Graduate Program
The archaeology curriculum is designed to highlight the three themes of our program. We have a commitment to analysis at different scales, from the study of everyday life and the household to the widest questions of social change. We also want students to develop a set of methods and intellectual questions that cross the borders between the humanities and the sciences. Students must understand archaeology as part of the wider project of an integrated four-field program, powered by the intellectual differences and complementary approaches of an holistic Anthropology.
Requirements
In the first year, students wishing to pursue Archaeology are required to take 322 Introduction to Archaeological Research Design and Methods.
In addition to the departmental core requirements, archaeology students are also expected to take the following classes:
- 490 Gender in Anthropology
- 490 Household Archaeology
- 490 Archaeological Theory
- 490 Buildings Archaeology
- 490 Mapping People Space and Place
- 490 Artifact and Text
First and second-year papers
- By the end of the first year students are expected to have completed a first-year paper. The first year paper should focus on research that helps you move your PhD forward.
- By the end of the second year, they are supposed to have completed their second-year paper. The second-year paper should contain material of publishable quality, and it should be prepared in a format and language suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Learn more about our requirements for first and second-year papers. By the end of the third year, students should have completed a draft of their dissertation proposal in the form of an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant.
Field opportunities
In addition to course offered on the Northwestern campus it is strongly encouraged that students take advantage of ongoing archaeological research.
Current field projects span the world. Northwestern archaeologists are studying:
Key interests and themes include inequality, gender, materiality, agency and practice, everyday and household life, landscapes, slavery, race after slavery, and the archaeology of capitalism.