This Open Educational Resource was designed to provide a four-field introduction to anthropology ... more This Open Educational Resource was designed to provide a four-field introduction to anthropology for undergraduate courses. This course was created through the cumulative efforts of the Department of Anthropology at IUP as a reflection of their teaching and experiences as a collective.
IUP's Introduction to Anthropology: A Holistic and Applied Approach to Being Human is a 4-field text designed to provide students and instructors with a quality, peer-reviewed free resource that depicts a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and topics related to sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
Consisting of a robust series of 20 modules, the IUP OER covers topics from the history of North American anthropology, cultural and archaeological methods, the origins of humans and our earliest ancestors, the development of agriculture, race and ancestry, sex and gender, kinship, religion, climate change, and human rights and social issues—providing faculty flexibility with topics covered in a typical 15-week semester.
Designed to help students engage more meaningfully with each topic and develop as critical thinkers, the OER includes:
review and assessment questions discussion prompts class activities relevant videos glossaries suggested readings
allowing students to dive further into topics no matter their preferred method of learning.
Authored by the faculty in IUP's Department of Anthropology, this OER arose from a commitment to provide high-quality resources to all students. We combined the best aspects of our introductory course and teaching to create a robust resource that can be used in any introductory, 4-field anthropology course. Our own applied experiences are integrated into the course materials, as well as those from a range of professional anthropologists (isotopes and kinship studies, indigenous archaeology, forensic anthropology and the race problem, medical anthropology, and a linguistic anthropological analysis of food and power relationships in the prison system, among others!). The result is a resource that provides multiple lenses to tackle common introductory topics while showing students the myriad possibilities of what it looks like to be an anthropologist.
Contact us for a LMS package to integrate the course into a Learning Management System.
Royal Savage is an important physical link to one of the seminal events of early U.S. Revolutiona... more Royal Savage is an important physical link to one of the seminal events of early U.S. Revolutionary War history. This importance drew the attention of an interested public long before archaeological science and ethics were advanced enough to provide for the long-term preservation of the hull and its artifacts. The result was a collection of disassociated timbers and artifacts that several institutions wanted to own, but which never received the interpretation they deserved. Now, using state-of-the-art three-dimensional imaging technology, it is possible to regain some of the information that was lost. In addition to contributing to the generation of a timber catalog, 3d documentation of the Royal Savage timbers via laser scanning and photogrammetry provides a visually appealing, permanent, and versatile record of the physical characteristics of the ship's remains. The resulting digital models are permanent in that, as visual reproductions, and if stored and managed appropriately, they will remain impervious to the physical decay to which the actual remains of the ship have and will continue to be subjected. As such, they will also remain available to continued and varied analyses to which the physical remains cannot be subjected, both as individual timbers and, when digitally reconstructed, as a partially intact hull.
Research experience is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice that improves unde... more Research experience is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice that improves undergraduate engagement, retention, and learning. Active and early student involvement in the excitement of answering real questions with real data helps undergraduates appreciate what they learn in classes and makes them more likely to persist in a program of study (Kuh 2008). Research experience is doubly valuable in archaeology, where much of the data are qualitative. Hands-on learning is a necessary component of mastering archaeological skills, as is active experience with learning how varying methods affect what research questions can be answered. Providing these experiences raises issues of scale and intensity for instructors. The experiences need to be deployable at a scale that meets the university's minimum class size requirement so that all students are exposed to research and allows interested students to continue research beyond the classroom. While a guided research experience may be sufficient to solidify basic concepts in the mind of the average student, few things are more effective at deadening the interest of a motivated student than withdrawing access to research once he or she has been hooked.
