TTC - Susan Foster McCarter - Introduction to Archeology

Introduction to Archaeology
(24 lectures, 45 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 193

Taught by Susan Foster McCarter
Johns Hopkins University
Ph.D., Brandeis University
 
Have you ever found yourself, perhaps after visiting a museum, an art gallery, or a historic site, wanting to know more about a long-lost civilization, a fortress that was bitterly fought over ages ago, or a ruined city sitting mute but poignant in the midst of what was once a thriving human world but is now a trackless jungle or a lonely plain? 

If such experiences have gripped your imagination, then you have probably also wondered how, more generally, groups of human beings dealt at different times and places with the challenges of their environments, and how, in turn, the environment shaped past peoples across the unchronicled millennia of human prehistory. 

Writing was invented only about 5,000 years ago. Since scientists can trace humanity's origins back 500 times as far?to almost 2.5 million years ago?sometimes the desire to explore questions like these cannot be satisfied by the pages of written history. The place for you to turn, as this course will show, is to archaeology. 

Part meticulous empirical science and part inspired detective work, archaeology seeks answers about the obscure reaches of the past by using techniques and insights from a wealth of other fields, including geology, anthropology, history, physics, art history, and even philosophy?along with long hours in the field studying the physical traces that our forebears have left behind.

Course Lecture Titles 

1-  What is Archaeology? 
2-  The Scientific Underpinnings 
3-  Historians, Treasure Hunters, and Antiquarians 
4-  The Fathers of Scientific Excavation 
5-  Preservation of Archaeological Remains 
6-  Stratigraphic and Sequence Dating 
7-  Seriation, Ancient Sources, and Sediments 
8-  Dating Using Flora and Fauna 
9-  Radiocarbon and Potassium-Argon Dating 
10- Other Scientific Dating Methods 
11- Archaeological Survey 
12- Excavation 
13- Interpreting Finds 
14- Stone Tools 
15- Pottery 
16- Bones 
17- Features and Structures 
18- Reconstructing Ancient Cultures 
19- Archaeological Theories about Change 
20- Paleolithic Art 
21- The Neolithic Revolution 
22- Çatal Hüyük 
23- The Rise of Civilizations 
24- Archaeology and Ethics