Landscape dynamics: Past and Present

Catalog description

Three hours lecture per week Recommended: Junior Standing Examines how and why past and present peoples influence and alter the land around them both intentionally and unintentionally. Course utilizes all subfields of anthropology to evaluate landscape dynamics including core anthropological principles, such as investigation methodologies of symbolic and physical aspects of cultural landscapes, archaeological interpretations and spatial pattern analysis methods, historic ethnographic and living oral history details of remembrance of place and change, linguistic meaning of place names and cultural significance, and ethics and polices of anthropological cooperative interactions with living descendant communities. Case studies include but are not limited to local California, Dublin Ireland, Amsterdam Netherlands, Crete Greece, Cambodia, Republic of Tunisia Northern Africa, and Belize South America. Examples include prehistoric, historic, present-day, rural and industrial landscapes.