Maritime archaeology is an evolving field whose main focus is understanding and interpreting the ... more Maritime archaeology is an evolving field whose main focus is understanding and interpreting the past relationship between humans and the rivers, lakes, and oceans that have surrounded us throughout our history. Originating in the mid-20th century as the study of individual submerged archaeological sites striving to establish itself within the broader discipline of archaeology, it is now a vibrant and ever-expanding field, exploring not only an expanded range of individual sites—whether they be shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks, or harbor installations—but also submerged or maritime cultural landscapes, along with the broader societies and contexts surrounding these sites. Concurrently, advances in methodology and the use of technologies have increased the accuracy and breadth of data that may be recovered. Deep-water archaeology has emerged as a result of technological developments in recent years, complemented by impressive excavations of nautical or maritime sites on land. The science of conserving and analyzing artifacts, integral to the research and preservation of maritime cultural resources, continues to contribute new avenues supporting their interpretation and stabilization. The field is also expanding geographically and thematically, as international standards and practices develop, and as additional nations strive to preserve and research their maritime cultural heritage. Finding itself dedicated to the study of cultural resources that were originally meant to transcend cultural, political, and geographical boundaries, and that are now often located in areas outside the concrete management authority of state institutions or the view of the public, maritime archaeology presents an exceptional case study for questions that touch human culture at large: Who does it belong to? Who has access to it? How is preservation balanced with progress and development? This overview attempts to provide the reader with a variety of entry points into this fascinating and diverse field, according to one’s interests and perspective. The reader should note, however, that whereas the archaeological study of maritime heritage is a global endeavor conducted in all portions of the world, the field’s most influential works in the English language reflect traditional prejudices and biases in research, publication, and resourcing, and do not yet permit a uniform treatment of all regions and subject matter. In an attempt to counterbalance these limitations, the authors recommend that readers turn to several of the journal and proceedings publications in the section on Journals and Conference Proceedings Series for the broadest and most current coverage of the field.
Durham boats were a vital part of eastern North American inland transportation during the 18th an... more Durham boats were a vital part of eastern North American inland transportation during the 18th and 19th centuries, but are underrepresented in the archaeological record. The discovery of a 19th-century shipwreck in Oneida Lake, New York, that closely resembles historical Durham-boat descriptions allowed for an analysis of this vernacular vessel type. The Onei-da Lake shipwreck is fully described and compared to primary historical accounts to establish it as an archaeological example of the Durham-boat type. Extracto Los barcos Durham fueron una parte vital del transporte interior del este de Norteamérica durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, pero están subrepresentados en el registro arqueológico. El descubrimiento de un naufragio del siglo XIX en el Lago Oneida, estado de Nueva York, que se parece mucho a las descripciones históricas de barcos Durham, permitió realizar un análisis de este tipo de embarcación vernacular. El naufragio del Lago Oneida se describe por completo y se compara con los datos históricos principales, para establecerlo como un ejemplo arqueológico del barco tipo Durham.
The Bulletin and Journal of the New York State Archaeological Association, 2018
Carleton Island was home to a British naval base and Fort Haldimand during the American Revolutio... more Carleton Island was home to a British naval base and Fort Haldimand during the American Revolutionary War. Located on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York, the base served as an important connection between Québec and British interior forts. The Thousand Islands Land Trust protects Fort Haldimand, but the area immediately outside the fort is privately owned. A portion this area was surveyed with an electromagnetic profiler, a dual gradiometer system, and ground penetrating radar. The geophysical results were then investigated with excavation units that yielded several features, as well as a variety of 18th century artifacts. The features included the glacis, a sheet midden, and a possible abatis trench.
IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 2014
The Cruttenden Carriage Works in New Haven, Connecticut, stood for less than a century but housed... more The Cruttenden Carriage Works in New Haven, Connecticut, stood for less than a century but housed two different industries and witnessed several internal changes within a largely unaltered external shell. During the building’s ninety-six-year growth and decline, the surrounding community went from an incipient industrial district, to a bustling single industry community, to a slum. The physical and documentary remains of the Cruttenden Carriage Works provide evidence of the growth and decline of the carriage industry and how the industry shaped the surrounding neighborhood.
This Open Educational Resource was designed to provide a four-field introduction to anthropology ... more This Open Educational Resource was designed to provide a four-field introduction to anthropology for undergraduate courses. This course was created through the cumulative efforts of the Department of Anthropology at IUP as a reflection of their teaching and experiences as a collective.
