Anthro 325: World Prehistory
Spring 2009
Tue/Thur 10:00-11:50
Stv. 2065
Professor Margaret Purser
Contact info:
Email: margaret.purser@sonoma.edu
Phone: 664-3164
Office: Stevenson Hall 2059 G
Office hours: Tuesdays 1-2, Wednesdays 9-10, Fridays 10-11
This course syllabus is a detailed description of what Anthro 325 is all about,
what kinds of assignments and exams will be given, what my responsibilities are to you
as the course instructor, and what expectations I have of you as course students. It is the
“contract” as it were, between the professor and the students for this course. As such,
you need to read it very carefully, and be sure you understand it. If you have any
questions at all about anything covered here, PLEASE see me BEFORE the final drop
date for this semester, or February 6, 2009.
Course Description
World Prehistory is a course that presents a global survey of the human past from
the earliest evidence of tool use by hominid species to the emergence of stratified chiefly
societies. We will emphasize the complex diversity of past lifeways, including the
development of many different social systems over time, and the wide range of cultural
responses human groups have made to the longer term environmental changes of the past
300,000 years. Case studies will focus on the nature of the archaeological data that
support these investigations, with a special emphasis on the way that the interpretation of
specific issues and data sets have changed as archaeological science has developed.
The course is organized around three texts. The first one, Scarre’s “The Human
Past” is a globally comprehensive overview of the entire period covered in conventional
‘textbook’ format. The other two are more focused case studies dealing with two key
issues and/or periods: the controversies surrounding the evolutionary emergence and
cultural diversification of the species Homo Erectus (Boaz and Ciochon, Dragon Bone
Hill), and the emergence of food production globally (Bellwood, First Farmers: The
Origins of Agricultural Societies).
World Prehistory Syllabus
Spring 2009
2
Course Requirements
The required texts for this course are:
The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies
(Paperback) by Chris Scarre, (Editor). Thames & Hudson (May 20, 2005); ISBN:
0500285314.
Dragon Bone Hill : An Ice-Age Saga of Homo erectus (Hardcover)
by Noel Thomas Boaz and Russell L. Ciochon. Oxford University Press, (February 16,
2004). (Hardcover) ISBN: 0195152913
First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. By Peter Bellwood. WileyBlackwell Press, 2004. ISBN 0631205667
There is also a course website, at
http://www.sonoma.edu/anthropology/course_web_pages.htm (click on link to Anth 325
Purser) where all course materials, assignment handouts, review sheets, and
announcements will be posted. Students will be responsible for checking the website
each week before the Monday morning class, and printing out and bringing to class the
relevant handouts for each week. In addition, Scarre’s “The Human Past” is supported
by a student website, at http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/web/humanpast/ that can
be used as a study guide.
The course workload will consist of weekly assigned readings, one take-home
midterm exam, two case study assignments, and one take-home course final. This course
is designed to run as a split lecture/discussion class. Course lectures will be on Tuesdays;
discussions will happen on Thursdays. Students are expected to have completed the
assigned readings for each week in time for each Wednesday’s discussion. The two case
study assignments will consist of a brief research paper for the Dragon Bone Hill case
study, and a poster presentation for the First Farmers case study. None of the exams
except the final will be cumulative. Review sessions, and review question handouts, will
help prepare for each exam.
Grading
Grades for this course will be weighted as follows:
Attendance: 5%
Take-home midterm: 15%
Dragon Bone Hill case study assignment: 20%
First Farmers case study assignment: 25%
Final exam: 25%
Note that the weight of the assignments increases somewhat over the semester, as your
mastery of the material increases. Grades for course assignments will be evaluated on a
numerical point basis, out of 100 possible points in each case, unless otherwise specified.
Assignment specifics and grading criteria will be developed as a part of class discussion,
and will be covered in later handouts. But in general, this course is designed to help
students develop their critical thinking and expository writing skills. Although there are
some team or group assignments incorporated into the course program, the assessment or
World Prehistory Syllabus
Spring 2009
3
grading focus will be on individual work. Some general standard criteria for upper
division university course work do apply for this course: this includes spelling, grammar,
complete sentence structure (where appropriate), and other basic mechanics of English
writing. If you think your writing skills could use a brush-up, or you find yourself getting
papers marked down consistently for simple errors, I would urge you to take advantage of
SSU’s excellent Writing Center services. They are located in 1103 Schulz Information
Center, and you can check them out at http://www.sonoma.edu/programs/writingcenter/ .
Office hours
Please note the scheduled office hours at the top of the syllabus. If you have any
questions about course material or assignments, preparing for course tests, your grade, or
just want to talk about civilizations, archaeology, anthropology, or anything else, I would
really like to see you, so please come by. There will be a sign-up sheet for 15-minute
time slots for each of these hours. I am also very reachable by email, and check my email
several times a day. (I am much less likely to catch phone messages except for early in
the morning). This semester, in addition to my teaching workload I am also the
Graduate Coordinator for the CRM master’s program. As students, each of you has an
equal claim on my time, but there are quite a few of you with that same claim. So please
be considerate of your colleagues, and let me know if you need to cancel a scheduled
appointment. With a week’s advance notice, I can make arrangements to meet you
outside of regularly scheduled office hours, for any weekday except Mondays.
