The exploration of the remarkable prehistories of China, the Koreas and Japan challenge western thought on agricultural origins, complex hunter-gatherers, urbanization and the development of centralized authority. This course evaluates current thinking about these issues in the three regions and examines the impact of local archaeological practice on the construction of narratives about the past.

This course examines major schools of archaeological thought over time. We will explore how theoretical approaches to archeological explanations of the human past affect and are affected by how archaeologists investigate research questions and interpret archaeological evidence. Readings include historically important key works as well as recent syntheses.

This course surveys the archaeology of South Asia (modern-day India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and northern regions) from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval Period (+200,000 ya to ca. 1600 CE/AD) using a comparative framework. South Asia is a place where many external cultural traditions mixed with indigenous traditions to create new socioeconomic and sociopolitical entities and sequences. While we will examine classic examples of hunter-gatherer groups, early villages, urban settlements, regional polities, and large empires through time, we will also stress the contemporaneity of groups of people with very different lifestyles -- hunter-gatherers participated in trading networks with town and city dwellers, pastoral nomads moved through settled village regions during their annual migrations. The impact of archaeological research on the region today is seen through the politicization of South Asian prehistory and history that has strongly affected both interpretations of the past and modern political events. Cases such as the debate over the identity of the Harappans and the existence of the Aryans will be evaluated from both an archaeological and a political perspective.

This course is a survey from an archaeological perspective of Indigenous history in Ontario and the Eastern Woodlands of North America from earliest times until colonization. Themes examined will include technology, subsistence, shelter, landscape use, art, and trade and how these vary in time and space.

Introduction to archaeological field methods. Practical component of the field school takes place on the UTM campus during the last two weeks of August (Monday-Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm). Morning lectures (week one) covering note taking, map making, cultural landscapes, material culture identification and survey and excavation methods, are followed by afternoons in the field applying skills taught that morning. Week two is spent excavating at an archaeological site. During weekly laboratory sessions September – December students learn to process, identify, and catalogue artifacts recovered during the field component. Limited Enrolment and Application Process: see Anthropology department website for more details.

Using hands-on learning as a primary approach, this course focuses on insights into social and cultural processes provided by the study of ancient and historic technology. Experimental, ethnographic, archaeological, and textual data are used to examine topics such as organization and control of production, style of technology, and the value of objects. Throughout, we will discuss social and cultural as well as economic and functional reasons for the development and adoption of new technologies.

This course will present various perspectives on the nature and dynamics of youth culture. The course will examine one or more of the following: capitalism and youth cultures, ethnomusicology, and discourses of "youth." Topics may include North American subcultures (such as punk and hip-hop) and/or ethnographies of youth from other parts of the world. The course may also use frameworks from cultural studies and semiotics.

A second revolution in human existence began when people developed agriculture long after the origin of modern humans and Upper Palaeolithic culture. This course critically evaluates the shift to agriculture in the context of current ecological and archaeological perspectives. The concept of "agriculture" is evaluated by considering plant and animal domestication as well as resource management in a broad range of contexts.

Human sexual behaviours will be examined through the lens of evolutionary theory. Through lectures and readings, students will examine such topics as genetic, hormonal, and environmental determinants of sex, sexual selection, and the influence of sex on life history and behaviour. Students will discuss research that has been published in this area, and will develop critical assessments of the literature and films.

What does it mean to be human? Paleoanthropologists address this question by using fossil evidence to piece together our evolutionary history. Who we are today is a product of our biological and geological past. We will begin this quest by looking at ourselves as primates, and then we will traverse back through time to study primate origins, evolution, adaptations, and behaviour until we reach our genus, Homo.

What does it mean to be human? This course will examine the evolutionary journey through the genus Homo by examining the fossil evidence and the archeological record. Through this examination we will discover the unique biological and behavioural characteristics of modern humans.

In this course students are given hands-on experience in the identification of the normal anatomy of the adult human skeleton with accompanying muscle function. Metrical variation, growth and development, bone histology, and methods of individual identification are introduced.

Survey of the function of gender roles from evolutionary and cultural perspectives. Cross-cultural variation in human sexual behaviour and gender will be examined. In some years, as part of this course, students may have the option of participating in an international learning experience that will have an additional cost and application process. See Anthropology department website for more details.

This course examines the fundamental biological principles of growth and how these are expressed throughout evolution. It explores the evolution of growth patterns among primates and hominins and compares patterns of growth among the living primates. The course examines human growth and development throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence and explores the influence of genetic, epigenetic, and endocrine processes on the plasticity of human growth that ultimately produces the variability observed in our species. The goal of the course is to provide students with a complex understanding of how evolutionary and environmental processes interact in the production of growth and health in human populations.

