The Doctoral Program in Anthropological Archaeology |
The doctoral program in anthropological archaeology is highly selective, focusing on the archaeology of
late precolonial societies in East and West Africa and North America, especially the Southwest and California. The program
also features a major emerging concentration on the archaeology of colonial encounters among peoples of Europe, Africa,
and the Americas, supported by recent and scheduled faculty hires.
The program’s focus on the archaeology of
colonialism is augmented by departmental strengths in the cultural anthropology of colonial encounters and is further
enriched by interdisciplinary relationships with faculty in History,
Latino and Latin American Studies, and
History of Art and Visual Culture.
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Bas-relief from the
royal palace at Abomey in Bénin depicting a Dahomean soldier carrying off a captive of war. Credit: J. Cameron Monroe
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UC Santa Cruz’s archaeology graduate program is distinctive in insisting that theories of
power, production and exchange, human ecology, gender, ethnicity, and technological practice be explored through rigorous
laboratory and field research methods.
Doctoral students choose methodological concentrations in any of the following: ceramic materials analysis,
landscape and architectural analysis, zooarchaeology, and chemical and isotopic characterization studies,
singly or in combination. They work closely with faculty as apprentices in state-of-the-art research laboratories
learning and applying advanced materials and spatial analysis techniques to address significant social, historical and ecological problems.
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Current graduate student projects include:
- using GIS and foodways to explore identity at landscape and household levels in an ethnically diverse buffer community in colonial New Mexico
- applying technological analysis to California Mission Ware pottery to chart the emergence of diverse communities of practice during a span of rapid cultural change
- agent-based modeling of aboriginal social boundaries and exchange in the late Holocene Monterey Bay region
- reconstruction of historical ecology and human fisheries strategies over eight millennia in the Monterey Bay area
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Santa Cruz Anthropology doctoral students are strongly supported to apply for extramural funding and consistently rank
among the top departments on the campus for such support. Extramural funding won by archaeology PhD. students alone over the last five years includes:
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant
- Wenner-Gren Foundation Pre-doctoral Research Grant
- Jacob Javits Graduate Fellowship
- UC-MEXUS Research Grant
- Joe Ben Wheat Research Fellowship
- Clogg Fellow, University of Michigan Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
- Center for Spatially Integrated Social Sciences, UC Santa Barbara Scholarship
Archaeology graduate students have also successfully won numerous intramural fellowships and research funding.
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| UC Santa Cruz is renowned for its undergraduate teaching, and supervised development of graduate student skills in
teaching is an integral part of the program. |
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The Faculty
The core faculty of the archaeology program are
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez,
Judith Habicht-Mauche,
J. Cameron Monroe, and Adjunct Professor
William Hildebrandt. A fourth tenure-track position, focused on the
archaeology of the colonial encounter in the Americas, is scheduled to be added within the next few years,
further strengthening the historic arm of our doctoral program. Two scientists specializing in isotopic
characterization, A.
Russell Flegal and Paul Koch,
are affiliated faculty.
Doctoral students are encouraged to develop links not only with affiliated faculty in our department but also those in
other departments on the campus. Currently, UCSC Faculty in History, Economics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics,
and Earth Sciences serve on graduate student committees in the archaeology doctoral program.
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Credit: Diane Gifford-Gonzalez |
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The Graduate Curriculum
The normal course of progress in the doctoral program in anthropology
involves up to three years of increasingly specialized study before the PhD. Qualifying Examination, a field or lab based research
project of variable length, and a year of dissertation writing. Students entering with Masters degrees may progress through
the program more swiftly, depending upon the fit of prior work with the requirements of the doctoral program.
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| First-year students take a foundational course in the history of archaeological theory, another elective
theory course, and pass a portfolio review of their year’s work. They also participate in the departmental colloquia
and proseminars, work closely with their faculty advisor to define methodological and regional foci of their curriculum,
and to begin to develop their dissertation prospectus. |
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Within the first two years of study students will also take:
- two foundational materials/methods courses in anthropology or laboratory courses in other departments
- two advanced lab apprenticeship courses in anthropology or similar courses in other departments
- two foundational courses in geographic/temporal areas
- two graduate seminars in anthropology or related area of study
- one quantitative methods course
- two terms of supervised teaching experience.
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The Third Year requirements are:
- three laboratory apprenticeship courses or their equivalents
- grant writing seminar
- tutorials to prepare three Field Statements and a Research Prospectus for the PhD. Qualifying Exams
- pass the PhD. Qualifying Exam by end of academic year
All courses outside the department must be approved by the graduate advisor.
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Photomicrograph of ceramic thin section
showing mixed lithic sand temper. Credit: Judith Habicht-Mauche
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After advancing to candidacy, Ph.D. students carry out a sustained laboratory or fieldwork
project of variable length and are expected to complete their dissertations within a year of finishing this research.
For full details of degree requirements, and other aspects of the anthropology graduate program,
please see the Anthropology Graduate Handbook.
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