University level course protocols and etiquette
This is an upper division undergraduate course at a full-program, four-year liberal
arts university. This means that there are certain standards of conduct that, in addition to
your performance on graded assignments, will affect your overall performance in this
course. A basic review of these standards follows:
All university policies covering intellectual property rights and plagiarism will
apply in this course. If you have questions about these policies you can consult the
university’s website at http://www.sonoma.edu/uaffairs/policies/cheatingpolicy.htm .
This will apply equally to all conventional text or printed media, and to web- or internetbased sources. I STRONGLY recommend using the tools made available through the
university library’s website, especially at
http://library.sonoma.edu/research/subguides.html and
http://libguides.sonoma.edu/content.php?pid=9403 .We will be discussing the basics of
this policy during the course, as well, as it relates to specific assignments.
Please note that all due dates are firm, and late assignments cannot be submitted
without affecting your grade. Specifically, unless some other arrangement has been made
IN ADVANCE, each day late will reduce the possible point value of the grade for that
assignment by five points.
PLEASE NOTE: To request academic accommodations
due to a disability, please contact the disabled student services office (their phone is 6642677 and they are located in Salazar 1049. Their website is:
World Prehistory Syllabus
Spring 2009
4
http://www.sonoma.edu/dss/ ). If you have a letter from their office indicating that you
have a disability that requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me
WITHIN THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF CLASS (by Feb. 6) if at all possible so we can
discuss the accommodations that you might need in this class.
Course attendance is a part of your grade. A sign-up sheet will be passed around
every class meeting, within the first 15 minutes of class. In the course of the semester,
everyone will probably have some kind of emergency or conflict arise that means they
must arrive late, or leave early, but these should be kept to an absolute minimum. Please
observe the basic courtesy of not leaving in the midst of lecture unless it is absolutely
necessary, and if you must leave for some reason, please be as courteous and undisruptive
as possible to your fellow classmates as you exit. It is the responsibility of each student
to find out what material they have missed by coming late or leaving early.
Please show the basic courtesies due to your colleagues in a public gathering:
turn off your cell phones, keep conversation to a minimum, and try to make any
accommodation needed for people with any special needs.
Course Calendar
1/27-1/29: Introduction to the course, course format, requirements, content. Pretests.
Assigned reading (as background): Scarre, ch. 1.
2/3-2/5: Overview of Pleistocene era archaeology, discussion of Homo Erectus
controversies. Assigned reading: Scarre, chapters 2, 3.
2/10-2/12: Modern humans: Neanderthals, the Upper Paleolithic, and the end of the
Pleistocene. Assigned reading: Scarre, chapter 4.
2/17-2/19: Introduction to Dragon Bone Hill case study and project assignments 2/17.
Review questions for first exam handed out/posted 2/17. Review session for midterm
exam 2/19. Take home exam handed out 2/19.
2/24-2/26: Exams due at beginning of class 2/24. Intellectual history and changing
views of Zhoukoudian and Homo Erectus. Assigned reading: Dragon Bone Hill
chapters 1-3.
3/3-3/5: Melding the paleontological and archaeological record. Assigned reading:
Dragon Bone Hill chapters 4-6.
3/10-3/12: Proposals and controversies. Assigned reading: Dragon Bone Hill chapters
7-9.
World Prehistory Syllabus
Spring 2009
5
3/17-3/19: Dragon Bone Hill case study assignments due at the beginning of class,
3/19. Introduction to the Holocene transition 3/17. Assigned reading: Scarre, chapter 5.
Transitions to Early Agriculture in Asia and Southwest Asia, 3/19. Assigned reading:
Scarre, chapters 6 and 7.
3/24-3/26: Blended economies and cultural diversity in Holocene Africa, the Pacific, and
the Americas. Assigned reading: Scarre, chapters 8 to p. 294, 9 and 10 to p. 370.
3/31: Cesar Chavez Day: Campus Closed
4/2: First Farmers poster assignment handed out 4/9. Laying out the argument and the
methodologies for First Farmers. Assigned reading: Bellwood, chs. 1 and 2, and last.
4/7-4/9: Regional approaches: Southwest Asia, and diffusion to Europe and Asia.
Assigned reading: Bellwood, chs.3, 4 (Background in Scarre chs. 6, 11)
4/14-4/16: SPRING BREAK
4/21-4/23: Independent Development: Africa and Asia. Assigned reading: Bellwood,
chs. 5, 6 (Background in Scarre chs. 7,10, 12)
4/28-4/30: Contrasting Diffusion and Independent Development: Southeast Asia and
Oceania vs. the Americas. Assigned reading: Bellwood, chs. 7,8. (Background in
Scarre chs. 7 pp. 256-260; 8, 9, 16, 17, 18).
5/5-5/7: Similarities and Differences across the data: Language, Archaeology, and
Biology. Assigned reading: Bellwood, chs. 9, 10, 11
5/12-5/14: Last week of classes. Posters due 5/14. Concluding discussions and review
for final exam
FINAL EXAM: Tuesday, May 19 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.