IUP's Introduction to Anthropology: A Holistic and Applied Approach to Being Human is a 4-field text designed to provide students and instructors with a quality, peer-reviewed free resource that depicts a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and topics related to sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
Consisting of a robust series of 20 modules, the IUP OER covers topics from the history of North American anthropology, cultural and archaeological methods, the origins of humans and our earliest ancestors, the development of agriculture, race and ancestry, sex and gender, kinship, religion, climate change, and human rights and social issues—providing faculty flexibility with topics covered in a typical 15-week semester.
Designed to help students engage more meaningfully with each topic and develop as critical thinkers, the OER includes:
review and assessment questions discussion prompts class activities relevant videos glossaries suggested readings
allowing students to dive further into topics no matter their preferred method of learning.
Authored by the faculty in IUP's Department of Anthropology, this OER arose from a commitment to provide high-quality resources to all students. We combined the best aspects of our introductory course and teaching to create a robust resource that can be used in any introductory, 4-field anthropology course. Our own applied experiences are integrated into the course materials, as well as those from a range of professional anthropologists (isotopes and kinship studies, indigenous archaeology, forensic anthropology and the race problem, medical anthropology, and a linguistic anthropological analysis of food and power relationships in the prison system, among others!). The result is a resource that provides multiple lenses to tackle common introductory topics while showing students the myriad possibilities of what it looks like to be an anthropologist.
Contact us for a LMS package to integrate the course into a Learning Management System.
Royal Savage is an important physical link to one of the seminal events of early U.S. Revolutiona... more Royal Savage is an important physical link to one of the seminal events of early U.S. Revolutionary War history. This importance drew the attention of an interested public long before archaeological science and ethics were advanced enough to provide for the long-term preservation of the hull and its artifacts. The result was a collection of disassociated timbers and artifacts that several institutions wanted to own, but which never received the interpretation they deserved. Now, using state-of-the-art three-dimensional imaging technology, it is possible to regain some of the information that was lost. In addition to contributing to the generation of a timber catalog, 3d documentation of the Royal Savage timbers via laser scanning and photogrammetry provides a visually appealing, permanent, and versatile record of the physical characteristics of the ship's remains. The resulting digital models are permanent in that, as visual reproductions, and if stored and managed appropriately, they will remain impervious to the physical decay to which the actual remains of the ship have and will continue to be subjected. As such, they will also remain available to continued and varied analyses to which the physical remains cannot be subjected, both as individual timbers and, when digitally reconstructed, as a partially intact hull.
Research experience is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice that improves unde... more Research experience is widely recognized as a high-impact educational practice that improves undergraduate engagement, retention, and learning. Active and early student involvement in the excitement of answering real questions with real data helps undergraduates appreciate what they learn in classes and makes them more likely to persist in a program of study (Kuh 2008). Research experience is doubly valuable in archaeology, where much of the data are qualitative. Hands-on learning is a necessary component of mastering archaeological skills, as is active experience with learning how varying methods affect what research questions can be answered. Providing these experiences raises issues of scale and intensity for instructors. The experiences need to be deployable at a scale that meets the university's minimum class size requirement so that all students are exposed to research and allows interested students to continue research beyond the classroom. While a guided research experience may be sufficient to solidify basic concepts in the mind of the average student, few things are more effective at deadening the interest of a motivated student than withdrawing access to research once he or she has been hooked.
Maritime archaeology is an evolving field whose main focus is understanding and interpreting the ... more Maritime archaeology is an evolving field whose main focus is understanding and interpreting the past relationship between humans and the rivers, lakes, and oceans that have surrounded us throughout our history. Originating in the mid-20th century as the study of individual submerged archaeological sites striving to establish itself within the broader discipline of archaeology, it is now a vibrant and ever-expanding field, exploring not only an expanded range of individual sites—whether they be shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks, or harbor installations—but also submerged or maritime cultural landscapes, along with the broader societies and contexts surrounding these sites. Concurrently, advances in methodology and the use of technologies have increased the accuracy and breadth of data that may be recovered. Deep-water archaeology has emerged as a result of technological developments in recent years, complemented by impressive excavations of nautical or maritime sites on land. The science of conserving and analyzing artifacts, integral to the research and preservation of maritime cultural resources, continues to contribute new avenues supporting their interpretation and stabilization. The field is also expanding geographically and thematically, as international standards and practices develop, and as additional nations strive to preserve and research their maritime cultural heritage. Finding itself dedicated to the study of cultural resources that were originally meant to transcend cultural, political, and geographical boundaries, and that are now often located in areas outside the concrete management authority of state institutions or the view of the public, maritime archaeology presents an exceptional case study for questions that touch human culture at large: Who does it belong to? Who has access to it? How is preservation balanced with progress and development? This overview attempts to provide the reader with a variety of entry points into this fascinating and diverse field, according to one’s interests and perspective. The reader should note, however, that whereas the archaeological study of maritime heritage is a global endeavor conducted in all portions of the world, the field’s most influential works in the English language reflect traditional prejudices and biases in research, publication, and resourcing, and do not yet permit a uniform treatment of all regions and subject matter. In an attempt to counterbalance these limitations, the authors recommend that readers turn to several of the journal and proceedings publications in the section on Journals and Conference Proceedings Series for the broadest and most current coverage of the field.
Durham boats were a vital part of eastern North American inland transportation during the 18th an... more Durham boats were a vital part of eastern North American inland transportation during the 18th and 19th centuries, but are underrepresented in the archaeological record. The discovery of a 19th-century shipwreck in Oneida Lake, New York, that closely resembles historical Durham-boat descriptions allowed for an analysis of this vernacular vessel type. The Onei-da Lake shipwreck is fully described and compared to primary historical accounts to establish it as an archaeological example of the Durham-boat type. Extracto Los barcos Durham fueron una parte vital del transporte interior del este de Norteamérica durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, pero están subrepresentados en el registro arqueológico. El descubrimiento de un naufragio del siglo XIX en el Lago Oneida, estado de Nueva York, que se parece mucho a las descripciones históricas de barcos Durham, permitió realizar un análisis de este tipo de embarcación vernacular. El naufragio del Lago Oneida se describe por completo y se compara con los datos históricos principales, para establecerlo como un ejemplo arqueológico del barco tipo Durham.
The Bulletin and Journal of the New York State Archaeological Association, 2018
Carleton Island was home to a British naval base and Fort Haldimand during the American Revolutio... more Carleton Island was home to a British naval base and Fort Haldimand during the American Revolutionary War. Located on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York, the base served as an important connection between Québec and British interior forts. The Thousand Islands Land Trust protects Fort Haldimand, but the area immediately outside the fort is privately owned. A portion this area was surveyed with an electromagnetic profiler, a dual gradiometer system, and ground penetrating radar. The geophysical results were then investigated with excavation units that yielded several features, as well as a variety of 18th century artifacts. The features included the glacis, a sheet midden, and a possible abatis trench.
IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 2014
The Cruttenden Carriage Works in New Haven, Connecticut, stood for less than a century but housed... more The Cruttenden Carriage Works in New Haven, Connecticut, stood for less than a century but housed two different industries and witnessed several internal changes within a largely unaltered external shell. During the building’s ninety-six-year growth and decline, the surrounding community went from an incipient industrial district, to a bustling single industry community, to a slum. The physical and documentary remains of the Cruttenden Carriage Works provide evidence of the growth and decline of the carriage industry and how the industry shaped the surrounding neighborhood.
Naval power was central to controlling the Great Lakes and, by extension, the interior of North A... more Naval power was central to controlling the Great Lakes and, by extension, the interior of North America during the War of 1812. On Lake Ontario, the naval conflict took the form of an arms race with virtually no actual engagements. As a result, few vessels were lost during the war. With the signing of the Rush-Bagot Agreement, however, both belligerents sold vessels and put others in storage, resulting in the wrecks of lost or abandoned war vessels all over the lake. Many of these vessels have been located and studied over the last century. This paper reviews the vessels that have been studied, discusses what has been and what can be learned from these vessels, and notes some of the shipwrecks that are still to be found.
