Anthro/Archae at Top-Ranked Schools

warblersrule
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:57:23 +0000

slipper1234:

I don’t think you can rank anthro for undergrad so easily warblers. That list seems totally off to me.

I was ranking archaeology, not anthropology. I would never attempt to rank the latter, partially because so few schools are strong in all subject areas – you have Emory and Duke specializing in cultural and biological anthropology, Chicago specializing in archaeology and cultural anthropology, Stony Brook focusing on archaeology and biological anthropology, USC specializing in cultural and visual anthropology, etc.

As for archaeology, I think it is one of the few fields in which it is actually possible to rank colleges in terms of faculty quality and resources available, simply because so few schools are noticeably strong in the subject. Sure, some schools like Wooster and Vanderbilt may send a student to graduate school in archaeology every so often, and some schools are great in a specific area, like Johns Hopkins for Middle Eastern archaeology, Texas A&M for nautical archaeology, and SMU for southwestern archaeology. If, however, you want a wide range of archaeologists on faculty, large archaeological collections, well-equipped archaeology labs, and a wide range of courses that include not just the easily taught survey courses (“Greek Art and Archaeology,” “Mayan Civilization”) but also method courses (lithic analysis, ceramic analysis, faunal and floral analysis, molecular spectroscopy, etc.), then there are very, very few good options available.

I had very specific reasons for ranking the schools the way I did, and I focused on overall offerings – my lists would look rather different if the OP were only interested in, say, Chinese or Egyptian archaeology. I won’t go into it here, but I’d be happy to discuss it via PM.