Re: Subject Reviews
No exam for this one either, so:
ARPH1001 Introduction to Archaeology
Lecturer: Dr Martin Gibbs (and his wacky crew of guest lecturers)
To be recoded ARCA1002 and moved to Sem 2 from next year
Ease: 8.5/10. Most of the material covered was reasonably basic, and the lack of an exam meant you didn’t need any deep understanding of it. The two 15% quizzes – which were mainly multiple choice with a few short answers - weren’t particularly challenging, just going over notes and memorising lists was good enough to get a decent mark. It probably wasn’t necessary to go to the lectures, since the textbook* and the notes on WebCT were pretty comprehensive. The essay was OK if you started early and picked a decent topic – I stupidly chose a complicated topic and started late, but I did it reasonably thoroughly anyway and got a D. The other element of assessment was a workbook based on the six workshop sessions. The main thing was not to put it off until later but just to do each workshop’s tasks soon after the workshop, to avoid it all piling up. The hardest task was Documents in Archaeology, which took a long time because it actually required thinking.
Lecturer: 9/10 for Martin, 6/10 for the guest lecturers. Martin Gibbs is an excellent lecturer who can convey a lot of fairly dry topics humorously and clearly. He also has a ton of interesting examples from his own research in the Solomon Islands and thereabouts. Unfortunately, most of the lecturers from the second half of the course, ‘Themes in archaeological research’, were guest lecturers from the Department of Archaeology talking about their areas of expertise. Most of them weren’t much good at lecturing: lowlights were Sarah Colley’s excruciatingly boring lecture on environmental archaeology, Ian Johnson’s pointless lecture about computer applications in archaeology, and every lecture by Lesley Beaumont, who has the unique ability to make it sound like she’s reading her lecture word-for-word off the paper in front of her even though she actually isn’t.
Interest: 8/10. The first half of the course, ‘Definitions and techniques in archaeology’, was fascinating – looking at different aspects of practical archaeology like surveying, settlement patterns, excavation, chronologies and ethnoarchaeology. The second half varied, as it was pretty much a pick’n’mix of different areas of archaeological research – the stuff about the development of literacy and trade was interesting, but the stuff about the archaeology of identity and religion was awful. Some of the workshops were better than others – Identities in Rubbish, where we looked through people’s household waste to see what we could conclude about them, was really fun, but the stratigraphy one was basic, tedious and difficult at the same time.
Overall: 8.5/10. It was an interesting (and easy) course that provides a decent foundation for further study in archaeology. I’d rate it higher if not for some of the guest lecturers and a couple of boring and fiddly workshops.
*Don't bother buying it unless you're really committed. I just got it out of the library a week before each test to go through a few details that the online notes didn't cover in enough depth.