Series Editors: Linda Hulin (Oxford), Veronica Vardillo-Walker (Helsinki) In the thirty years sin... more Series Editors: Linda Hulin (Oxford), Veronica Vardillo-Walker (Helsinki) In the thirty years since Christer Westerdahl called for the study of maritime cultural landscapes, the field of maritime and underwater archaeology has been dominated by economic studies and the exploration of boat building traditions. Yet there has been a quiet sea-change, with more and more graduate studies oriented towards maritime cultural life on land as well as on board ship, and including inland rivers, lakes and waterways in the scope of their inquiry. The series editors wish to encourage contributions that embrace all forms of theory in maritime and underwater archaeology that increase our understanding of maritime cultural practices and identities in the past. The series will publish synthetic studies, theoretically oriented excavation reports and object studies, conference proceedings and revised doctoral theses. To ensure academic relevance, we encourage conference proceedings to be published within 2 years of the conference session taking place. The geographical scope of the series will be global, and contributions are encouraged from all regions of the world and from all time periods, from the Palaeolithic to the modern world. Editorial Board
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Books by Ben Ford
IUP's Introduction to Anthropology: A Holistic and Applied Approach to Being Human is a 4-field text designed to provide students and instructors with a quality, peer-reviewed free resource that depicts a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and topics related to sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
Consisting of a robust series of 20 modules, the IUP OER covers topics from the history of North American anthropology, cultural and archaeological methods, the origins of humans and our earliest ancestors, the development of agriculture, race and ancestry, sex and gender, kinship, religion, climate change, and human rights and social issues—providing faculty flexibility with topics covered in a typical 15-week semester.
Designed to help students engage more meaningfully with each topic and develop as critical thinkers, the OER includes:
review and assessment questions
discussion prompts
class activities
relevant videos
glossaries
suggested readings
allowing students to dive further into topics no matter their preferred method of learning.
Authored by the faculty in IUP's Department of Anthropology, this OER arose from a commitment to provide high-quality resources to all students. We combined the best aspects of our introductory course and teaching to create a robust resource that can be used in any introductory, 4-field anthropology course. Our own applied experiences are integrated into the course materials, as well as those from a range of professional anthropologists (isotopes and kinship studies, indigenous archaeology, forensic anthropology and the race problem, medical anthropology, and a linguistic anthropological analysis of food and power relationships in the prison system, among others!). The result is a resource that provides multiple lenses to tackle common introductory topics while showing students the myriad possibilities of what it looks like to be an anthropologist.
Contact us for a LMS package to integrate the course into a Learning Management System.
Papers by Ben Ford
IUP's Introduction to Anthropology: A Holistic and Applied Approach to Being Human is a 4-field text designed to provide students and instructors with a quality, peer-reviewed free resource that depicts a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and topics related to sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.
Consisting of a robust series of 20 modules, the IUP OER covers topics from the history of North American anthropology, cultural and archaeological methods, the origins of humans and our earliest ancestors, the development of agriculture, race and ancestry, sex and gender, kinship, religion, climate change, and human rights and social issues—providing faculty flexibility with topics covered in a typical 15-week semester.
Designed to help students engage more meaningfully with each topic and develop as critical thinkers, the OER includes:
review and assessment questions
discussion prompts
class activities
relevant videos
glossaries
suggested readings
allowing students to dive further into topics no matter their preferred method of learning.
Authored by the faculty in IUP's Department of Anthropology, this OER arose from a commitment to provide high-quality resources to all students. We combined the best aspects of our introductory course and teaching to create a robust resource that can be used in any introductory, 4-field anthropology course. Our own applied experiences are integrated into the course materials, as well as those from a range of professional anthropologists (isotopes and kinship studies, indigenous archaeology, forensic anthropology and the race problem, medical anthropology, and a linguistic anthropological analysis of food and power relationships in the prison system, among others!). The result is a resource that provides multiple lenses to tackle common introductory topics while showing students the myriad possibilities of what it looks like to be an anthropologist.
Contact us for a LMS package to integrate the course into a Learning Management System.