Washington College offers unique opportunities for exploring anthropology, or the study of human nature and human society. Courses focus on evolution and societal development, traditional ecological knowledge, environmental anthropology, experimental archaeology, and archaeological ethics. Areas of focus include the Chesapeake Bay region, Mesoamerica, and the Southeastern United States.
Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, we were the first college chartered in the new nation.
Washington College’s Field School in Archaeology is an eight-credit course designed to give students practical experience in all phases of archaeological fieldwork, from site preparation through lab analysis. We do this by rotating students through various activities such as surveying methods (with compass, transit and GPS), site reconnaissance and remote sensing technologies, excavation, recording, drawing, photography, and laboratory processing. We begin each of these activities with lectures, supplemented by readings and a field manual written specifically for the Field School.
Washington College’s 3-week summer course titled, Interpreting the immerses students in the interpretation of the past by exposure to various institutions, researchers, re-enactors, actors, scientists, archaeologists, historians, and staff that are responsible for this important role. Students will visit and be given “behind the scene tours” of a variety of museums (the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and the Museum of Natural History, the National Museum in Copenhagen), open-air museums (Williamsburg, Lejre: Land of Legends in Denmark, the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum in Denmark), conservation labs (Winterthur, MAC lab), a Society for Creative Anachronism group, a civil war re- enactment group, an international primitive technology gathering (the Athraa gathering); and, learn in a lecture/discussion format. The course will culminate with students putting what they have learned into practice by becoming interpreters themselves. During these final three days of the course, students will live in a reconstructed Stone Age Village, cook and eat only period correct food, wear period correct dress, and use only period correct tools while interpreting Iron Age life to the public.
Please check the article about the 2012 Summer Course, published in EXARC Journal 2013/3.
