Randy McGuire                                                                                                                   Fall 2004

Science 1 - 228; x7-2906, rmcguire@binghamton.edu                                                         Office hrs: T 2-3, W 10-11

Archaeology of the Southwest U.S. & Northwest Mexico

This seminar will introduce graduate students to the archaeology of the Southwest U.S./ Northwest México culture area.  The Southwest/Northwest is the culture area with the most spectacular, ancient ruins north of Mesoamerica. The Southwestern culture area includes the US states of Arizona, and New Mexico, plus southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and trans-Pecos Texas.  Half of the culture area lies in the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.  Archaeologists have made this culture area one of the most intensively researched regions in the world.  The Native American nations of the region have long histories of living there.  They have their own oral histories that differ markedly from the archaeologist's interpretations.

The course is intended primarily for archaeology students in the department of anthropology.  It will provide these students with an understanding of Southwestern/Northwestern archaeology.  This understanding is valuable for comparisons to other areas and for background to further work in the region.  Our discussions will focus on how theory and data have been combined in archaeological studies so that the course will also be useful as a study of how we write the prehistory of a region.

We will meet one day a week for a three-hour seminar.  You should have all class reading done before the class meeting for which they are assigned.  My experience has always been that the students make or break a seminar.  We will be meeting 3 hours a week to engage in a dialogue on the issues raised for that week.  To this end it is absolutely imperative that you come to class prepared.  This means that you must do the readings, but more importantly, you must THINK about the readings before you come to class.  I will try to give you an idea of the issues and questions before each session to help you do the readings.

REQUIREMENTS

The course requirements one class presentation, and a research paper.  Each student in the class will select a site report from the region that dates before 1965.  The student will prepare a summary of this report, and do a class presentation on it.  The presentations will serve as the basis for class discussion on that day.  The presentation will be worth 25 points.  Each student will choose a topic from Southwest/Northwest archaeology to do a research paper on.  If you are doing a MA thesis, prospectus, or dissertation on the Southwest/Northwest I encourage you to do a paper that directly helps you towards this goal.  The research papers will be due on a date to be set during the final exam period, and will count for 100 points.  Class participation will count for 25 points. The total number of points possible in the class is 150.

TEXTS

    There are three texts for the course. 

Cordell, Linda

1997 Archaeology of the Southwest.  Academic Press, Orlando.

Sheridan, T.E. and N.J. Parezo

1996 Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest and Northern Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Lekson, Stephen H.

1999 The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Power in the Ancient Southwest. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek.