Geoarchaeology: includes soils and sediments; site formation; prospection, or the non-destructive methods for locating cultural remains; provenance (sourcing) of raw materials; and dating using radiocarbon and other methods of establishing absolute chronologies.

Technology: how, where, and when various peoples obtained raw materials to make artifacts of stone, clay, metal, fiber, etc.; what cognitive and physical processes were employed in production; and the relationships between material, form and function. Includes topics such as microwear analysis of stone tools to determine function.

Bioarchaeology: the reconstruction of early plant and animal environments; and the study of ancient diet, genetics, health, and disease. Includes sub-specialties such as palynology (pollen analysis): paleoethnobotany (human use of plants in the past); analyses of phytoliths (plant skeletons), coprolites (feces), ancient DNA, and organic residues inside pottery.

Museology: using knowledge of technology, provenance, composition, and chronology to evaluate museum artifacts in their historical contexts and to preserve them for the future.

Archaeometric techniques provide the archaeologist with crucial information on aspects of ancient environment and material culture. In addition to helping source and date specific artifacts, analytical data are used to track broad changes over time and space in areas such as trade and exchange, technology, utilization of natural resources, and human health and diet.

The importance of understanding archaeological context and the nature of the burial environment is stressed, and key terms (culture; material culture; stratigraphy; seriation; absolute vs. relative dating; provenance vs. provenience; diffusion; experimental archaeology) are defined.

A. Mineralogy and analytical techniques for sourcing stone and clay

B. Prospection: locating cultural remains non-destructively.

C. Marble sourcing and the Getty Kouros: Class debate on a supposedly ancient Greek sculpture of a kouros, or young man. Where did the marble come from? What is the sculptural "style", and how does "style" contribute to the question of the date? How was the patina formed, and how long did it take? Can scientific or stylistic analysis determine "authenticity" in this case?

A. Stone: manufacture and microwear analysis of stone tools; experiments in replication of tools; chaine operatoire (sequence of operations)

B. Ceramics: clay as a plastic material; the multiple functions of ceramic artifacts (pottery, building materials, figurines, burial containers, etc.); ceramic ecology; archaeometric techniques for studying clay and temper composition and forming and firing techniques.

Includes visit to Greek, Roman, and Precolumbian pottery collections in UIUC museums. (formerly, this unit also included a visit to the UIUC nuclear reactor, closed 8/98).

C. Metals: copper, bronze and iron as materials; recycling of ancient metals; methods of construction and examination of artifacts using modern instrumental techniques (e.g. metallography, scanning electron microscopy)

A. Changes in conservation philosophy over time; ceramic conservation and analysis; structural and compositional studies of artifacts made of wood, metal, fiber, etc.; conservation of stone monuments.

Includes class visit(s) to UIUC museums.

A. Bones, chemistry, and nutrition.

B. Using stable isotope analysis of human and animal bone to reconstruct early diets and environments