Possible Paper Topic List

 

Anthropology 207

Decision due September 24

Topics with fewer sources are asterisked *

 

1.      Domestication of plants or animals in:  North America, Mexico, South America, the Fertile Crescent, Asia, Africa, or the Pacific Islands

 

2.      The effect of environment and human culture

 

3.      The peopling of the Americas

 

4.      Ur and the invention of writing

 

5.      The first colonialism—the Uruk expansion

 

6.      *The response to the first colonialism—the Proto-Elamite expansion

 

7.      The first cultural collapse—the PPNB collapse

 

8.      Mayan writing

 

9.      The first city in North America—Cahokia

 

10.  Middle Mississippian culture in North America

 

11.  Late Mississippian culture in North America

 

12.  European contact in North America, South America, or Mexico

 

13.  *The Wessex culture in England

 

14.  *Linear Bandkeramik Culture (LBK) in Europe—the expansion of farming into Europe

 

15.  The Shang Dynasty of China

 

16.  The Zhou Dynasty of China

 

17.  *The Xia Dynasty of China

 

18.  *Shamanism

 

19.  The very short-lived Qin dynasty of China

 

20.  The Olmecs

 

21.  The Aztecs

 

22.  The Zapotecs

 

23.  The Toltecs

 

24.  Chichen Itza

 

25.  Archaeological Theory

 

26.  Science and Archaeology

 

27.  Ethnographic analogy in archaeology

 

28.  Maize and culture

 

29.  The Indus Civilization

 

30.  The Oxus Civilization (Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex)

 

31.  The Old Kingdom of Egypt

 

32.  Nubia and Egypt

 

33.  The Middle Kingdom of Egypt

 

34.  The New Kingdom of Egypt

 

35.  Any of the Intermediate Periods of Egypt

 

36.  Colonialism in Prehistory

 

37.  Geology and Archaeology

 

38.  Problems in Archaeological Interpretation

 

39.  The site of Moundville in Alabama

 

40.  The Poverty Point site in Louisiana

 

41.  North Carolina archaeology in: Paleoindian period, Archaic period, Woodland period, Mississippian period, proto-historic/Contact period, or Historic period

 

42.  Historic Archaeology

 

43.  Slave archaeology

 

44.  Cultural Resource Management and modern archaeological problems

 

45.  The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the politics of modern archaeology

 

46.  Museums and archaeology