This lab methods course focuses on laboratory techniques used by biological anthropologists to assess growth, health, and risk of chronic disease in human populations. In this course students will gain practical, hands-on experience in nutrition assessment, anthropometry, physical activity and sleep assessment, and human energy expenditure. State-of-the-art instruments and software are employed, ensuring students gain valuable knowledge of data management and analysis using applications suitable in both clinical and research settings.

This course instructs students in the osteological methods used to interpret the life course of past populations, and the theory underlying these analyses. We will explore how skeletal analyses are employed to interpret group identity and behaviour using a biocultural approach and will address ethical issues pertaining to human remains, including the goals of descendant populations. The theoretical underpinnings of osteobiographical analyses, biological distance studies, paleopathology, and paleodemography will be outlined. Students will observe human morphological skeletal variation as a result of taphonomic processes, sex, age, pathological conditions, and non-metric variance.

Infection is situated at the intersection of social and biological experience. This course examines why infectious disease occupies such a central position in our contemporary understanding of health. It examines the many theoretical and methodological approaches currently used to understand how humans experience infectious illness. Perspectives from bioarchaeology, demography, environmental anthropology, medical history, biocultural anthropology, and medical anthropology are used to examine the way epidemics and infections have been understood throughout human history and how those understandings continue to shape human perceptions of risk, the body and identity. Social inequality is a major focus of inquiry; the course explores how colonialism, globalization and injustice lead to significant and persistent health inequalities for many populations.

The course uses ethnographic material to examine ways in which global forces have changed the nature of work in different sites since World War Two -- North America, Europe, and the countries of the South are selectively included.

Sociocultural anthropology has, since its inception, questioned the assumption that "the economy" ought to be understood as a domain distinguishable from other fields of human interaction, such as religion and kinship, or from power, politics, affect, and morality. This class offers a set of introductory readings that range from the analysis of non-Western forms of exchange and value to the study of capitalism; from stock-markets to the anti-globalization movement.

This course explores ethnographically the social and cultural practices through which the exercise of power is legitimized, authorized, and contested, examining such topics as nation-building, non-governmental activism, human rights, and the global "war on terror."

This course explores key concepts in medical anthropology, disability studies, and gender and queer studies by examining how gender and sexuality matter in the contexts of illness and disability across a range of institutional, social, and national contexts. Students will learn to think critically about the body as a site of power configured in the social and material fields of heath/illness, dis/ability, race, and gender and sexuality.

This class explores different forms of rebellion, insurgency, protest and political mobilization from an anthropological perspective, focusing specifically on anti-capitalist mobilizations. Grounded in ethnographies that range from studies of piracy, hacking, and the occupy movements, to struggles against the privatization of water and social movements organizing for "the commons," this course offers key insight into contemporary social movements, their deep groundings in the past, and the implications they might have for the future.

How does technology mediate our ideas about the social differences of disability, race, and gender? By rethinking the role of technology in reproducing social disparities and challenging bioethical debates about enhancement, students will emerge with the tools to reimagine the relationship between technology, the human body, and social justice.

This course will explore political violence and social change in the modern Middle East. What forms of loyalty, authority or rivalry have accompanied political violence? What economic activities and relations have been shaped by political conflict and peace in the region? What are the historical origins of nation-states, political regimes, and social movements in the region? By taking a historical and anthropological look at political conflict and change, this course will examine the transformations of the region in the last two centuries.

This course examines anthropological approaches to the environment and environmentalism. Through key readings on indigenous peoples and conservation, traditional ecological knowledge, community-based natural resource management, ecotourism and the human dimensions of climate change, the course explores the complex social, cultural and political encounters that produce 'the environment' as a resource in need of management.

This course investigates how sociocultural and/or linguistic anthropologists collect data, conduct fieldwork, and interpret research results. The course will benefit students who want to gain an appreciation of research design and practice and those considering graduate-level work in anthropology or another social science.

This course considers anthropological approaches to western and non-western religions and religious phenomena.

The course aims to introduce students to theoretical questions and contemporary research in linguistic anthropology. Topics include language ideologies, language and media, language and embodiment, as well as core theories in linguistic anthropology.

What's the difference between magic and science? Is there one? This course explores anthropological approaches to magic and science and related topics, raising basic questions about the nature of knowledge: what can we know about the world, and how can we know it? Through close readings of key anthropological texts, we consider what--if anything--differentiates magic and science, belief and truth, subjectivity and objectivity, irrationality and rationality.

This course will give students hands-on experience in methods for recording, transcribing, coding, and analyzing ethnographic data in linguistic anthropology. Students will synthesize weekly reading materials focused on these methods with actual, collaborative, in-class practice on a designated topic in the anthropology of everyday social interaction. Through this synthesis students will come to discern the relationship between everyday instances of communication between people and what the patterns of speech in this interaction may say about larger society. Students will be expected to develop their own analyses of the data collected under the guidance of the instructor and to formulate a final project.