ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology is a broad interdisciplinary field that studies the origin and diversity of our human experience in both the modern and ancient world. At Pierce College, we offer courses in all four sub-fields of Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Archaeology.

Physical Anthropology involves investigating our origins and biological diversity. Physical Anthropology (Anthropology 101-Human Biological Evolution and the Anthropology 111, Lab) are the courses that receive the greatest enrollment because they fulfill the general education requirement in the biological sciences. Over the years we have developed an anthropology collection consisting of human and primate skeletal material, fossil casts, archaeological material, and much more to use in teaching these classes. The other courses that fit into this category are Anthropology 118, The Fundamentals of Forensic Anthropology and Anthropology 119, Introduction to Forensic Anthropology.

Archaeology is the study of human prehistory, which covers most of our species time on the planet. How is it that just 20,000 years ago all humans lived in small mobile hunter-gatherer groups, but today the majority of us live in large urban societies? Archaeologists recover evidence of ancient societies in order to answer such questions. Our archaeology program consists of three courses, Anthropology 105 (Prehistoric Peoples), Anthropology 106 (Introduction to Archaeology), which includes a lab component, and Anthropology 113 (Field Archaeology).

Cultural Anthropology involves the study of human cultural diversity in our contemporary world. The largest field is cultural anthropology that fulfills both social science and humanities general education requirements. The courses that fall into this category are Anthropology 102 (Human Ways of Life: Cultural Anthropology), Anthropology 109 (Gender, Sex and Culture), Anthropology 121 (Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft), Anthropology 132 (Native Peoples of North America), and Anthropology 141 (Culture, Illness and Healing).

Linguistic Anthropology seeks to understand the deep connections between language and culture. Research in this subfield covers a broad range of subjects, such as understanding the ancestral ties between modern languages, deciphering ancient writing systems, and how language shapes the way in which people view the world. Courses Offered:Anthropology 161: Introduction to Language and Linguistics