosmovision and Culture introduce students to the Pre-Columbian and contemporary cultures of Mesoamerica. ANTH 202: Archaeology – Our Human Past spans the broad evolution of material culture from our earliest ancestors through the rise of complex societies all over the globe. Anthropology Faculty also teach a wide range of first-year seminars that offer students the to opportunity dive deeply into such diverse topics as Historical Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Archaeology in the Popular Imagination. The B.A. in Archaeology provides both academic breadth and field focus. Archaeology majors will acquire an overview of the history of the discipline, exposure to the various and evolving theoretical perspectives that inform archaeology, and hands-on experience with basic and contemporary field technologies.
The “Hunter Blatherer” undergraduate archaeology blog showcases some of the exciting recent research projects completed by students in the Archaeology Research Center, while the Trojan Archaeology blog presents research projects from the Archaeology of USC course and student field experiences.
For more information about the B.A. in Archaeology, please contact the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Academic Advisor, Jessica Kanoski (jkanoski@usc.edu).