B.S. in Anthropology, Archaeology

The Anthropology – Archaeology program at Colorado State University is integrative, drawing from geography, biology, the humanities, and other social and natural sciences.

In this Anthropology – Archaeology program at Colorado State University focuses you will participate actively in programs of interdisciplinary research.

Four programmatic areas define faculty research and scholarship with which students can engage: humans and the environment, international development and globalization, health and well-being, and professional methods and techniques. In the education of undergraduates, the department values and promotes experiential training, primary research as well as public engagement and education.

The research endeavors of the anthropology faculty are trans-disciplinary and international. They are interested in diverse topics including but not limited to contemporary culture, ethnicity, linguistics, comparative religion, virtual worlds, subsistence patterns, archaeology, human ecology, human anatomy, human evolution, biogeography, land cover/land use patterns, and the behavior of non-human primates.

Anthropology majors follow a liberal arts curriculum that provides a broad education with an emphasis on learning how to learn. The department has ten research and teaching laboratories and three summer field schools; the Ethnographic Field School, the Archaeology Field School, and the Paleontology Field School.

Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• Employ anthropological theory and qualitative/quantitative research methods to describe and analyze human biological and cultural variation over time and across space.
• Describe and evaluate the inter-relationships between environments, health and well-being, and human cultural and biological evolution.
• Synthesize anthropological theory, methods, and data to formulate arguments both orally and in written format.
• Articulate anthropology to non-specialists and explain anthropological concepts across subfields and/or with other social sciences and humanities disciplines.
• Transfer knowledge gained in anthropology program to a career trajectory after graduation.

The Archaeology concentration focuses on the Americas, and includes prehistoric and historic archaeology. The faculty members of this sub-discipline have expertise in:

• Rocky Mountain and Plains archaeology
• Paleo-Indian studies
• Hunter-gatherer ecology
• Taphonomy
• Zooarchaeology
• Public archaeology
• Andean archaeology
• Inca and Spanish empires
• Mining communities
• Mesoamerican archaeology
• Landscape archaeology
• Geoarchaeology
• Legacies of Resilience Project (LORE-LPG)

Special resources include the Center for Mountain and Plains Archaeology, the MesoAmerican lab, the Center for Archaeogeophysics and Geoarchaeology, and the Cultural Resources section of the Center for the Ecological Study of Military Lands. The archaeology program sponsors an annual field school each summer and houses the CSU Archaeological Repository.